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ISLAMABAD: The World Food Programme on Tuesday warned that flood-ravaged Pakistan faced a “triple threat” after the worst disaster in the country’s history left eight million people dependent on aid to survive.

The floods have washed away huge swathes of the rich farmland on which the country’s struggling economy depends.

“There is a triple threat unfolding as this crisis widens and deepens,” World Food Programme chief Josette Sheeran said at a press conference with other United Nations officials in Islamabad, after visiting flooded areas.

“People have lost seeds, crops and their incomes, leaving them vulnerable to hunger, homelessness and desperation —the situation is extremely critical,” she said.

Anthony Lake, chief of the UN children’s fund Unicef, said that the disaster had affected nearly 8.6 million children.

“In many ways it is a children’s emergency,” Lake said. “There is also a potential second wave of death from waterborne diseases. This is likely to get much worse if we can’t reach people with clean water, adequate nutrition, sanitation and vaccination,” he said.

PESHAWAR: A Pakistani official says government airstrikes have killed eight suspected insurgents in the Khyber tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Local official Ameerzada Khan says fighter jets and helicopter gunships pounded suspected insurgent hideouts in Nare Baba and Sheen Drand villages in Teerah Valley on Tuesday and killed eight militants.

Two intelligence officials also confirmed the airstrikes but said 30 insurgents were killed. The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

GENEVA: Flood waters in Pakistan have dislodged and carried landmines to places previously deemed safe or demined, increasing risks to the population, the international Red Cross warned on Tuesday.

Since the beginning of the floods, “three children, a woman and a man have been severely injured” by landmines in disaster-hit regions, Luiza Khazhgerieva, an official from the International Committee of the Red Cross, told AFP.

“Mines and unexploded ordnance could have been easily moved by water from the original places,” she noted.

The ICRC has in recent weeks documented incidents of explosions in areas previously deemed to be free of landmines.

In one instance, a woman’s leg was blown off after she stepped on a mine while collecting firewood in places she used to frequent before the flood.

In another incident, a refugee in Kashmir was hurt by a mine while cutting grass to feed his cattle.

“This incident occurred in the area which is far away from places where incidents have been reported in the past,” said Khazhgerieva, who did not have figures on the number of unexploded ordnance in Pakistan.

In addition, two anti-personnel mines and a grenade were found in the pools of stagnant water and defused by the bomb disposal squad in Dera Ismail Kahn, south of Peshawar, said the aid official.

“Big explosions have been seen by local people in moving flood water there,” she noted, adding that this could be due to an explosive colliding with a hard surface.

The aid agency has stepped up a campaign to remind the population of the dangers of landmines.—AFP

SIALKOT: After completion of an investigation into the murder of two brothers by a mob in Silakot, police formally arrested former DPO Waqar Chohan on Tuesday.

DPO Silakot Bilal Sadiq said that the arrested DPO along with six other policemen will be presented before a court on Wednesday.

Bilal, while talking to DawnNews, said that ten policemen were found guilty in the initial investigation of the Sialkot incident. Six of them were arrested and four were still at large, he added.

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Foreign Office strongly denied the news propagated in the US and Indian media claiming that ‘Galgit Baltistan’ region had been handed over to China, on Tuesday.

 “The Chinese were working on landslide, flood hit areas and on the destroyed Korakoram Highway with the permission of Pakistani Government,” said Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit.

Selig Harrison in his article, published in the New York Times, wrote that on invitation of the Pakistani government ‘seven to eleven thousand’ Chinese soldiers had entered Gilgit Baltistan area.

Referring to the article, Basit said “The statements are based on incomplete information. Harrison has an anti-Pakistan mindset and has tried to deform the facts in his article to sensitize the situation.” – DawnNews

ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on Tuesday said that the Prime Minister’s role in the appointment of judges cannot be eliminated. He further said that the court should be properly informed on the parliamentary committee in this regard.

Chief Justice Iftikhar made these remarks during the hearing of petitions challenging the 18th Amendment.

A 17-judge full court was hearing the petitions challenging certain clauses in the amendment.

During the hearing, Chief Justice Iftikhar said that Pakistan will continue to have the parliamentary form of government.

