Today, Shabir is furious: he says it has been 10 days since the river retreated from the land but no one from the army or the Pakistani government has come to help him.
“At this point, we need tents, because in case of rain, there can be shelter for our children,” he said as his wife and children sought relief from the mid-day sun.
“We need something to make shelters, but I don't think the government will provide anything. ... We were starving, but they didn't show up.”
He has received only a single tent from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and food and medicine from Islamic charity Falah-e-Insaniyat (FeI), he said.
Falah-e-Insaniyat is believed to have ties to Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity, which the UN Security Council banned last December for its alleged links with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group blamed for the 2008 attack on the Indian city of Mumbai.
Shabir has to trek 13 km (8 miles) to the FeI distribution centre every day for food aid. “I didn't receive anything from the government,” he says.
The story is the same further down the river. From a creaky fishing boat, villages on both sides of the river are simply gone, sometimes replaced with ragged tent cities made of homemade canvas, carpets and blankets strung up on tree limbs.
Millions of flood victims are still homeless in Pakistan and potentially fatal diseases threaten to bring a new wave of death.
Zafar Iqbal, who manages relief activity in the four districts of southern Punjab for Falah-e-Insaniyat, said that 180 mobile medical camps had been set up, serving 72,000 patients. More than 120,000 people had received hot meals.
He said the aid comes from private donations from Pakistanis. The district government is also routing some aid through the group, because it has an established relief network.
The United States and Pakistani officials have warned that militant groups and their charitable wings could use the flood crisis to undermine faith in the government and attract recruits.
“If serving humanity and providing food to poor and deserving people is terrorism then we're terrorists,” said Rehan Butt, spokesman for Falah-e-Insaniyat. – Reuters
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