Isabel Villiers

What is Zardari doing at Chequers?

Pakistan’s President has provoked outrage by taking a tour of Europe with his son while thousands die in the floods at home. Isabel Villiers reports

Pakistan’s President has provoked outrage by taking a tour of Europe with his son while thousands die in the floods at home. Isabel Villiers reports

Pakistan’s worst monsoon rains continue, and thousands are now dead, many more trapped, surrounded by floods. The images on TV over here show vast expanses of putrid water where riverbanks have spilled, chasing families from their homes, swallowing crops, destroying livelihoods.

In one of Pakistan’s worst affected flooded areas around Peshawar, people are very angry. They claim their privacy, their culture has been violated as women and children have been forced to sleep in the streets and wash in a contaminated mix of water, mud, human and animal faeces.

What makes people here most upset is that their President, Asif Zardari, has abandoned them in their hour of need. As Rahim Saranjan, an MBA student from Peshawar says: ‘People in general are very sad and now they are actually asking God — why is this happening to us? We are fighting a war against terrorism but where is the government at a time when we need it most? It is a sad situation.’ Whatever the army is saying, whatever the official line, the fact here is that two weeks into the crisis and there is still no centralised relief management plan or package.

Yasir Raheed, his wife and two daughters aged five and nine were visiting the Khagan valley in the Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa province when the floods began. He woke up to find the lower level of the hotel underwater — the owner had fled and the guests were given no warning. For three days Yasir and his family waited for the rains to stop and for help to arrive. Eventually, Yasir, his family and the other hotel residents fled to the nearest hill, and shivered there, alert for landslides and rising lake levels.

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