Through the chopper’s open door, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif pitches a sack of food, then looks down and heaves out another. He has spent almost every day since the floods hit marshalling dykes and dispensing relief. His rivals accuse him of taking political advantage from the deluge, which at its height submerged a fifth of Pakistan’s area and affected over 20m people. But the country would be in less calamitous shape if more officials worked as hard as he.
Touching down in Daira Din Panah, a small town in southern Punjab, the chief minister roused the assembled crowd, promising gifts for the Muslim festival of Eidul Fitr, which was celebrated in Pakistan on September 11. He then visited the town’s clinic, checked that its walls were drying, demanded to see that its x-ray machine was still working, congratulated its exhausted medical staff - then left to perform much the same routine elsewhere.
Punjab is the country’s richest and most populous province but, according to Khalid Sherdil, the head of the provincial Disaster Relief Authority, its government has found only $6m to spend on flood relief. Over half a million houses are said to be damaged in Punjab, yet it has been able to provide only 30,000 tents. Its chief minister said he had no choice but to lead from the muddy front because his district officials, the main dispensers of public services, could not otherwise be relied upon. Since the floodwater hit Punjab at the end of August, after flash-floods in northern Swat (where most of the disaster’s 1,800-odd deaths occurred), Shahbaz has sacked the bosses of two of Punjab’s six worst-affected districts. And he disparaged the rest: “I’ve found most have brains below average.”
On the other hand, President Asif Zardari, the PPP leader, was castigated for visiting, by helicopter, his French chateau a few days after the disaster struck. He has an unmatched (though unproven) reputation for corruption. And this is likely to hurt the PPP most because the flooding is mainly in its strongholds, of southern Punjab and Sindh. The especially lamentable response of Sindh’s PPP-run provincial government, which had the clearest warning of the coming spate, may prove particularly damaging to Pakistan’s ruling party.
Of all Pakistan’s main actors, only the armed forces have emerged from the disaster strongly in credit. Bringing boats and helicopters that the civil powers lacked, they have rescued tens of thousands of stranded people and dispensed much of the government’s aid. Over 70,000 troops have been dedicated to this work. “It was the army’s duty to come in aid of the civil power,” says the army’s spokesman, Major-General Athar Abbas. “It just set to work.” Thanks goodness for that. Then again, considering that by one estimate the armed forces lay claim to a third of Pakistan’s budget, quite right too.
According to Punjab’s chief minister, many army officers are itching to intervene; their chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, demurs. Shahbaz also expressed two other flood-related fears: that disaffected victims could turn to Islamist militancy, which is entrenched in southern Punjab, or that they might otherwise rise up. “If we do not do our job properly, bury the hatchet and move forward, there’s a danger that the people of this area will march to Lahore and will not spare the elite class,” he said.