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Last week’s heavy rains in northern Pakistan have inundated many areas, such as Nowshera, and are causing many deaths.
Mardan Charsadda M-1 Peshawar GRAND TRUNK ROAD N55 Typical water extent
Approximate area of flooding
SOURCE: UNOSAT 0 MILES GENE THORP/THE WASHINGTON POST
Floods are just the latest calamity for Pakistanis
by Griff Witte nowshera, pakistan —
When the mocha-brown waters of the Kabul River came to Humayu- sadn Khan’s living room, there was only one way to go: up. Khan’s family scrambled to the second floor, then to the roof. There, Khan, his wife and their six children clung precariously for three days and nights as the river lapped at their heels and the rains heaved relentlessly from above. “We had nothing,” the fruit ven- dor said. “No food to eat, nothing to drink.” On Monday, Khan, 49, was on
dry land but feeling no less for- saken. The flood had taken every- thing from him except his family, and it was unclear whether his government could help. Northwestern Pakistan is ac-
customed to being at the center of world attention. It is the heart of a vicious insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives na- tionwide and a haven for fighters who terrorize U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan. For residents who are unin- volved in the fighting, last week’s floods — the worst in the region in 81 years — constitute just the latest calamity to strike without warning or provocation. Earthquakes, Taliban suicide bombers and army offensives have brought their share of suf- fering to northwestern Pakistan. Even under the best of circum- stances, residents must contend with deep levels of poverty and a government that often appears indifferent to their plight. Aid began to trickle in Monday,
but it is not enough to make much impact after a disaster that has taken at least 1,200 lives and af- fected 2.5 million. The United States was quick to announce an assistance package that includes $10 million and nearly 200,000 meals, but those contributions are little more than a rumor in some of the worst-hit areas. Even when aid is available, get- ting it to the people with the greatest need is difficult because many areas are inaccessible. “The distribution of relief is se- verely constrained by damaged infrastructure, and the wide- spread contamination of water supplies has the potential to cre- ate major health problems,” said Muhammad Ateeb Siddiqui, di- rector of operations for the Paki- stan Red Crescent Society. The worst might not have passed: Forecasters predict more rain for the region this week and say floods could extend to other parts of the country. Along the Grand Trunk Road, the ancient trade route linking the regional capital of Peshawar to the national capital of Islam- abad, an exodus was underway Monday as thousands of people walked in search of shelter. Women, their pink shalwars
streaked with mud, led children by the hand as they sought out spots in makeshift camps that
filled up as quickly as they opened. Men used frayed ropes to guide water buffalo through traf- fic, having taken their livestock because they are unsure when they will next see their fields. In the towns, merchants threw hundreds of carpets — each one saturated and soiled a deep brown — into the street. Children picked through the muck for dis- carded valuables. Refrigerators stood empty along roads that had buckled and twisted beneath the powerful currents. At a grave- yard, the tips of headstones peeked out just above the water- line. The government has said that it is doing its best to meet the popu- lation’s needs but that resources are limited. The chief minister of the hardest-hit province, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, called the floods the worst natural disaster the area has seen. “It has pushed the province almost 50 years back,” said Amir Haider Khan Hoti. At one government camp Mon-
day, families were given a worn canvas tent, a bottle of water and two pieces of bread. It was better than the alternative. “We don’t know whether we will be here for a week or a month,” said Omar Basha, 53, who had arrived in the camp with his wife and two sons. “How can we go back to our homes when we don’t know whether anything is left for us there?” At a nearby traffic circle, Islam- ic charities were seeking to fill the void left by the government, of- fering food and health services to anyone in need. “It is a large-scale disaster, and we are providing whatever we can,” said Mohammed Hanza, a relief official with the charitable wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the country’s main religious parties. He scoffed at the notion that
U.S. aid was reaching the people. “Those dollars are going into the pockets of our rulers,” he said. For Khan, the fruit vendor, it
matters little who provides help. He just knows he needs it. Having survived the flood atop
his roof, he, his wife and their six children must find a new place to live because their home is unin- habitable. Meanwhile, one of their daughters has a fractured leg, and Khan has an injured back after falling from a boat while be- ing rescued. He received treat- ment Monday at a makeshift health clinic that had been wedged into a school classroom. “Maybe the government will help us,” Khan said as he walked off in search of his family, bracing himself with a cane. “But there are no assurances.”
witteg@washpost.com
on
washingtonpost.com Awash in misfortune
Frustration takes hold as thousands await help;
survivors struggle to hang on.
washingtonpost.com/world
10 Nowshera M-1 Arabian Sea TURKMEN. Kabul
AFGHANISTAN Kandahar
IRAN Karachi
Detail TAJIK.
