Indus river, originating in the Tibetan plateau in the vicinity of Lake Mansarovar in Tibet Autonomous Region, the river runs a course through the Ladakh district of Jammu and Kashmir and then enters Northern Areas Gilgit-Baltistan, flowing through the North in a southerly direction along the entire length of the country, to merge into the Arabian Sea near port city of Karachi in Sindh. The total length of the river is 3,180 kilometers (1,976 miles) and is Pakistan’s longest river.
The river has a number of major tributaries of which Kabul, Jhelum, Chenab and Ravi Rivers are prominent. The river finally joins the Arabian Sea in Indian Ocean near the port city of Karachi.
The river has a total drainage area exceeding 1,165,000 square kilometers (450,000 square miles). The river’s estimated annual flow stands at around 207 cubic kilometers (7,380,765,344,791.12 Cubic feet) making it the twenty-first largest river in the world in terms of annual flow. Beginning at the heights of the world with glaciers, the river feeds the ecosystem of temperate forests, plains and arid countryside. Together with the rivers Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, Jhelum, Beas and two tributaries from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Afghanistan, the Indus forms the Sapta Sindhu (Seven Rivers) delta of Pakistan. Indus River cusec is a volumetric unit for measuring the flow of liquids, equal to one cubic foot per second.
Generally, major floods in the Indus Basin occur in late summer (July to September) when the South Asian region is subjected to heavy monsoon rains. In the upper to mid reaches of the Basin, it is generally the tributaries like Jhelum and Chenab Rivers, which are the cause off loading rather than the Indus River itself. Since many rivers are also snow-fed, an early monsoon may combine with peak snowmelt runoff to exacerbate flooding.
The monsoon low or depression that causes intense rain develops in either Arabian Sea or Bay of Bengal. Major flooding is generally associated with the depression from the Bay of Bengal moving across India in west/north-westerly direction and then turning north at the border with Pakistan. The annual disruption in economic activity, in many areas of the flood plain, hampers steady socio-economic progress of the area. Loss of life and property in the flooding season is an annual phenomenon, diverting limited national resources to the flood relief operations.
The economic damages resulting from annual flooding is a major burden on the country. Floods have wreaked havoc over the years, threatening country’s vital agricultural and communication infrastructure, with damages worth Rs 225 billion (US $ 4 billion) recorded for the ten largest floods since country’s independence in 1947 up to 1995. Almost 8000 lives have been lost during these floods.
This year in Noah’s floods, according to official estimates, more than 20 million people have been displaced and another 1,600 are dead because of one of the worst floods in Pakistani history. In some places, the rains have made the Indus River 15 miles wide, some 25 times broader than normal. The flooding started when the monsoon rains tore through the mountains in the northwest part of the country (called Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa). As the waters raged through the Sindh and Punjab provinces, they destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and over 1.7 million acres of farmland. Several large cities were also been submerged, like Naushera, Muzaffarabad and Abottabad. The people who have made it out of the flood-ravaged areas are crammed in makeshift shelters or in overcrowded government buildings.
Those who escaped the floods find themselves without access to food, clean drinking water, sanitation and medicine. All of this has exacerbated the crisis, as many more are likely to die as the result of diarrhea, cholera and other diseases. Disaster management in Pakistan revolves around flood disasters with a primary focus on rescue and relief. After each disaster episode, the government incurs considerable expenditure directed at rescue, relief and rehabilitation. Applied disaster management policy in most of the time carries strategic biases that are aimed at protecting locations and infrastructure of greater economic, political and strategic significance at the cost of areas and communities with lesser influence and importance.
To start with, the priorities being protection of strategic biases, the human and environmental safety takes a back seat or is secondary. Look at the mess and you will find there is no place for preemption or evacuation of people and their flocks. State-level disaster preparedness and mitigation measures, are heavily tilted towards structural aspects and undermine non-structural elements such as the knowledge and capacities of local people, and the related livelihood protection issues.
“These are not only natural floods, but the structures that were created were injurious and badly looked after by the irrigation department – they caused such destruction and worsened the situation.” To make matters worse, naked self-interest has dominated the allocation of resources and the decisions about where and how to act. In one instance in Kot Mittin in southern Punjab, the government built a wall to save a prosperous neighborhood. But in its attempts to save the Tonsa barrage, it managed to submerge the poor neighborhood next to it. Some 100,000 people lost their homes in the process.
Even more damning has been the activity of property owners in Sindh who have been cutting slits into the banks of the canals in order to save their own lands. In the process of securing the Guddu Barrage in Sindh, the landlords managed to drown the people of Jacobabad. And there are reports of politicians, like Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, diverting relief aid from the most needy sections of Pakistan to their own home districts. The Engineering Failures Disaster and relief departments and organizations largely remain under-resourced, untrained, and not given required importance within administrative hierarchy. Dedicated fund for disaster management at the federal level has never been a part of the over all development planning.
