Anil Kalhan

That’s what Audil Rashid and Mian Nazish Adnan sound the alarm about in the July 4, 2009 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, following their recent visits to camps set up to house internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing the conflict zone in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. While Americans celebrate the Independence Day weekend with barbeques and fireworks, Rashid and Adnan paint a grim picture of the crisis in Pakistan:

From the very beginning it was evident that the government had underestimated the human cost of the military operation. As several camps were hastily set up to cater to the massive influx of IDPs, reports about the lack of even basic amenities in these camps began to emerge. Excessive heat (daytime temperatures soaring to 40°C and above), no electricity, food and water shortages, poor sanitation, and lack of proper health care are some of the immediate problems being faced by IDPs….

Lack of proper toilets and sanitation, unsafe drinking water, infrequent bathing, high air temperatures, inadequate disposal of solid waste, and the complete absence of a proper drainage system at the refugee camps are the main causes of worry for relief health workers. “This is the making of a disaster. These camps have been established on open tracts of land used for agricultural purposes. There are snakes, rats, and scorpions here. At night, when it is pitch dark because of no electricity, people sleep on the ground and are vulnerable to snakebites”, said M Idrees Mirza, a doctor who runs a private clinic in Rawalpindi city and is working voluntarily in the
camps.

“Conditions in these camps make them perfect breeding areas for mosquitoes and many varieties of insects. In my opinion, there is a very high probability of an outbreak of any disease like mumps, measles, scabies, malaria, diarrhoea, polio, and leishmaniasis”, said another health worker working for a respected NGO who spoke to The Lancet on condition of anonymity. “We need medicines, doctors, and qualified health workers. And we need them urgently. Any delays might result in a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.”….

Eager to establish its writ over the Swat Valley, the government seems to have created a health crisis which it may not be able to overcome. [link; registration req'd]

Two letters in the same issue of The Lancet offer additional details. But as dire as the situation has become within the camps, K.M. Bile and Assad Hafeez note in one of those letters that the government camps house only 20 percent of the IDPs — who may now total as many as 2.5 million individuals, almost half of them children:

Without counting the great costs to themselves, families in the local community are looking after more than 1·73 million people, in accordance with the local tradition of hospitality. Most displaced people have been accommodated within family homes; others are in schools, mosques, and other community buildings…. Although a proportion of host families are related to or friends of the displaced people, many have welcomed strangers. [link; registration req'd]

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

In Pakistan, it increasingly appears that everything old may soon be new again — for better, but perhaps also for worse.

With all of the media attention paid to the mutual antagonism between Musharraf and Sharif — who literally tried to kill each other in 1999 and 2000 — and to the negotiations between Musharraf and Bhutto, observers outside of Pakistan have virtually ignored the third side of this triangle, between Bhutto and Sharif themselves. In the process, the deeper structural issues that transcend the soap opera transpiring among these three personalities — and the folly of the U.S. and British governments’ efforts to broker a deal between Musharraf and Bhutto — have been wholly obscured.

Continue reading at AsiaMedia….

A couple of weeks ago, as noted in the South Asian Journalists Association’s blog SAJAforum, Pakistan’s U.N. Ambassador, Munir Akram, took a break from his duties as diplomat to perform a quick stint as media critic. In a letter to the editor, he responded to a New York Times editorial criticizing continued U.S. support for General Pervez Musharraf. Akram complained that The Times’ “repeated references to our president as a military dictator are offensive. President Pervez Musharraf was elected in accordance with Pakistan’s Constitution by our national and provincial parliaments. His re-election will be similarly democratic.”

The Times did not exactly get it wrong. . . .

Continue reading at AsiaMedia….

Last weekend’s bout of political violence in Karachi — the worst the city has seen in years — culminated a tumultuous week in which the stakes escalated sharply in the conflict between Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf and supporters of now the “non-functional” Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. With Musharraf and his allies clamping down on political opponents, interfering with freedom of the press, and raising the specter of a state of emergency, the prospects for the return of Pakistani democracy may hang in the balance. . . .

Continue reading at AsiaMedia…