News Right Now: The Unnatural Disasters

Welcome to News Right Now: ‘The Unnatural Disasters’...

Pakistan's monsoon season has been hit by the heaviest downpours that have resulted in the deadly flash flooding since records began in 1961; leaving over a third of the country under water, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department. Torrential monsoon rainfall was 10 times heavier than usual and has caused the Indus River to overflow, effectively creating a long lake, tens of kilometers wide, according to images from the ESA on August 30. 33 million people have been affected, and the death toll is rising by the hour. The 1,282 recorded deaths so far include hundreds of children, and rural areas have suffered the worst of the floods as the situation stands.

Satellite images showed the flooding to be the result of a combination of the record monsoon rains and melting glaciers in Pakistan's northern mountains; which has been described as the worst the country has ever seen. In the southern Sindh and Balochistan provinces, rainfall was 500% above average as of August 30, according to the NDMA, engulfing entire villages and farmland, razing buildings and wiping out crops. Aid agencies say even if the flooding recedes the country faces a long road to recovery, as economists estimate $10 billion in damages to infrastructure, homes and farms.

The heartbreaking statistics are rising, more than three million children are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance due to the risk of waterborne diseases, drowning and malnutrition, according to UNICEF. The floods have also damaged or destroyed 17,566 schools nationwide, UNICEF says, further jeopardizing children's education after two years of Covid-related closures. As well as this, more than 1 million homes have been damaged or destroyed, while at least 5,000 kilometers of roads have been damaged, according to the disaster management authority.

Floods have impacted 2 million acres of crops and killed more than 794,000 heads of livestock across Pakistan, according to a situation report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on August 26. So now food is in short supply. Meanwhile, aid agencies have warned of an uptake in infectious diseases, leaving millions vulnerable to illness. Since mid June when the monsoon season began, around 1,100 people had already died, nearly 400 of them children, and now those who were already suffering, and millions more, have been displaced, according to Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

Additionally more than 800 health facilities have been damaged in the country, of which 180 are completely damaged, leaving millions of people lacking access to health care and medical treatment, as reported in many affected districts, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Pakistan which was already grappling with political and economic turmoil, has been thrown into the front line of the human-induced climate crisis. 27 million people in the country did not have access to enough food prior to the floods, and now the risk of widespread hunger, malaria and even more imminent outbreaks of diarrhea diseases, skin infections, respiratory tract infections, malaria and dengue in the aftermath of the floods.

Pakistan is home to more glaciers than anywhere outside the polar regions, and it was known that as the climate warms, it will become more vulnerable to sudden outbursts of melting glacier water. So Pakistan’s governments should have begun to invest in effective natural disaster management long ago! Building dams across the rivers of the northern regions and creating an effective drainage system are the least expensive and easiest forms of flood control, which should have been priority projects for any government to initiate for its own people.

Pakistan's governance has been so weak that it hasn't even restored the drain infrastructure or the canal systems that enable cities like Karachi to manage urban floods. The drains are choked by encroachments. And the Sukkur Barrage, which redirects water to a series of canals, has suffered years of neglect, and is not capable of dealing with the current volume of rain. Silt has not been removed and the lack of equipment means that the canals haven’t been dredged since 2010; resulting in meters of layers of silt, and therefore less room for the water to flow - causing a backlog and leading to an overflow that has impacted the cities, and causing flooding in the Indus river.

Likewise the telemetry and early warning systems were not available in several regions of the country such as south Punjab, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan for issuance of flood warnings... And Pakistan did not always have an aviation system on the go for adequate disaster management.” The monsoon rains are an annual occurrence, Pakistan’s government's failure to develop an effective early warning system or even utilize NASA’s freely available satellite weather reports as preemptive measures, sums up the serious mismanagement and dissonance of Pakistani politicians. It’s a fact that government after government has been riddled with political corruption and power struggles, money laundering and financial mismanagement; with no thought for the safety and security of its people.

The complete absence of preparation by every Pakistani government proves exactly what unaccountable governance looks like. The weak infrastructure, occasionally improved to be upheld as the latest trophy of any given politician during election time, smacks of a disingenuous lack of vision, knowledge and total ineptitude of the parties and politicians alike. Islamic governance prioritizes the people in every situation, over political gain and financial profiteering. Islamic governance serves the people humbly and with extreme accountability.
The Messenger of Allah (saw) said:

«مَا مِنْ وَالٍ يَلِي رَعِيَّةً مِنْ الْمُسْلِمِينَ فَيَمُوتُ وَهُوَ غَاشٌّ لَهُمْ إِلَّا حَرَّمَ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ الْجَنَّةَ»

“There is no governor/wali who takes charge of Muslims and dies cheating them, except that Allah prohibits him paradise.” [Bukhari]

When Umar bin Al Khattab was Khalifa, he epitomized this when he said... “If a lost sheep under my care were to die on the banks of the Euphrates, I would expect Allah the Exalted to question me about it on the Day of Resurrection.” He also told his people, “Rulers usually appoint people to watch over their subjects. I appoint you a watcher over me and my behavior.”

Allah (swt) has commanded us to take precautionary measures to mitigate such disasters when they occur. Islam defines the responsibility of taking care of the peoples affairs and ensures the accountability of those in charge in both this world and the next. This is the type of governance that produced the likes of Umar, and this is the only type of governance qualified to care for humanity.

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