As Pakistan continues to battle ravaging floods and struggles for relief funds from foreign donors, it is also in a fight for the hearts and minds of its citizens. Never a place of rock-solid political stability, the recent uprooting of 20 million civilians by the rains and floods has added a new dimension to the nuclear-armed country. The success or failure of the relief mission can change the country.
"There was God and then these people who helped us," said Taheem Khan, who was at a relief camp set up by Jamaat ud Dawa. "When we were starving these people fed us. When we were thirsty these people gave us water. Our children were sick and they treated them," Khan said.
The Jamaat ud Dawa is widely considered to be a terrorist organisation with links to a massacre last year in Mumbai, in neighbouring India. While certainly not a majority view, people in the country are angry at the government of President Asif Ali Zardari, which has been in charge since the 2008 ousting of Pervez Musharaf, a general.
The hopes that prevailed during the Zardari coalition's accession to power on the backs of a popular campaign, as the first civilian ruler in nearly a decade, have turned into bitter upset. "Every body knows Zardari is a corrupt politician. His family lives in Dubai," said Maqbool Ahmad, a school teacher in Rawalpindi, the garrison town that adjoins Islamabad.
The feeling is more than a personal grudge against the man in charge. "I see no difference in dictatorship and democracy. Both have no cure for this country," said Malik Sabir, a citizen in Islamabad. "We need help," was the simple outcry at recent protest of those displaced by the floods.
The call was directed at their own distrusted president, but also at the international community, which is wary over repeated allegations of governmental ties to the Taliban, general inefficiency and corruption. The army may not be able to fully govern but at the moment, without the further strengthening of democratic and civilian institutions, Pakistan cannot be governed effectively without the men in uniform.
In no small part, the new anger at Zardari - which comes on top of frustration over the scarce improvement in daily lives amid a widespread terror campaign by Islamists in recent years - stems from his inability to bring relief to flood victims faster.
When compared to Haiti and its devastating earthquake earlier this year, the global community is being much tighter with its wallet. Only about half the 450 million dollars needed by the United Nations for immediate relief and recovery has been committed, but not necessarily yet delivered. Aid workers note that they don't count the cash until it is in the bank, as promises can be broken.
The country, unlike Haiti, also faces further threats, and not only from the radical militants who have killed some 3,500 people in the past three years, most of them innocent civilians. More areas of the country are likely to go under water as the rains continue. Diseases are spreading. And the billions of dollars in damages to the vital agricultural sector and other industries means economic woes are only beginning. Feeding the hungry will be a major challenge.
Those giving the biggest help, the Western allies of Zardari, are also the countries many Pakistanis dislike, signalling yet another widening gap between the government and its citizens. "Our enemies are helping us more than our friends, than those people we believe are our brothers," blasted Fayyaz Hussain, a shopkeeper in Islamabad, referring to the limited response from the Muslim world.
Also, some worry portions of private aid money coming from the Arab Gulf might end up in the hands of extremists and not go to neutral aid agencies. But the so-called "enemies" are afraid of a failed Pakistan, with its nuclear arms cache, resident extremist elements, and its strategic location in Asia as a trade route and the neighbour of volatile Afghanistan.
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