Meanwhile, Attorney-General Pakistan Maulvi Anwarul Haq said that the procedure of judges’ appointment detailed in the 18th Amendment does not infringe upon the judiciary’s independence.

The hearing of the petitions was adjourned till Wednesday.

LAHORE: A man killed his wife and three daughters in Sheikhupura district’s Pindi Ratan Singh village on Tuesday, DawnNews reported.

Shaukat, the accused, used a sharp object to kill his wife Amna bibi and their three daughters.

Witnesses said Shaukat was angered to discover that his wife had betrothed their eldest daughter to her nephew.

After the murders Shaukat escaped from the scene. — DawnNews

KARACHI: Floodwaters that have devastated Pakistan for five weeks headed to the Arabian Sea on Tuesday after swallowing two final towns, but the challenges of delivering emergency aid to 8 million people remained.

The floods have moved down from the mountainous northwest, submerging or affecting almost 1/5 of the country at their peak.

Waters have begun to recede in the north and in Punjab, but they have been submerging towns in southern Sindh province close to the Indus River over the last 10 days.

Government official Hadi Bakhsh said the last two towns in the path of the floods were hit late Monday.

”The floodwaters hit Khahre Jamali and Jati towns last night, and now there is no other village or town in the way of the deluge,” he said, adding that people had already fled the towns, parts of which were under 10 feet (3 meters) of water.

”The floodwaters are now heading to the Arabian Sea,” he said.

Authorities have struggled to feed, house and arrange medical care for the survivors of the floods. Foreign countries and the United Nations were slow to respond to the disaster, in part because it took a long time for its extent to become clear.

Aid is slowly reaching the worst-affected areas by army helicopter, road and boat, but millions have received little or no help.

The UN warned that additional funding for emergency food was urgently needed to ensure supplies into next month.

Once all the floodwaters recede, the country will be left with a massive relief and reconstruction effort that will cost billions of dollars and take years. An estimated 1 million homes have been damaged or destroyed, five times as many as were hit by this year’s earthquake in Haiti. – AP

PESHAWAR: Needing cash not food, refugees in Pakistan’s flood-ravaged northwest do not have to look far for buyers for their rations. Outside an aid warehouse, middlemen buy US-branded oil, flour and biscuits and supply shops across the city.

The trade is not illegal, but appears to strengthen arguments by aid groups who say that giving money to those recovering from disasters or war is often cheaper, more effective and efficient than doling out food or other assistance like housing materials, seeds or agricultural tools.

Some large charities have already begun handing out money to victims of this summer’s devastating floods and others say they have plans to so, continuing a trend that began in earnest after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and has picked up pace ever since.

But some in the humanitarian community remain resistant to the idea, especially those in the larger U.N. agencies, where there are fears that cash can cause inflation and fuel corruption. Many Pakistanis apparently share the same concern. They have preferred to give food, clothes and medicine to flood victims instead of money because of worries it could be misused.

The floods started about a month ago in the northwest after extremely heavy monsoon rains and have slowly surged south along the Indus River, devastating towns and farmland. More than 1,600 people have died and 17 million have been affected by the floods. Water levels are beginning to drop in southern Pakistan as the floodwaters flow down the Indus River into the Arabian Sea.

While giving money in environments where there is no food to buy on the market and banks and distribution networks have been damaged is clearly wrong, in many parts of Pakistan – even those affected by the floods – those conditions do not apply, aid groups say.

”We have other needs too,” said Paenda Mohammad, who sold part of his rations from a World Food Programme warehouse in the northwestern city of Peshawar last week to one of several middlemen waiting outside. ”Each time we get just flour and oil and this bunch of tasteless biscuits.”

Mohammad is one of several hundred people who receive a sack of 180 pounds (80 kilograms) of flour, along with cooking oil, pulses, sugar and high-energy biscuits from the warehouse every month. The goods are clearly marked ”Not to be Sold or Exchanged.” The flour sacks have American flags emblazoned on them.

Mohammad and his family have been displaced by fighting over the last two years between the Pakistani army and the Taliban in tribal regions close to the Afghan border, not by the floods, which have hit communities elsewhere in the northwest.

