Impact of Pakistan floods as bad as 1947 partition, says prime minister (20million homeless)

[Turborama]

Source: The Guardian

Yousaf Raza Gilani calls on population to rise to flooding challenge as anger grows among 20 million people left homeless -

David Batty and Saeed Shah in Islamabad -
Saturday August 14 2010 12.09 BST -

Pakistan's government has compared the impact of the country's devastating floods to the country's partition from India as it revealed more than 20 million people had been made homeless by the disaster.

The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, said the country faced challenges similar to those during the 1947 partition of the subcontinent into Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-majority Pakistan in which about 500,000 people were killed in mass violence and thousands of families were torn apart as 10 million refugees crossed the new border.

Gilani said 20 million people were now homeless and called on Pakistanis to rise to the occasion, amid growing fears of social unrest or even a military takeover following the government's shambolic response to the floods. "The nation faced the situation successfully at that time and inshallah we will emerge successful in this test," he said.

=snip=

Aid agencies have warned that 6 million children are at risk of life-threatening diarrhoeal diseases, malnutrition and pneumonia. Stagnant flood plains in densely populated, poverty-stricken urban areas may become breeding grounds for cholera, mosquitos and malaria.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/14/pakistan-flooding-disaster-partition-gilani

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More distrubing and worrisome statistics in the rest of the article.


A Pakistani mother carries her children through flood water in Muzaffargarh city,
Punjab province. Photograph: K.M.Chaudary/AP

[aquart]

1. Partition? 1947?

So it was done first with the Hindus and Moslems and only THEN with the Moslems and Jews? Are the displaced people from 1947 still calling themselves refugees?

[Turborama]

2. No. Although it does include two religions, they were two completely separate historical events.

and the partition created two separate countries, which didn't happen in the other example you try and conflate it with.

[Igel]

3. Yeah, but avoid the passive verbs.

The Muslims voted to be separate and so Pakistan/Bangladesh was formed. Immediately there was fear by Muslims and Hindus so they picked up and left. At the same time, there was sectarian violence helping to "motivate" Muslims and Hindus to pick up and leave.

The refugees from that partition were resettled, for the most part. When Bangladesh broke off from Pakistan, however, a fair number of Bangladeshis wanted to be Pakistanis. Pakistan did this for a while. Then they refused to allow more refugees to settle in Pakistan proper and stranded a lot in India. Some are still refugees. http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2007-08-14-3079523328_x.htm

In Palestine the partition similarly required no separation of peoples. As with the S. Asian partition that immediately preceded it, the actual partition of peoples followed in short order, and was both voluntary as well as "motivated" by interethnic violence that, as in S. Asia, had preceded partition by decades and involved both some long-standing animosities as well as some more recent ones, resulting from Muslim hegemony followed by a reversal of fortunes as Muslims were no longer in charge.

There were other partitions. In the late '30s, Poland and Czechoslovakia. After WWII, Europe continued what apparently had become tradition: Poland was shifted (and Belorusia expanded), the border between Italy and Slovenia moved, Germany was partitioned, more of the Ukrainian-speaking area was given to Ukraine, Romania was split. There are still Germans calling themselves refugees; Italians, too, I think, in spite of the fact that in the Italy/Slovenian repartition the land taken from Slavs was to be given to the Italian refugees (and was instead kept by the state). I can't take the German and Italian claims seriously since they were assimilated and their "status" is neither one of legality nor of economic disparity, merely one of hurt feelings (and therefore, it seems, utterly meaningless except for purposes of disparaging those so offended).

[scarletwoman]

4. I don't understand your comment. The article is comparing the scope of the current disaster

to the Partition in terms of the numbers of people left homeless and desperate in both events.

Certainly the current disaster is one of the biggest challenges ever faced by the country of Pakistan since 1947.

sw

[elleng]

5. Good point, scarlet.

No need to confuse historical events; this is a HUGE disaster.

E

[Turborama]

6. +1

I'm 41 and I don't think I've seen a natural disaster of this magnitude in my lifetime.

[breadandwine]

7. It must have been the fault of Gandhi.

Why else would Mr. Jinnah have torn the subcontinent apart???

[La Lioness Priyanka]

8. love how when du'ers discuss pakistan the scope of the conversation is political & not humanitarian

for shame.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

10. are you fucking kidding me? little children are dying of cholera, and this what you spew?

[Posteritatis]

11. Yep

I find myself slipping in that direction more than I want to when reading about these sorts of stories; I really hate doing that. Ugh.

[sabrina 1]

14. Not just on DU. Sadly our 'crusades' into

Arab and Muslim countries over the past decade have encouraged bigotry towards Muslims especially, the kind I have not seen in my lifetime.

Some of the comments attached to news articles about this disaster are so hateful, and those are the ones they didn't delete, it could make you give up the idea that this planet will ever not need a scapegoat for the fears generated mostly by the primitive notion that if we need resources the only way to get them is to launch brutal wars and demonize whoever lives there on top of our oil, as terrorists.

Even babies are not exempt these days ... it is thoroughly sickening. I am hoping that these people loud as they are, are not representative of the majority of people. But this disaster in Pakistan seems to have brought a lot of them out for some reason.

[Posteritatis]

12. One out of every eight. Gah. (nt)

[formercia]

13. "inshallah"

"God Willing" is not going to cut it this time.