Pakistan’s Flood: Organize vs. Rulers’ Crimes Engulfing Workers, Farmers

The devastation from last year’s floods in Pakistan — 2,300 mostly poor, working-class farmers dead, 24 million displaced and 2.3 million houses and 4,655 villages destroyed — was blamed on unprecedented monsoon rains, but the real cause was the ruling class’s refusal to protect the working class.

Six months after the floods, large areas, especially in the South, are still underwater, and over 7,000,000 people lack adequate shelter. Millions of flood survivors with immune systems weakened by stress, lack of food and cold weather are at risk of pneumonia and other respiratory and water-borne diseases.

Friends of PLP have been playing a key role in organizing nation-wide protest demonstrations which began last year over the government’s failed flood relief. (Pakistan is a federation of four provinces, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh, and four federal territories, altogether totaling over 170 million people.)

Our friends pointed out that while the floods were a natural event, the homelessness of millions and the massive destruction were a disaster produced by Pakistan’s capitalist class and U.S. imperialism, placing profits before workers’ lives. As our friends join in grass-roots struggles to provide basic necessities for flood victims, communist ideas are being spread promoting a society based on the interests of the working class where careful planning would prevent such devastation.

This included exposure of the corruption of national and local officials, and their tactic of citing “security issues” to keep relief agencies away from poor areas while taking food and supplies intended for flood victims for themselves.  Big landowners, many also being members of Parliament, fled before the waters rose, using state resources to divert the water’s path in order to save their homes and crops. They often re-routed it to poor areas, thereby destroying millions of homes.

Even though the government had known since last June that flash floodings would occur from July to September, the government had no evacuation plan. Poor workers, who could not pay the high cost of transportation away from the floods, watched as rising waters destroyed their homes and livelihoods.

Many breaches were made to intentionally divert floodwaters away from military garrisons, (including the Shahbaz Airbase in Sindh), which flooded Baluchistan, displacing 800,000 Baluchis. The airbase, under U.S. Air Force control since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is the source of continued lethal raids into Afghanistan and drone attacks on Taliban insurgents, while refusing to help in desperately-needed relief work.

Although the Pakistani Supreme Court is examining cases of floodwater diversion — seeking reports from provincial officials who turned a blind eye to it — they will likely shift blame onto other exploiters and whip up national-ethnic rivalries to hide their crimes against the working class.

The destruction of crops by the floods, and farmers’ inability to plant in still water-logged fields, means another 500,000 people will need food this year. In Sindh province, home base to some of the country’s largest landowners, including the notorious Bhutto clan — the current president, Asif Ali Zardar, is the husband of ex-president Benazir Bhutto, assassinated in 2009) — an estimated 25% of children under five are malnourished and 6% severely underfed. But such figures result not only from the devastation caused by the floods but also from the long-time inequality inherent in capitalist society. (A 2002 study found a national malnutrition rate of 13.2%, and rates of 23.1% in northern Sindh and 21.2% in its southern part.)

Pakistan’s economy has been severely harmed by extensive damage to crops and infrastructure intensifying a profound economic crisis. The total impact from the floods approaches $US45 billion. The ruling class and international capitalists are determined to place the cost of this crisis on the backs of Pakistan’s working class.

Brutal austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have led to sharper increases in food and energy prices and more cuts in social spending. The government intends to rebuild the infrastructure through public and private “partnerships,” meaning more corruption, as big business is given state funds for reconstruction. 

There are daily protests and strikes over the lack of flood relief, rising prices and unemployment. More than two million energy-industry workers have been laid off, as well as massive job losses in the agricultural sector.

As in the recent earthquake in Haiti, the floods in Pakistan demonstrate that capitalism cannot provide for the needs of the working class. We call on all workers to unite across borders and fight for a communist society.