Men with pushcarts then take the goods to shops around 100 yards (100 meters) away, where shopkeepers display them prominently.

”This is very fine flour and cost-effective too,” said Nawab Ali, who bought a 100-pound (50-kilogram) sack and rode off with it, and his two young children, on a motorbike.

”We mix it with a little local whole-wheat flour and make good bread out of it.”

The World Food Programme said it monitored markets in the northwest to see how much of its supplies were ending up for sale and that levels in Peshawar were not unusually high.

American officials said they were not so concerned about people selling the aid, but would investigate whether any supplies had been stolen from somewhere in the distribution network and then put up for sale.

While aid groups use the term ”cash-based programming,” actual money is rarely given because of security reasons. The assistance is mostly in the form of checks, vouchers, food stamps or remittances at banks.

Some aid experts say the resistance to cash by some aid groups is as much cultural as anything else. They say it challenges deep-seated and largely unspoken assumptions that Western countries know best what the poor in developing countries need.

Several studies have shown that a main argument once used against giving cash – that recipients would spend it on cigarettes, alcohol or drugs – is not true.

”We can trust people. They are wise enough,” said Claudie Meyers from Oxfam GB, which has already given checks of around $60 to 7,000 families in the northwest and plans to give out similar amounts to 40,000 more.

”They can prioritise their needs. If I was in this situation, I would buy food. They do the same.”

The WFP, which plans to be feeding 6 million people in Pakistan by the end of September, recently concluded a pilot project in Buner district in the northwest where it gave cash vouchers to people rather than food. It found that recipients spent 70 per cent of the money on food and the distribution costs were around five percent cheaper than trucking in food.

The study also reported a significant boost to local shops.

Wolfgang Herbinger, WFP’s country director in Pakistan, said there would likely be more cash-programming in the future in the country, but said the agency still ”tended to be a bit cautious.”

Wolfgang Herbinger, WFP’s country director in Pakistan, said there would likely be more cash-programming in the future in the country, but said the agency still “tended to be a bit cautious.”

“Many people are fairly ideological on cash, I find, but the analysis and evidence is not there,” he said. “There is currently so much hype, every donor says it stimulates the economy,” he said, adding there was a risk that “if you throw the money, it does not add a kilogram of food, it only drives up prices.”

Many governments around the world already give their poorest citizens cash handouts or food stamps.

Pakistan has a scheme named after the slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto that gives out the equivalent of $24 every two months to its poorest people. The United States has donated at least $85 million dollars to that fund.
The government has also announced plans to give $250 to families affected by the floods.

Paul Harvey, an independent aid consultant who has studied the use of cash in emergency situations, said that so long as aid groups were responsible, it was a very effective response. He said that in reality a mix of food, other aid and cash was often the ideal choice.

“Cash should be part of the tool box and could be used more than it currently it is,” he said. “People prefer having cash. It is a more dignified way of doing things.”

Several flood victims returning to their villages in the northwest said they would prefer money.
 
Many people have complained over the last month of humiliation when scrounging for food thrown from a helicopter or the back of a truck.

“We prefer the cash. Because whenever this stuff comes – whether it is food or anything else – the distribution is not very good. Undeserving people get things that other people truly need,” said Mirbat Khan who was looking at the remains of his village in Nowshera district. –AP

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party continues to lead the fake degree holding lawmakers as the Higher Education Commission (HEC) declared three more legislators to be holding fake degree.

Those found to be possessing fake degrees included Amir Yar Waran, Jawad Hussain and Iqbal Ahmad Langrial.

The PPP continues to top the list of fake degree holding lawmakers with 13 followed by PML- Q (12) and PML-N 11. —Dawn

ISLAMABAD: The Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme , Josette Sheeran, on Monday announced that the WFP is doubling its own helicopter fleet from five to ten to ensure uninterrupted supply of food to flood-hit people of Pakistan. 

Sheeran appealed to the world community to provide more helicopters for the purpose.

According to a statement issued by the WFP, Sheeran is visiting Pakistan on Aug 31 to review the program’s relief activities.

