Pakistan’s flood survivors: "What are we going to do now?"

Zubadia Razia, 20, walks through the mud and rubble that was once her home in the devastated Charsadda district. She is looking for a suitcase she kept clothes in, but it is nowhere to be found.

Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

The International Rescue Committee’s Peter Biro is travelling in western Pakistan where the IRC is delivering aid to victims of the worst flooding in Pakistan’s history.

In a rare reprieve from the heavy monsoon rains, Zubadia Razia, 20, walks through the mud and rubble that was once her home. She is looking for a suitcase she kept clothes in, but it is nowhere to be found. This area, near the city of Peshawar, was wiped out in Pakistan’s worst flooding in living memory. So far, the deluge has killed over 1,600 people, affected some 20 million people, washed away crops and farm animals and overwhelmed the Pakistani government. 
 
“This is what’s left of our house,” Razia says, gesturing toward a pile of rubble, her voice filled with despair. “We were 13 people living here and now everything is gone.”
 
As fierce rains continue to pound much of Pakistan, the people here are wondering what to do next. Food prices have soared and the livelihoods of entire villages have been washed away. All around us corn and wheat fields are under water.
 
“My husband made a living from selling ice cream,” Razia says, pointing to a small wooden vending cart, its twisted wheels buried in the rubble. “I stitch clothes for a living, but my sewing machine is also lost.”
 
Normally Razia’s family spends 350 rupees, or four U.S. dollars, per day on food. With any possibility of earning a living now shattered, the family is surviving on handouts and money borrowed from friends and relatives.
 
“We receive rice from people around us who can afford to give it away,” Zubadia says.
 
Poor sanitary conditions and a lack of safe drinking water have created the potential for serious outbreaks of disease. Health officials have confirmed at least one case of cholera in northwestern Pakistan and diarrhea and skin disease have started to spread. The United Nations has warned that a shortage of aid money is threatening six million people, the majority of them children and infants, with potentially lethal diseases carried by contaminated water. As a first step to thwart the spread of disease, my IRC colleagues are distributing water purification tablets. The next critical step, they tell me, is to bring clean water via tanker trucks to the devastated communities.

“With most of the infrastructure destroyed and supplies overstretched, this will be no easy task,” says Tammy Hasselfeldt, who runs IRC programs in Pakistan.
 
Not far from Razia’s wrecked house lies the Azakhel camp, which has been a home for refugees fleeing war and conflict in Afghanistan for over three decades. Now it’s all gone. When the banks of the Kabul River burst, almost all the mud houses were turned into clay mounds and twisted debris, leaving some 30,000 people homeless. Mattresses, twisted bed frames and fans lie buried in thick mud. The stench of rotting carcasses of livestock fills the hot midday air and in the pools of stagnant water, insects are visibly breeding.  Hasselfeldt says malaria is a growing threat.

 Most of the Afghan refugees are now taking shelter nearby, in tents by the side of the Grand Trunk road, once part of the legendary Silk Road and now a busy highway.
 
One of the Afghans, Serdar Wali, has been squatting under a tarpaulin for more than two weeks. “What are we going to do now?” he says with a bitter smile as heavy trucks roar by a couple of meters away. “Once again, we are refugees.” 

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