That KP has been hit by a virtually unprecedented disaster will not be gainsaid. There will be the usual procession of handwringing political leaders, who will jostle to be snapped in carefully arranged ‘spontaneous’ relief efforts, and the heirs and family members of the deceased will left to give them what burial they can, amid the roiling floodwaters. However, there are two incontrovertible realities too. The first is that monsoons come every year. The second is that the measures that should have been taken by those doing the handwringing (as well as their predecessors) were not taken. This was a disaster waiting to happen, and it has. While all the northern areas of Pakistan have been affected, with 12 killed so far in Azad Kashmir and nine in Gilgit Baltistan, and 332 in the whole of KP, of which 208 have been reported killed in Buner district alone, while 50 are still missing.
Such widespread destruction reflects the failure of the government to predict the coming of the flash floods that occurred, and more importantly, to pass on that information to the communities likely to be affected. It is extremely unlikely for the government to be able to stop the flooding, but it should be noted that there has long been clamour about the stripping of KP’s once-extensive forests by timber mafias. The absence of this cover means that any flash floods have no impediments, and merely gain in speed as the waters go downhill. The neglect has been old, for the present KP government cannot just order forests to be grown, and expect them to spring up by the next monsoon. Even if planted now, forest cover would not be able to come up until several monsoons down the line. This assumes that those lands are suitable for forestry, for the floods may have washed away the soil in which the trees could have grown.
However, this is not the time to argue about whether the saplings should have been planted 10 years ago or 20, but to take immediate action. Even after the forest cover is re-developed, it will still be necessary to develop warning systems to save people’s lives next monsoon. Whereas the south of the country was badly hit in the 2023 floods, it seems to have been the north’s turn this year. Hopefully, the rest will be spared, but that will not absolve the government, which must be prepared.