Besides traveling to the flood hit areas she will also hold meetings with the chiefs of other UN organisations involved in the relief efforts.

Sheeran said that the devastating flood had cut off many areas but there were still several regions which were accessible via roads.

She said the WFP was finding it hard to provide food to eight lac people stuck in remote areas. “Helicopters were the only way to reach them and we were short of them,” she added.—DawnNews

HYDERABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari urged all concerned institutions to work collectively for the rehabilitation of flood affectees.

The president on Monday visited relief camps setup in Hyderabad, Jamshoro and Kotri and took an aerial view of Thatta and Sajawal.

During a briefing, Zardari was informed that over two million people had been affected by the flashfloods and damage caused to the tune of Rs438 billion.

He was told that one billion rupees had been distributed among the flood victims in Sindh and one billion rupees more would be released for distribution soon.

Zardari, while addressing the briefing, instructed the local administration to foster its relief and rescue efforts.

He said that mobile filtration plants would be installed in the camps to protect flood-hit people from water borne diseases. The affectees would also be provided with bank cards for the transparent disbursement of funds, he added.—DawnNews

SIALKOT: The Gujranwala anti-terrorism court handed over 17 suspects to the police for a seven day remand. The suspects are alleged to have been involved in the case of the two brothers, Mughees and Muneeb, who were brutally murdered by a mob in Sialkot.

All the suspects were brought to the anti-terrorism court number 1 after an FIR was filed by the father of the killed brothers. Allegedly involved policemen will also be brought to same court tomorrow.

All suspects were arrested in cases of 449, 302, 147, 148, 297 and 788 and investigations are being carried forward accordingly. —DawnNews

KARACHI: The CID police arrested a militant associated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) from Karachi’s Banaras area on Monday, television reports said.

Explosive material was also recovered from the militant, reports quoted police sources as saying. 

The militant was arrested during an operation conducted by the CID in Banaras.

He was being interrogated by the police.  

ISLAMABAD: Balochistan’s Home minister Mir Zafarullah Zehri said that the provincial government could solve the problem of Balochistan if full autonomy was granted to the province.
 
Exclusively speaking to Dawn, Zehri urged power players to create a positive mindset about the Balochistan issue.

He further said that the Baloch militants were not agents of any other country because they were fighting the war for Balochistan’s rights. The Baloch do not require money from India because they have support of the Baloch nation.
 
However, he said that there were some groups in the province who were creating law and order problems and were supported externally.
 
He said that the power elements in Pakistan should seriously dwell upon the matter because fighting and operations were not the solution.

Zehri also voiced concerns over the impact of the killings of Nawab Akber Khan Bugti and other Baloch leaders.
 
“We are suffering the impact of these killing and we have to think about the Balochistan issue for the betterment of the country,” he added. —DawnNews

KARACHI: Pakistan on Monday released 100 Indian fishermen imprisoned for fishing in its territorial waters, officials said, after lobby groups said they were being detained beyond their jail terms.

Another 342 fishermen will also be released in the coming week after serving their sentences, deputy superintendent of Landhi prison Shakir Shah told AFP.

Pakistan and India frequently seize each other’s fishermen, accusing them of violating their respective zones in the Arabian Sea.

Two lobby groups for Pakistani fishermen had filed a case seeking the release of the Indian fishermen in Pakistan’s Supreme Court, and it was still being heard when the authorities made the sudden decision to release them.

“We informed the Supreme Court that the detention of those Indian fishermen who had completed their sentences was unlawful,” said Shujauddin Qureshi, a spokesman for the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research.

“We are surprised that the government released the fishermen while the petition is still pending before the court.”

Hundreds of Indians and Pakistanis are languishing in prisons on both sides of the border on charges of spying or illegal entry. – AFP

ISLAMABAD: A full court bench of the Supreme Court on Monday ordered the 32 additional judges of the four high courts to continue working today.

The high courts’ chief justices had earlier written to the Chief Justice over a possible judicial crisis, sources said.

Judges cannot be appointed under the new procedure by September 5, as a commission to approve the recommendations is not yet in place.

Moreover, some of the existing judges will retire by this date and that might lead to a judicial void.

