Those who take an interest in climate change issues on the Indian sub-continent follow news of the August monsoon rains closely, as their intensity can trigger floods, usually in the north-east of the region. This year it has hit the north-west, in Pakistan, along the Indus River, the Punjab and Sindh as the rains – and the floods – move south. This is the biggest natural disaster Pakistan has faced since gaining independence, with more than 1,600 fatalities and millions displaced – and those figures continue to rise.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari has attracted criticism after his family visited London, having first spent a few days in Paris. They also found the time to attend a rally in Birmingham, the aim of which was to launch the political career of his son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. This said a lot about his priorities, in the view of the President’s opponents. When his country needed firm leadership, particularly from a civilian government, he was in London planning his son’s political future at the head of the Bhutto-Zardari dynasty.
There has been speculation about how the people of Sindh will react to all this. Sindh is the stronghold of President Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party. The President’s own niece, Fatima Bhutto, has referred to it the “Permanent Plunder Party”.
In the meantime, the controversy surrounding the views about Pakistan expressed by David Cameron during his trip to India seems to be passing. In fact, the Prime Minister’s clash with President Zardari is regarded as largely irrelevant, because in Pakistan the army has effective control. Mr Zardari is not able to dismiss his army chiefs in the way that Barack Obama did with his commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal.
In Pakistan, the army has been undermining civilian governments ever since the state’s creation in 1947. It would be a major turning point in Pakistani politics if something resembling the McChrystal affair ever happened there. Mostly, it has been the other way round, with the army dismissing democratically-elected governments.
As for the long suffering Pakistani people, it will be those who help them in their hour of need who are likely to get their support in future – not those who, in the best traditions of dynastic politics in the sub-continent, have been plotting their family’s future monopoly of political power in the country from the other side of the world.
