AmericanAnDerTU

I woke up this morning and was watching the news as I always do and I finally hear some of the latest headlines regarding the floods covering a fifth of Pakistan (currently an area the size of Italy has been affected, 20 million homeless and 1500 dead). Now, I am no great fan of the government of Pakistan, especially of the ISI and their ever-continuing support for the Taliban in Afghanistan despite their “alliance” with the United States. Clearly Pakistan’s government is happy to play both sides of the game and I can understand from a geopolitical standpoint why they are, but that doesn’t make it right. The focus of this blog entry isn’t about the politics of Pakistan, however, it’s about the flooding in Pakistan that is affecting its people, the people that can’t really stop its government’s international power plays, its people that are humans, just like every single one of us in the world.

Let me say right now that I have only personally paid special attention to this disaster this morning after I read Ban Ki-Moon’s remarks that this is the worst disaster he has ever seen (this is from a man that goes to every disaster zone in the world when he can and he’s visited every single one in the recent past that I know of). Now, we have the UN Secretary General saying that this is the worst natural disaster he has ever seen and finding any information about it through traditional news services is damned near impossible. I barely find mentions of it on most of the major news websites, much less a large banner across a site dedicated to grabbing your attention. Here are a few screen shots I just made (around 11:30am CET on August 16th, 2010) after paying visits to a few of these websites:

That first image is from the website of Fox News. Notice the fact that the Find bar in my Firefox browser cannot find any mention of Pakistan on the website. Having a look at their Most Read section doesn’t elicit a hit (though it does earn a tiny mention on their Latest News section, but you have to scroll to about mid-page to find this box) at all. Not a surprise, though, when you consider the audience that Fox News typically caters to. Let’s have a look at some others.

This one is from CNN’s Hot Topics section. Here on this site you also only find a brief mention of Pakistan and the flooding and it isn’t one of their typical banner stories. Anyone remember when the Haitian earthquakes happened? It was plastered all over CNN’s website. 200k people died in Haiti, a terrible disaster and we only have 1500 dead in Pakistan, but there are 20 MILLION homeless people in Pakistan that are without food or water. Now look at the other Hot Topics being tracked on CNN: out of 10, I count 6 that are about celebrities. America, you should be ashamed.

Here is a photo from the CBS News website. They at least have the photo as the first thing you see when you load up their page in their slide show of headlines and accompanying photos.

The BBC, always the true journalists that they are, have also done well. Their site is arranged differently, but their story on the flooding in Pakistan draws you right in when looking at the international news on their homepage.

Television coverage of the catastrophe has also been quite sparse. I struggle to find anything about it on most of the major news networks. CNN International does a relatively decent job as does the BBC, but turning on any of the German broadcasters brings very little in the way of information. Perhaps I’m just unlucky in this respect, though, as the TV watching I’ve been doing over the past few days hasn’t been all that much. Anyone reading this, please post in the comments about what you have seen in regards to media coverage of the flooding in your home country regardless of what medium you use.

I also read a comment this morning that was shown to me on the website from Krone.at (an Austrian “newspaper” that often is no different than tabloid journalism) that reflected a view point that I think is rather common: What about all the Muslim countries? The majority of the money in the world is down in the Gulf right? They’re also all Muslims and they should be helping their fellow Muslims. Iran has money for guns and nukes, I’m sure they could afford a few boxes of food aid! That’s all well and good, but when you look at the nominal GDP per capita then the argument looks a bit different. Only Qatar and Kuwait really manage to break into the Top 20 in each of the three lists from 2009 there (IMF, World Bank and CIA World Factbook). In the interest of fairness, let’s also take a look at the purchasing power parity GDP per capita. Here the story is much the same and the sources have not changed either. Qatar and Kuwait each manage to break into the Top 20, but the rest of the list is dominated by European countries, just like in the nominal GDP list. That means, if we listen to these lists, then the richest countries (and thereby, where the majority of the world’s money is) are all European countries and should thus be paying out the most. The shocker is, this isn’t happening.

According to this article from the Associated Press (one of the largest news reporting organizations in the world), the largest donations by countries have thus far come from the United States ($70 million), Great Britain ($32 million), Germany ($13 million), $10 million (Australia), Kuwait ($5 million), Japan ($3.5 million) and Norway ($3.3 million). Now, this article IS two days old and I’ve not been able to find anything that lists figures from other countries in comparison, so please post in the comments if you have newer information. I did, however, find one article that reports that the Saudi Arabian (perhaps my least favorite country in the Gulf) government has pledged supplies with a worth of $100 million as of August 4th. Whether or not these supplies have arrived, though, I really don’t know. There is also the report of an account being set up by the Consulate of Pakistan in Dubai for expatriates and residents of Dubai to be able to easily make cash donations. Another report details the donations being collected by the Pakistan Social Centre Sharjah that is, according to the article, going quite well. It would seem, then, that the Gulf states are taking care of their fellow Muslim brothers. I personally would not expect to see anything coming from Iraq or Iran given the fact that both of those countries are Shiite in majority and the Sunnis and Shiites do not always see eye-to-eye. I am not a Muslim nor an expert on Islam so I can’t really make an educated guess here.

The one thing that Pakistan as a government must certainly do, however, is be prepared to offer better services than the Islamist hardliner groups that operate within the country. There are many right-wing groups that support al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist groups, some of them legitimate political parties within Pakistan even, that could gather enough financial backing to be able to win the hearts and minds of the people of Pakistan that are perhaps not receiving very much help from the Pakistani government. These are small groups that likely have very strong ties to villages and could use this show of goodwill to win more recruits to their cause. Now, I am all for helping people, but this help should not be used as a way to gain support for war. Certainly the United States is trying to help rescue its image in Pakistan and the Muslim world by giving as much money and material support it can, but these smaller groups have actual people on the ground that speak the language of Pakistan and are Muslims, things that the United States cannot match or even beat. Only the Pakistani government can really match and beat the offerings of these groups and it is important that they do so to try and not only help their own people but stop the spread of Islamism within the country.

My heart and prayers go out to the people of Pakistan and I hope that they can fight through this hardship and survive. I would also like to see the kind of coverage in the media that other disasters have earned. Perhaps the celebrities of the world could also throw their weight behind the people of Pakistan and help gather whatever donations they can. Like it or not, when certain celebrities announce their support for a cause the donations come pouring in.

Here are my other sources I used in writing this blog entry:
BBC: Pakistan floods ‘heart wrenching’ - UN chief
BBC: ‘Hardline’ groups step in to fill Pakistan aid vacuum
HNN: What is the Difference Between Sunni and Shiite Muslims—and Why Does It Matter?