The appointment procedure, as approved in the 18th Amendment, is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court.

Since the issue is in court, the government says it can do nothing till the case is decided.

ISLAMABAD: Flood-striken Pakistan urgently needs more international aid to combat potential instability and extremism, a US official said, as hunger and disease threaten millions of victims.

In an commentary published in Monday’s International Herald Tribune, US Senator John Kerry wrote that the international community is not meeting its responsibilities towards the south Asian nation, where floods have killed more than 1,600 people and left at least six million homeless.

“The danger of the floods extends beyond a very real humanitarian crisis,” Kerry wrote.

“A stable and secure Pakistan, based on democracy and the rule of law, is in all of our interests. Pakistan has made enormous strides in combating extremism and terrorism – at great sacrifice. But its ability to keep up the fight requires an effective response to this crisis.”

Pakistan has struggled with its response to the massive flooding, which has left one-fifth of the country underwater, an area the size of Italy. Pakistanis have grown increasingly angry with the sluggish government response, and are turning to charities sometimes tied to militant groups.

Pakistan is battling militants linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban, and the speed and efficiency with which Islamic charities have helped flood victims worries government officials and the United States, which wants a stable Pakistan because of its role as a frontline state in the war on militancy.

“We don’t want politicians. We want the Islamic groups in power. The government just steals,” said Haidar Ali, a college student in the devastated Swat Valley whose life has been reduced to laying bricks all day in stifling heat.

MALNUTRITION, DISEASE

Kerry is a co-sponsor of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid package, which would funnel $7.5 billion over five years in civilian development money to Pakistan. Last week, the head of the United States Agency for International Development said $50 million from the package would be diverted to immediate flood relief.

The United States is the single largest donor to the flood relief, contributing more than $200 million or over 20 per cent of the total aid pledged so far.

The floods began in late July after torrential monsoon downpours over the upper Indus basin in the northwest.

Officials said water levels were receding on most rivers now and they expected no rain in the coming few days.

“We believe that it will take another 10 to 12 days for rivers in Sindh to come to normal flow. Therefore, we still need to be watchful,” said senior weather official Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry.

The southern province has been especially hard hit.

The death toll was expected to rise significantly as the bodies of the many missing people are found. There is no official estimate of the number of missing because mass displacements have made accounting for them almost impossible.

The floods have damaged about 14 per cent of Pakistan’s cultivated land, according to the United Nation food agency, and the cost in crop damages is believed to be almost $3 billion. – Reuters

THATTA: A torrent of water threatening to deluge a major town in flood-hit Pakistan has begun to recede, officials said Monday, as emergency workers plugged a breach in defences against the swollen Indus river.

Pakistani troops and workers have been on a “war footing” over the weekend, battling to save the southern city of Thatta after most of the 300,000-strong population fled the advancing barrage.

“The breach near Thatta has been half-plugged and fortunately the flood has also changed its course and is moving away from the city and populated areas,”senior city official Hadi Bakhsh Kalhoro told AFP.

“The water is flowing into the sea and its level is receding, and many people are returning to their homes,” he said.

Pakistan Meteorological Department said inflows at the nearby Kotri barrage were receding but maintained its “significant” flood forecast.

The Flood Forecasting Centre said the Indus river at Kotri would “continue in exceptionally high flood level” for another 24 hours.

Torrential monsoon rain has triggered massive floods that have moved steadily from north to south over the past month, engulfing a fifth of the volatile country and affecting 17 million of its 167 million people.

Southern Sindh is the worst-affected province, with 19 of its 23 districts ravaged as floodwaters swell the raging Indus river to 40 times its usual volume.

One million people have been displaced over the past few days and hundreds of thousands fled Thatta alone ahead of the approaching torrents.

Kalhoro said the low-lying town of Sujawal, near Thatta, was flooded on Sunday, and almost the entire population of about 100,000 had evacuated, with power supplies cut and many residents waiting on the roofs of their homes for rescue boats.

“We estimate that there are still up to 400 people in Sujawal and the surrounding villages and they are being rescued by boats,” the city official said.

The Pakistani government has been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster, the worst in the country’s history, with millions in need of tents, food and medical aid.

