The Quietly Help - Please Thinking About Humanitarian

The summer of 2010 produced Pakistan’s worst flooding in 80 years. The number
of people affected, who need food, shelter and clothing to face a harsh Pakistani
winter, is 20 million.

Flooding began on July 22, 2010, in the province of Baluchistan. The swollen waters
then poured across the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province in the northwest before flowing
south into Punjab and Sindh. Estimates of the death toll of the floods range from
1,300 to 1,600.

Even as Pakistani and international relief officials scrambled to save people and
property, they despaired that the nation’s worst natural calamity had ruined just
about every physical strand that knit the country together — roads, bridges,
schools, health clinics, electricity and communications.

The flooding, which began with the arrival of the annual monsoons, eventually
affected about one-fifth of the country — nearly 62,000 square miles — or an
area larger than England.

Six weeks after the floods began, as rivers continued to devour villages and
farmland in the southern province of Sindh, aid workers warned of a triple
threat: loss of crops, loss of seed for the next planting season and loss
of a daily income. There was widespread worry that the disaster will destabilize
the country and aggravate its already deep regional, sectarian and class fissures.

Poorly handled relief efforts, corruption and favoritism have added to the
distrust that many Pakistanis already feel for their civilian political
leaders, while the armed forces have burnished their image performing rescue
and relief missions along the length of the flooded areas.