Terrorists rushed in where leaders feared to tread (Floods in Pakistan -II)

With the vacuum in the Pakistani leadership visible right from the onset of the flood tragedy, foot-soldiers of extremist organisations have rushed in where President Asif Ali Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif are reluctant to tread.

The unprecedented flood calamity has handed out Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s (JuD) dipping stock a much-needed lifeline and an opportunity to fatten its nursery of young brigade.

JuD chief Hafiz Saeed has his sly smile back.

He made his cadre swing into action much ahead of the state machinery. The alleged mastermind of Mumbai terror attacks, sought by the Indian government, floated a new charity organisation, Falah-e-Insaniat, to storm the flooded areas.

When Hafiz Saeed was grilled in a telephonic chat with a popular Pakistani TV channel over the source of funding for his organisation, he boasted that his funding sources are transparent and regularly audited by professional chartered accountants from Lahore who visit Muridke (headquarters of Jamaat-ud-Dawa on the western outskirts of Lahore) every month.

The terrorist most wanted by the Indian government also boasted that JuD’s huge infrastructure and network has beaten all other charities and agencies in bringing relief to the suffering millions.

Hafiz Saeed is working in tandem with Kidhmat-e-Khalq of Jamaat-e-Islami(JI) in the affected areas.

Amid a rising chorus over hardline Islam filling the void in flooded Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed is a free man in Pakistan and he and his boys are saviours for hundreds of thousands of uprooted rural families — from the backwaters of Sindh to Balochistan.

Muzaffargarh is one of the oldest districts of Punjab in Pakistan. This southern district town forms a strip between the river Chenab on its east and Indus on its West.

Of the two million inhabitants of the district, only 10 percent of those living in the district town are surviving with their brick and mortar houses intact, the remaining 90 percent population of the district has been displaced, with their houses washed away in the surging waters of the Indus and the Chenab.

Along with Muzaffargarh, Rajanpur and Dera Ghazi Khan districts are badly hit and account for over 10 million people who are in the throes of massive displacement and health emergency.

Cholera and other water-borne diseases are now slowly choking their little ones to death.

In the village of Abbas Wala near Daira Deenpanah, Aleena, 16, was dreaming of a fairytale wedding. The water washed away her dreams and put tears into her dreamy eyes. Her grief-stricken countenance mirrors the tragedy of a benighted district.

The Indus floodwaters dealt her multiple blows. It washed away her mud house, killed her 57-years-old father, Abur Rehman; and if these were not enough to punish the innocent, beautiful girl, her fiance called off the wedding scheduled a few weeks later. The floodwaters demolished the castle of her dreams.

Aleena’s family was preparing for her wedding to Aslam from the neighbouring hamlet. When Aslam learnt that his would-be-bride has been reduced to an orphan without home, he declined to enter into matrimony with the ill-fated Aleena.

Aslam, himself in the throes of displacement, claimed he needed dowry to rebuild his own house.

As floods ravaged the country, about 60,000 Pakistani military personnel were deployed to provide impetus to the relief and rescue operations.

The growing appreciation of the Pakistan Army’s role only reinforces the perception outside and within Pakistan that brass tacks still pull the string of power.

Observers and some media analysts told me on condition of anonymity that the next 90 days would trigger a desperate attempt to dethrone the incumbents. A power storm is brewing in air of the Blue Area of Islamabad, the seat of power.

Will the Indus’s flood fury sink Zardari? This is the open question in Pakistan on streets. Yet, nobody has the million-dollar answer as to who would bell the cat?

Still later, nobody is predicting a military coup or affirming hope in the audacity of General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani to boot out Asif Ali Zardari.

Instead, observers are hoping for a third alternative, the surprise emergence of a dark horse backed by GHQ, Rawalpindi, minus Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, to clean the pungent odour.

One principal ally of Zardari, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) led by Altaf Hussain who is in exile in London, rattled the Zardari-Gilani government Aug 21 when he exhorted the Pakistan Army to step in to get rid of corrupt elements in the government.

The lukewarm response to the flood tragedy is further rattling well-reasoned Pakistanis. Even local traders and civilians in Lahore and Islamabad fear their money will end up in either hands of their much-maligned president or coffers of the Taliban.

Nazim Malik, a Lahore-based young millionaire, said: “Instead of bringing smiles to faces of innocent country folks, it might fund a suicide vest of a potential suicide bomber. Whom should I trust…?”

Anarchy is reigning supreme in certain areas where displaced people have begun to blame some powerful families of deliberately breaching the embankment for flooding their farmlands in order to save theirs.

Already Balochs are disenchanted with Islamabad; the fresh wave of realisation fills them with an acute sense of alienation.

To top that, food riots are rampant in several areas. A convoy of trucks carrying food materials and clothes was attacked by burqa-clad women in Dera Ismail Khan.

A foreign journalist shocked President Zardari by asking him tongue-in-cheek, “Mr President, your government is riled on streets for massive fraud and corruption. People don’t want to donate because of the malaise. Are you the problem?”

The image deficit and distrust virus is spreading gloom in Islamabad. When President Zardari convened a meeting of top industrialists and business magnates in Islamabad, a majority of those invited feigned unavailability citing one reason or the other.

When New Delhi, the arch rival, offered $5 million in assistance, the offer was greeted with usual cynicism.

A day later, the government sources suggested that the Manmohan Singh government offer should be routed through the UN.

Street harangues mocked the Indian offer as ‘usual suspect’s olive branch’ whereas some folks on streets of Lahore and Islamabad gesticulated that the ‘India Shining’ establishment should cough up more in hours of Pakistan’s Greek tragedy.

Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan has announced that he was alone going to raise funds through his Imran Khan Flood Relief Fund in collaboration with Mir Khalilur Rahman Foundation (MKR)-Pukaar of Jang Group, because the Pakistan government has failed yet again.

He told me: “There is no disaster that can’t become a blessing, and no blessing that can’t become a disaster…This national disaster needs a national mobilisation. We should not expect ‘dollar rain’ every time calamity strikes us.”

When I asked Imran whether he would fall back on his celebrity friends in Indian tinsel town of Mumbai for raising funds, he broke into a faint smile.

“I haven’t thought of bothering my friends outside as of now. People of Pakistan shall join hands together and, god willing, overcome the crisis.”

However, Imran agreed to back any initiative of organising India-Pakistan charity cricket match if some proposal is floated by the respective cricket boards.

(Frank Huzur is a biographer of Pakistan’s legendary cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. His upcoming book, “Imran Versus Imran: The Untold Story” is expected soon. He can be reached at frankhuzur@falcon-falcon.co.uk. Website link: www.falcon-falcon.co.uk)