Aid agencies are worried about the growing danger of malnutrition and water-borne disease, with children especially vulnerable.

Eight million people have been left dependent on aid for their survival and floods have washed away huge swathes of the rich farmland on which the country’s struggling economy depends.

The government has confirmed 1,600 people dead and 2,366 injured but officials warn that millions are at risk from food shortages and disease.

The United Nations has warned that 800,000 people in desperate need of aid have been cut off by the deluge across the country and appealed for more helicopters to deliver supplies to those reachable only by air.

A senior US official said last week that countries worldwide had pledged a total of more than 700 million dollars (554 million euros) towards flood relief in Pakistan. – AFP

ISLAMABAD: Muslim countries, organizations and individuals have pledged nearly $1 billion in cash and relief supplies to help Pakistan respond to the worst floods in the nation’s history, the head of a group of Islamic states said Sunday.

The announcement came as floodwaters inundated a large town in Pakistan and authorities struggled to build new levees with clay and stone to prevent one of the area’s biggest cities from suffering the same fate.

Foreign countries have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to help Pakistan cope with the floods, which first hit the country about a month ago after extremely heavy monsoon rains. But some officials had criticized the Muslim world for not contributing enough.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, head of the 57-member Organization of The Islamic Conference, likely sought to counter that criticism by announcing that Muslims have pledged nearly $1 billion. The pledges came from Muslim states, NGOs, OIC institutions and telethons held in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, he said.

”They have shown that they are one of the largest contributors of assistance both in kind and cash,” said Ihsanoglu of the various donors. He spoke during a joint press conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Islamabad.

Ihsanoglu did not provide a breakdown of the pledges or say how much of the money would flow through the Pakistani government versus independent organizations.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani criticized donations made to foreign NGOs rather than the Pakistani government Sunday, saying much of the money would be wasted ”Eighty per cent of the aid will not come to you directly,” said Gilani, referring to Pakistani citizens.

”It will come through their NGOs, and they will eat half of it,” he said during a press conference in his hometown of Multan.

The floods began in the mountainous northwest about a month ago and have moved slowly down the country toward the coast in the south, inundating vast swaths of prime agricultural land and damaging or destroying more than 1 million homes.

Floodwaters surged into the southern town of Sujawal on Sunday after breaking through a levee on the Indus River two days earlier, said Hadi Baksh, a disaster management official in southern Sindh province.

Most of the town’s 250,000 residents had already fled, but the damage to homes, clinics and schools added to the widespread devastation the floods have caused across Pakistan.

Authorities in Sujawal were trying to limit the flood damage, but the water level has already risen up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) in the center of town and 10 feet (3 meters) in the surrounding villages, said Anwarul Haq, the top official in Sujawal.

The floodwaters also threatened Thatta, a historic city of some 350,000 people who have mostly fled to higher ground. Thatta is the base of operations for local authorities trying to cope with a disaster that has overwhelmed the Pakistani government and international partners who have stepped in to help.

Authorities rushed to build makeshift levees across the road connecting Sujawal and Thatta, parts of which were already flooded, Baksh said.

”We are trying to plug the bridges at three different points to stop the water flow toward Thatta,” said Baksh. ”We are trying all our best efforts.”

Thatta is located about 75 miles (125 kilometers) southeast of the major coastal city of Karachi and 15 miles northwest of Sujawal.

Many of the people who fled Sujawal and Thatta headed to Makli, a hill just south of Thatta that contains a vast Muslim graveyard. About half a million flood victims are camped out on the hill, Baksh said. Most lack any form of shelter and are desperate for food and water.

”We don’t have water to drink, not to mention food, tents or any other facility,” said Mohammed Usman, a laborer who fled Sujawal several days ago and needed water to help cope with a painful kidney stone.

The United Nations, the Pakistani army and a host of local and international relief groups have rushed aid workers, medicine, food and water to the affected regions, but are unable to reach many of the 8 million people who are in need of emergency assistance.

The US said Saturday it would deploy an additional 18 helicopters to help with the relief effort. The US military is already operating 15 helicopters and three C-130 aircraft in the country, the US Embassy said in a statement. -AP