Pakistan floods: Islamic fundamentalists fill state aid void

[Turborama]

Source: The Guardian

Where authorities have been left overwhelmed by worst flooding in decades, Islamist groups linked with terrorists have stepped in

Saeed Shah in Charsadda -

The busy roadside aid station for flood victims seemed ordinary enough. Huge pots were lined up to distribute cooked food to the hungry. An ambulance, now no longer needed to ferry the injured, was being loaded up with bundles of second-hand clothing to be given away. But rather than being run by a humanitarian agency or government officials, the aid station on the outskirts of Charsadda, a town in the north-west that has seen some of the worst flooding in Pakistan, was set up by a group alleged to be international terrorists.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a hardline Islamist organisation thought to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the 2008 assault on Mumbai, said it had 2,000 members working for flood relief across the north-west of the country and down into Punjab province.

With the government overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster, the worst flooding in Pakistan in at least 80 years, a gap has opened up for well-organised Islamic groups, mainstream and extremist. They have been able to win hearts and minds in a region most hit by militancy and the threat of a Taliban takeover. Across the deluged north-west, locals complained bitterly that government help was almost entirely absent.

The UN said today that the flooding, caused by monsoon rain, has now affected 3 million people, with the death toll put at around 1,500 by the provincial government.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/03/islamist-groups-pakistan-aid-void

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Déjà vu

[Turbineguy]

1. Winning of Hearts and Minds.

If the US were to set up like that we would rename the Dept of Defense, the Department of Niceness and claim the the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are a small, perhaps even insignificant, part of the Department of Niceness.

This tactic has worked well for Hezbolla and Hamas too.

[Turborama]

2. This is what I really hoped was going to happen in Afghanistan when the war machine was revving up

If only Biden's proposal prior to the invasion had been put into practice
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/clip.php?appid=596279065

When $4.5 billion was pledged by several countries in January 2002 to aid Afghanistan I got my hopes up, but as history shows us, those hopes were in vain
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=afghanwar_tmln&afghanwar_tmln_us_invasion__occupation=afghanwar_tmln_economic_reconstruction

Afghanistan could have ended up in a much better condition in a relatively short period of time if this hadn't happened instead
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=afghanwar_tmln&afghanwar_tmln_us_invasion__occupation=afghanwar_tmln_us_redirection_of_forces_to_iraq

[CJvR]

3. Groan!!!

Can't those Pakistani morons do anything right!?!?!

(The goverment, not the fundies)