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08/23/2010

Imran Khan jumps out of the cream-colored Mercedes with a smile on his face. The national hero and former playboy has come to help.

Khan is wearing a cotton shirt that extends down to his knees and a pair of trousers that matches the color of his Mercedes. He folds together three sheets of paper and places them in his breast pocket. He has jotted down a few key words during the drive.

"So, let's go!" he says, and slips on a pair of Versace sunglasses as he sets off down the 100-meter (330-foot) path from the parking lot to the press club in Islamabad. His staff members have followed him in a convoy of SUVs, and they now leap out of the vehicles and try to keep pace with their boss.

Imran Khan, 57, a former player on the national cricket squad who is now a politician and activist, has ambitious plans. The millionaire, whose friends include Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, and who was married to billionaire's daughter Jemima Khan (née Goldsmith), is about to announce the foundation of the Imran Khan Flood Relief Fund.

It's scorching hot in the clubhouse; the air conditioning isn't running due to a power failure and his assistants have placed a few chairs in the inner courtyard. Khan sits down in a shady corner. He takes off his sunglasses.

Inept and Corrupt

"This flood in Pakistan is one of the greatest natural disasters that a nation has had to confront in recent history," he says. But the government is doing nothing, according to Khan, who says that only the military is doing good work. "Dollars, dollars, dollars," says Khan, as he runs his hand through his long hair and shakes his head. "Why do we always look abroad and expect help from there? Because we have the most corrupt, inept government of all time."

He has traveled a great deal through the flooded areas over the past few days, most recently in Mianwali, his political home in northwestern Punjab. He has waded through the muck, spoken with people who live in the ruins of their houses, and promised them support. Afterwards, he wrote down his personal flood relief plans on the pieces of paper in his breast pocket.

Khan wants to help in three stages: First, he wants to call for donations, then send convoys into the disaster areas, and later collect money for infrastructure initiatives. He won't say, though, how much money he is personally donating: "This is not about me -- it's about what I'm doing."

'Slow-Motion Tsunami'

More than three weeks after the disaster, the full extent of the tragedy still remains unclear. Every day the government and relief organizations revise upwards the number of flood victims. Some 20 million people, more than one-ninth of the population, have been affected by the floods. At least one-fifth of the entire surface area of Pakistan is still under water.

We are dealing with a "slow-motion tsunami," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a dramatic appeal in New York last Thursday -- with a catastrophe whose "destructive powers will accumulate and grow with time."

The United Nations estimates that over 4 million people have lost their homes. Eight million people need relief and approximately 1,600 people have died in the floods. The World Health Organization anticipates significantly more deaths from typhus and cholera if aid does not arrive soon.

The Western world has also seemingly reacted in slow motion to the floods -- at least until last week, when something of a competition to see who could come up with the largest donations broke out. Saudi Arabia announced that it was giving over $100 million (€78 million) to Pakistan, and the US boosted its aid from $90 million to over $150 million, while the German government increased its pledged amount from $15 million to $25 million. The fear that the money could fall into the wrong hands pales in the face of the tragedy.

Pakistani military helicopters are now flying to remote villages, and trucks filled with sacks of flour, rice and lentils are finally reaching devastated communities. Soldiers are venturing out in rubber dinghies and building shaky ropeways over rushing rivers to get food to people. "Without the military, we would have starved to death long ago," says an inhabitant of the village of Qandil, in the northern Swat Valley, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Here, for the past few days, a ropeway has extended across the once shining blue waters of the Swat River, which has now turned a muddy brown.

Political Winner

One thing is clear: The military is the political winner in this disaster. There are rumors that the flooding could perhaps lead to a new coup that would topple President Asif Ali Zardari. Pakistani journalists even maintain that they have been pressured by members of the army and the intelligence agency to spread lies about the government. There is virtually no way to verify these claims.

There are still regions threatened by new waves of flooding, as more rain causes rivers to overflow their banks and dams to burst. Food supplies are running low in remote locations which the soldiers have not managed to reach. These are the areas where Islamic charity organizations are making inroads -- not necessarily Taliban, as is normally claimed in the West, but devout relief workers, including extremists.

In Qandil, for example, before there was a ropeway across the Swat River, three men arrived from a Koran school in Karachi. They had traveled by foot from village to village, and gave the people envelopes with money: up to 6,000 rupees (€55 or $70), depending on the size of the family, so they could at least pay for the remaining goods in the grocery stores. Other organizations distributed bottled water, hygiene kits with soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes.

The government in Islamabad announced that an independent commission would supervise the aid distribution. Interior Minister Rehman Malik pledged that in the flooded regions "members of banned organizations would be arrested."

'It Shouldn't Be So Difficult'

Imran Khan has read articles in American and British newspapers that argue that the Taliban could use the situation to expand their power base. "Nonsense," he says. "Pakistan is a great nation; there are 170 million of us. Does the world seriously believe that the Taliban is all that we have on our minds?"

The electricity has suddenly gone on again at the press club in Islamabad. Khan has sat outside for half an hour; his shirt is drenched with sweat. He rolls up his shirtsleeves. His fund will be independent of his Tehreek-e-Insaf party ("Movement for Justice"), he says. "If we put aside all political differences, it shouldn't be so difficult to rebuild homes, streets and bridges."

On Aug. 28 the first truck convoys are to head out, first with food and relief supplies, later, in a second phase, also with building materials. This is politically neutral, reliable aid, says Khan. Then he stands up. There is no photo op with the millionaire. This is about the flood, not about him.

Two days after Khan's press conference, NATO announced that it would also send aid to the flood victims. It intends to use ships and aircraft to expedite generators, water pumps and tents to the disaster region -- 24 days after the first big wave of floods.