The existing arrangements for flood management were inadequate and a unified countrywide approach is required to manage the flood problem.
Federal Flood Commission
Prior to 1976, Provincial Governments were responsible for the planning and execution of flood protection works. Disastrous floods of 1973 and 1976 resulted in heavy losses indicating that existing flood protection facilities and planning were inadequate to provide effective protective measures for the country. Consequently, in January 1977, Federal Flood Commission was established for integrated flood management on country wide basis.
Flood Cell is one of the important functions of the FFC besides, other onerous national security tasks. It has been tasked with the Preparation of national flood protection plans, Approval of flood control schemes prepared by provincial governments and concerned federal agencies.
• Review of flood damages to public sector infrastructure and review of plans for restoration and reconstruction works.
• Measures for improvements in flood forecasting and warning system Standardization of designs and specifications for flood protection works.
• Evaluation and monitoring relating to progress of implementation of the national flood protection plan(nfpp)
• Preparation of a research program for flood control and protection Recommendations regarding principles of regulation of reservoirs for flood control Flood Cell FFC
A visit to Federal Flood Commission web site reveals a legend “achievements”. One is not surprised to find that it is truthful and loudly proclaims, “The page is under construction”. Besides, The Government of Pakistan has established policy and institutional mechanisms at national, provincial and district levels. The National Disaster Management Ordinance (NDMO) was passed on 21st of December 2006. Under the Ordinance a National Disaster Management Commission (NDMC) and a National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) have been established.
In 2007, the UNDP launched a project that intends to enhance capability of the Government of Pakistan at the federal, provincial and local levels in dealing with disaster risks/vulnerabilities in a systematic manner by establishing structures and systems and developing capacities in line with global good practices in order to achieve sustainable social, economic and environmental development through avoiding shocks from disasters.
Duration 2007 – 2011
Status Ongoing
Budget USD 46.5 million
Programme Delivery USD 1.005 million
Location Country wide
Federal Flood Commission, National Disaster Management Commission and National Disaster Management Authority, should be taken to task for their abject failure in saving lives and properties of people of Pakistan. They should be made accountable. The total failure of political and civil administration is there for all to see. Floods in Pakistan like every where else in the world are natural, but the destruction and damage caused by them is almost always man made. Accounts of the Indus River from the times of Alexander’s campaign indicate a healthy forest cover in the region, which has now considerably receded. The Mughal Emperor Babur writes of encountering rhinoceroses along its bank in his memoirs (the Baburnama).
The real intensity of the damage will become known, once the floodwaters recede. The international community is making the right noises and clamoring so long as the continuing tsunami is there on the mini screen. Past events are witness to other events over taking other global disasters. The real task at hand for Pakistan in years to come will be the rehabilitation of IDPs, reconstruction of the infrastructure, revival of the economy in the affected areas and maintaining the flow of resources for these purposes.
Pakistan may need drastic measures in the coming weeks and months to maintain law and order by addressing the flood of discontent in the society emanating in the after math. Such measures may require declaration of emergency and /or financial emergency under the constitution, putting in place mechanism at Federal and Provincial Levels, seeking waiver of our international debts/debts servicing an/or rescheduling, conserving or diverting available resources, optimum austerity measures at all levels.
If we fail to rise as nation, there is a real and present danger of collapse of established order, leading to chaos and collapse of our society.
On the face of it, Armed forces of Pakistan are right now engaged in rescue, relief and evacuation from its own resources and help from the people and NGOs. It cannot keep up with these efforts without allocation of resources, control and a clear mandate to continue with the relief and rehabilitation works for a longer duration of time.
The absence of Pakistan Armed Forces per force, for want of resources and a clearly chartered role as the lead organization will, on the one hand make the task unsustainable and on the other may result in political bickering amongst the so-called coalition partners and opposition, inter provincial disharmony, blame games leading to failure of the democratic dispensation.
The clarion call by Mr. Altaf Husain for Army’s pronounced role be debatable, but we may need to cross that bridge in coming weeks and months.
It will become popular choice if we fail to come up with a National and strategic decision as to how we are going to face up the challenges confronting the state of Pakistan in the after math of the unprecedented floods and its unprecedented failure of the Government.
Besides, even before the floods we are lurching from crisis to crisis in terms of lack or absence of governance, corruption, mismanagement, exacerbating energy and food shortages and inability to arrest the drift in our economy and security environment within and in the region.
Besides, this monsoon was not the last. The drastically changing ecosystem globally is going to sustain in the near future, even if measured on the twelve years cycle. If we fail to come out of our stupor and prepare we are doomed. Take a leaf from china, how they are, they are dealing with their floods.