Lahore PAKISTAN
INDIA 0
MILES
New Delhi
300 CHINA Islamabad
U.S. planning new North Korea sanctions Measures to target
denied involvement in the sink- ing.
companies, banks that help fund Pyongyang
by Chico Harlan
seoul — A top U.S. nonprofiler- ation official outlined a plan Monday to penalize North Korea by choking off the international network of companies and banks that largely fund its nuclear weapons program and the life- styles of its elite. Robert Einhorn, the State De-
partment’s special adviser for nonproliferation and arms con- trol, said during a trip to Seoul that new U.S. sanctions against North Korea will be finalized within several weeks. But he also emphasized the need for coopera- tion from other countries — Chi- na, in particular — to target the entities that do illegal business with North Korea.
Einhorn called it a “serious concern” held by many countries that China could capitalize on the situation, increasing its business dealings with a desperate Pyong- yang. China could seize upon similar opportunities in Iran, which in June was hit by a fourth round of U.N. sanctions.
According to Einhorn, North LEE JIN-MAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Robert Einhorn, State’s special adviser for nonproliferation, right, with Treasury’s Daniel Glaser at a briefing in Seoul.
“We want China to be a stake- holder in the international sys- tem,” Einhorn said, “and not take advantage of the restraint of oth- er countries.” The desire to increase pressure
on North Korea — yet another at- tempt to push Kim Jong Il’s gov- ernment toward denucleariza- tion — comes as a direct response to the March sinking of a South Korean warship, which killed 46 sailors and raised fears of further provocations on the Korean Pen- insula. An international investi- gation determined that the Cheo- nan was sunk by a torpedo made in North Korea and that the weapon was fired by a North Ko- rean submarine. North Korea has
Korea accesses hundreds of mil- lions of dollars annually by coun- terfeiting currency, smuggling narcotics and using overseas banks for illicit activities. Exist- ing U.N. security resolutions tar- get some of these activities, but Einhorn said the upcoming pen- alties represent a bolstering of these sanctions. “Our new measures will allow us to designate entities and indi- viduals involved in these activ- ities and to block any property or assets they posses that are under the control of a U.S. person or bank,” Einhorn said. “But by pub- licly naming these entities, these measures can have the broader effect of isolating them from the international community.” For Einhorn, the trip to Asia —
he’ll head to Tokyo on Tuesday — is a means to gather support for sanctions, not only against North Korea but also against Iran. Trav- eling with Treasury Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Dan- iel Glaser, Einhorn on Monday encouraged South Korea to ap- prove new sanctions against Iran, as member countries of the Euro- pean Union did last month. Though he said he doesn’t yet know when, Einhorn will also
DIGEST ENVIRONMENT
U.S. reaffirms goal on carbon emissions The United States assured
international negotiators Mon- day that it remains committed to reducing carbon emissions over the next 10 years, despite the col- lapse of efforts to legislate a cli- mate bill. U.S. delegate Jonathan Per- shing told a climate conference in Bonn, Germany, that Washing- ton is not backing away from President Obama’s pledge to cut emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels. Pershing said that legislation is the preferred way to control greenhouse gases but that the administration “will use all the tools available” to reach its tar- get.
Obama made the pledge at a
climate summit in Copenhagen last December and affirmed it in a formal note to the U.N. climate secretariat. At the time, the U.S. House had passed a climate bill and the Senate had been broadly expected to follow suit. —Associated Press
IRAQ
Maliki lashes out at his critics Iraq’s prime minister warned
Monday that his critics want to install a weak leader that would leave the nation riven by sectari- an divisions and prey to local warlords. Nouri al-Maliki’s comments, airing late Monday on state-run television, came just hours after President Obama promised again to remove all but 50,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the month. They also came on a day when
a dozen Iraqis were killed in bombings and drive-by shoot- ings across the country — un- derscoring widespread fears that insurgents are taking advantage of the political impasse caused by March’s inconclusive parlia- mentary elections, which failed to produce a clear winner. Appearing at times angry and
animated while lashing out at his critics, Maliki said he was a polit- ical target for naysayers because he refuses to sugarcoat Iraq’s problems.
