Hunza Needs Urgent Help
Hunza is in need of urgent help owing to the dam lake that threatens Hunza and Pakistan more widely as forewarned in my earlier post of March and shared again here. The sudden interest in the Hunza dam lake from the esteemed offices of the Prime Minister, President and the Army Chief are acts too little and too late to save the day, I fear.
Indeed I protest loudly at the individual apathy of Messrs Gilani, Zardari and Kayani in dealing with this issue of life and death for Hunza and Pakistan. As a collective force, all three represent the Pakistani state which has obviously shown criminal apathy in dealing with the Hunza landslide by not building a spillway urgently enough and generally ignoring all the warnings given of an impending disaster for Hunza and Pakistan.
What makes me more angry is knowing the fact that the PPP government has served Gilgit-Baltistan with distinction since 2008 and has the confidence of the people given it has has a PPP Chief Minister in Mehdi Shah who too seems apathetic to life and death issues affecting his very own province.
The fact that the Prime Minister of Pakistan can find time to stir controversy on another H, namely Hyderabad and visit that promised land and countless other places including speaking in favour of the cheating Jamshed Dasti at his election rally today is indicative of Gilani’s good governance. Given PM Gilani has yet to grace Hunza with his presence since early January from when the landslide occured shows how bothered the Prime Minister really is and shows the level of urgency in his federal government.
The fleeting visit of General Kayani may please the locals but it too is not enough given the Pakistan Army through the Frontier Works Organisation have clearly not done enough to ensure the spillways are ready to drain the water from the dam. The intervention from the Presidency does not merit detailed comment as actions speak louder than words for Mr Zardari and therefore the PPP Chairman will be judged on whether his interest and intervention can help the people of Hunza on the ground.
The best source of information on the Hunza landslide remains the Pamir Times shared here. Indeed I share a number of videos from Pamir Times and the comments of a landslide expert in David Petley on the Hunza landslide from his blog shared verbatim here and below:
The landslide at Attabad – New Videos of the Spillways and the Drowning Land Upstream
The lake behind the landslide at Attabad in Hunza, Pakistan continues to fill, meaning that we are probably only a fortnight or so away from the maximum point. I have not had an update from either NDMA or FOCUS for 48 hours, so am unsure as to how things have developed in the last two days. However, The Pamir Times has tonight posted three videos on Youtube that are worth watching. The first shows the spillway on 8th May:
This shows just how close to the top of the dam the water level has now reached. The second and third show the impact of the rapidly rising water level:
The sight of people destroying their own homes to recover building materials is pretty dreadful. Remember that most people in this area live on the basis of cash crops, and that their only real assets are their buildings, their land and their crops. For this reason, regardless of what happens at the spillway, the Attabad landslide is a disaster for the people of Gojal.
The words of David Petley put fear in my heart and provide the rationale for my words of criticism. Those words of criticism are written with a prayer and a hope that regardless of its failings so far the Pakistani state can act quickly to deal with the situation by saving the people and villages of Hunza as its most urgent priority.
