’JuD also was active in the aid effort after the massive 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, even winning international praise for its work, and also in caring for those displaced from the Swat valley last year when the army mounted an operation to recapture the area from the Taliban’
Shafiq Ahmed

The Khyber- Pakhtoonkhwa province is in mourning. Already ravaged by ’war on terror’, a big part of this province has been reduced to ruins by flash floods. At least four million people in this province have been affected as hundreds of villages and dozens of towns submerged when monsoon rains began to lash the province by end-July onwards.

The natural calamity has offered Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) a chance to build an image of philanthropic outfit. JuD’s front organization, Falah-e-Insaniat, is not merely active providing relief but has been turning this opportunity into a PR-campaign. The international media have also keenly reported the Falah-e-Insaniat activities. Every time the JuD activists get a chance to talk to foreign correspondents, they point out government’s failure in providing relief to flood victims.

That the JuD has seized upon the chance offered by floods to engage in a massive relief activity is not surprising. ’JuD also was active in the aid effort after the massive 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, even winning international praise for its work, and also in caring for those displaced from the Swat valley last year when the army mounted an operation to recapture the area from the Taliban’. Christian Science Monitor fittingly reminds (CSM Aug. 4).

The JuD was blamed for Mumbai attacks in November 2008 and was listed as a terrorist organization by the United Nations. The JuD is not the only religious outfit active in Pakhtoonkhwa. The Al-Khidmat Foundation, a charity linked with Jamaat-e-Islami, is also carrying out relief activities. Owing to the law and order situation in this province as writ of the state has largely gone missing and Taliban rule the roost, many NGOs and charity organization have it seems shied away from offering relief to flood victims.

Also, many people in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa have preferred donating to Al-Khidmat Foundation and JuD. The provincial information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, has repeatedly said that the government had not been offered private donations for rescue operations and rehabilitation efforts. He says the provincial government has been mainly depending on the federal government and international donors. The provincial government has frozen the development funds and has announced to divert these funds to rehabilitation efforts.

JuD vs. UN

Different UN organizations and certain international charities are often active when natural calamities hit a country. But in Pakhtoonkhwa their presence has not either been felt or these bodies have been slow in acting. The JuD and Al-Khidmat Foundation were the first to arrive on the scene in many cases. Also, the media sympathetically covered their activities.

“The JuD has provided food to 30,000 people since the flood inundated Charsadda, Nowshera and suburban Peshawar,” says JuD activist Abdullah. He oversees JuD’s relief operation in Peshawar. “Immediately after the flood, we started free transport service and helped thousands of stranded people to move to safe places,” Abdullah told Viewpoint.

Only in Peshawar district, which was less affected, Abdullah said, JuD had set up eight medical camps where 10 doctors and 40 paramedics were providing health service day and night. ’The JuD activities in Nowshera and Charsadda districts and Malakand region were three times bigger’, he asserted.

’Now we have started Ramadan package and in Peshawar the JuD workers have identified 500 shelter less families, who have started getting Sehr and Iftar (food to begin and end fasting) at the places they are lodged presently," Abdullah said. ’We will spend Eid with them and definitely support them on that day,’ he told Viewpoint.

According to JuD weekly Jarar , the organization has set up 162 medical centers in the flood-hit areas across the country and over 100,000 have been provided free treatment at these medical facilities.

Meantime, not merely national and international NGOs/charities have been largely missing from the scene, province’s two major political parties, Pakistan People’s Party and Awami National Party, have also been either confined to tiny circles or absent from calamity-hit districts.

The L A Times appropriately notes: ’The role that Falah-e-Insaniat and other hard-line Islamist groups are playing in disaster relief has created a dilemma for the Pakistani government. The groups are helping by reaching flood-stricken areas that the government hasn’t been able to get to because of a lack of personnel and resources, but their access to such vulnerable communities also allows them to spread their militant message’(Aug. 10).

Afghan refugees

The flash floods have washed away four Afghan refugee camps. The Zindai, Azakheil, Hajizai and Munda camps have been reduced to rubble. Thus the floods have left thousands of Afghan families homeless. The Pakhtoonkhwa government and other local and international donors are mostly focusing on the local population. None of them has come forth to help Afghan refugees.

About 18,000 Afghan families----approximately 100,000 persons---- have been affected in the floods. Hijratullah, Ghulam Rasool, Qari Amin and a few others----once lodged at Zindai camp---- told Viewpoint that the officials of UNHCR and Afghan Commission visited the Afghan refugee camps when the flood water receded. ’They provided only 40 tents for 3000 families at our camp. They asked us to go back to our country’, Ghulam Rasool said. Only Sufaa Foundation, a community-based NGO set up by well-off Afghans, is supporting the Afghan refugees. When this correspondent arrived at Zindai camp, sweat-soaked refugees were scavenging the mud-and-rubble of their destroyed houses. They were looking for wood-logs and doors from the ruins in the hope of rebuilding their houses. The refugees told Viewpoint that many of them have lost their ’identity cards’ issued by the Pakistan government. The holder of such identity card is considered a legal refugee. The loss of identity cards may cause problems for these refugees in future.

Shafiq Ahmad