Mosharraf Zaidi writes about the devastating floods in Pakistan that have affected more than 20 million people and the political dynamics that have led to an insufficiently robust international response:
There is an element of the boy who cried wolf about this government that is inescapable. The human catastrophe that these floods represent requires an international response that provides assistance to both international and Pakistani civil society, and to the Pakistani government.
But President Zardari and key members of his foreign policy team, like the Pakistani Ambassador to the United States, have spent almost two years constantly repeating the "Pakistan needs the world's support" refrain, as a quid pro quo for conducting military operations against terrorists hiding out in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
This distasteful reality is generating palpable fears that the first institutional casualty of the floods will be Pakistan's emaciated democracy. That would be adding a deep and irreversible insult to the severe injury inflicted by these floods.
As flood waters continue to threaten the lives of millions more this week, the first and only focus of people, no matter where they live and what country they are from, should be on the humanitarian catastrophe represented by these floods. Supporting the international and Pakistan NGOs working round the clock to save lives is the best way to do that.
Of course, the most effective countermeasure against terrorism isn't kinetic warfare but a healthy civil society, and Pakistan's may have been set back immeasurably by the floods. U.S. efforts at building one in Afghanistan are foundering, but even if they were going swimmingly, the goals of defeating and dismantling militant groups in the region would be drastically impacted by what's happening in Pakistan right now.