—Associated Press ROMANIA
Holocaust group: Scrap offensive coin
A leading Holocaust group has demanded that Romania’s cen- tral bank withdraw from circula- tion a commemorative coin of a former church leader who held anti-Semitic views and called for Jews to leave Romania. Radu Ioanid, a director of the
BEHROUZ MEHRI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES
A man gathers belongings outside his house in Nowshera. The floods in northwestern Pakistan are the region’s worst in 81 years.
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Mu- seum, said he was “shocked” by the bank’s decision to mint the coin depicting Patriarch Miron Cristea, who led the Romanian Orthodox Church from 1925 to 1939, the year of his death. Ioanid said the patriarch, who was prime minister from 1938 to 1939, was responsible for revis- ing the citizenship law, stripping about 225,000 Jews — or 37 per-
cent of the Jewish population — of their Romanian citizenship. About 300,000 Jews and Gyp- sies were killed in Romania dur- ing the Holocaust. Today, the country has 6,000 Jews. —Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS
45 names taken off sanctions blacklist The United Nations completed
its first review of 488 al-Qaeda and Taliban names on the sanc- tions blacklist and removed 45 individuals and entities. The Security Council in 2008
asked the committee monitoring sanctions to review the 142 Tali- ban and 346 al-Qaeda members on the list at that time.
Austria’s ambassador to the
United Nations, Thomas Mayr- Harting, said the committee took 10 individuals off the Taliban list and 35 individuals and entities off the al-Qaeda list. They included companies based in the United States, Ger- many, Austria, Yemen, Qatar, Switzerland, Sweden, the Baha- mas and Liechtenstein. Eight of the individuals removed from the list had died. The committee’s decisions on delisting are based on four prin- ciples: the person has renounced violence, laid down arms, broken all links with the extremist group and accepted the Afghan consti- tution, Mayr-Harting said. Five companies taken off the blacklist were related to al-Bara- kaat, a money-transfer business
set up to move funds from the United States to Somalia that U.S. authorities thought was be- ing skimmed for use by al-Qaeda. —Associated Press
Flood debris threatens dam: In- tense flooding has swept thick layers of garbage down the Yang- tze River in China, threatening to block the gates of the Three Gorges Dam, state media report- ed Monday.
Social networks used to find kid- nap victims: Brazilian police dis- mantled a kidnapping ring that scoured social-networking sites for victims who appeared to be wealthy, then used profile infor- mation to track them to their jobs or favorite bars or clubs. —From news services
PHOTOS BY DANISH ISMAIL/REUTERS KASHMIR
At top, mourners prepare the body of 8-year-old Sameer Ahmad Rah, who anti-India protesters in Kashmir say was killed in a stampede when Indian police fired on demonstrators. Above, mourners gather at the funeral in Srinagar. Clashes between protesters and government forces broke out across Kashmir on Monday as tens of thousands demonstrated their rejection of India’s rule over the mainly Muslim region. Seven civilians were killed on one of the worst days in nearly two months of unrest.
travel soon to China, whose fi- nancial support of North Korea has buffered Pyongyang from the worst effects of U.N. resolutions. Analysts say pending U.S. actions against the dictatorship won’t have much impact unless other countries add their support. North Korea has relatively few as- sets tied to the United States. “If we’re serious about going
after illicit transactions, how do we do that if a lot of it takes place through Chinese firms?” said one U.S. official who is involved in sanctions discussions and spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely about U.S. thinking. “I don’t know.” The current U.S. plan resem- bles a 2005 strategy in which the Macao-based Banco Delta Asia was targeted by Treasury for its alleged involvement in a North Korea money-laundering scheme. Other banks around the world, Glaser said, took notice and “decided they’d reexamine their relationship with North Ko- rea.”
Einhorn was not ready Mon-
day to specify the financial insti- tutions that according to the United States are doing business with North Korea. He said identi- fying those firms will be a part of the finalized sanctions.
harlanc@washpost.com
TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2010
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