Terror groups 'exploiting Pakistan flood crisis'

The international community must do more to support recovery efforts in Pakistan or risk its terror groups exploiting the situation, Unicef's south Asia regional director has warned.

Daniel Toole told TheParliament.com that "there will be people taking advantage" if Pakistan's government is not seen to be helping the almost 20 million people affected by the floods in July.

He was speaking in Brussels on Wednesday after meeting with MEPs, representatives from the European commission and the Belgian government.

His comments came after US officials warned that insurgents and militant charities were trying to win support by contributing to flood relief efforts.

"The international community has to be supportive," he said. "If we are not supportive to Pakistan, if we are not supportive to local communities, other people will solve problems - and those are not necessarily the people we want to be solving the problems.

"Pakistan is a place where there are terrorist groups. If we do not help and if the government of Pakistan is not delivering assistance and being seen to deliver assistance other people will. That's not in Pakistan's interests and it's certainly not in our interests.

"When you have an emergency on this scale and when you have people so inaccessible because of literally a sea of water that's covering a fifth of the country, there will be people taking advantage."

Toole, who has worked in development for 30 years, said he had "never seen an emergency this large" until he travelled to Pakistan in mid-August.

He told reporters that although the waters were beginning to recede in the north, the situation was worsening in the south of the country.

Health clinics had reported up to four times the number of cases of diarrhoea, he said, warning that this was often a euphemism for dysentery or cholera. "It's not a case of if we will have cholera, but when," he said.

"We must stop that second wave of tragedy when families survived the first tragedy of the flood."

With 10,000 schools destroyed, and roads and railways under water, Toole estimated the cost of reconstruction to be in the billions on infrastructure alone.

Disaster response

The UN appealed for more than €350m on 11 August, but EU humanitarian aid commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said this figure was likely to be "revised steeply" as the full scale of the emergency becomes clearer.

Georgieva warned earlier this week that the "unrelenting misery" caused by the 2005 earthquake, the fight against terrorism and the floods "could set Pakistan back many years".

Following criticism of the EU's slow response, French president Nicolas Sarkozy is calling for a European rapid reaction force to be set up to deal with future emergencies.

Georgieva highlighted the need for the EU to reflect on its disaster response instruments, and said it was important to "strengthen both the coordination and the communication of our response to disasters".

Asked whether he would support such a move, Toole said, "What we know is emergencies will continue.

"There are a number of agencies on the ground that have the capacity to respond.

"But any type of rapid reaction force has to be slotted in with people who can work on the ground, who know the reality and can work with national authorities.

"To send in a force that isn't grounded with the local situation isn't always the best response. So if there is a rapid reaction force it has to be able to integrate quickly with the Pakistani authorities."

'Good but not great'

The European commission has so far contributed €70m to recovery efforts, with member states pledging €160m.

However, no EU money has yet gone to Unicef, which wants Brussels to provide €20m to help fund water, education and health projects.

The organisation has so far received around €47m from the international community to this end, although this figure falls far short of the €110m the organisation says it is needed for the initial stages of aid.

"The international response has been good - not great - and it's been slow," Toole said.

"The problem is that it's a difficult time of the year because it's summer. It's also a very difficult time globally from a fiscal perspective.

"All countries have tightened their belts and therefore it's very hard to find the money after they've already given so much to Haiti and other crises around the world."

Toole also spoke of the low level of public support compared to other disasters. "People didn't and probably still don't understand how big the problem is," he said.

"Compared to the tsunami, the number of people affected is much larger - except that in the tsunami 60,000 people were killed in a matter of hours.

"That's very dramatic and that wrenches peoples' hearts. It's hard to grasp the totality when it takes a month for 18 million people to be displaced and a further million in the last 48 hours.

"When I flew over and saw a sea of water where there used to be farms, schools, villages, I started to understand that everyone has underestimated how large this problem is and how much they need our help."