It is difficult to fully understand the extent of the floods that have hit Pakistan since the beginning of August. Estimates put the current death toll at around 1,500 with nearly 20 million people directly affected.
The sheer scale of the disaster has ramifications not only in humanitarian and economic terms for Pakistan, but also has potential political and security implications for South Asia. Here, the floods have severed roads and communications lines for the NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The interconnectedness of what President Obama now labels the 'AfPak' conflict is well documented. However, what is less understood is how this disaster will potentially feed into the ability of Pakistan's Taliban wing, the Tehreek-e-Taliban, to spread its influence.
The tenuous nature of the Pakistani government has come under increasing strain since the onset of the crisis not only from what Pakistani President Zardari has labelled as "Taliban extremists and rightist forces" but also from elements within the political and military elite who are seeking to use this to destabilise his administration.
Tehreek-e-Taliban have reportedly taken advantage of the chaotic situation in the north to conduct attacks on government forces as well as implement recruitment drives in the vulnerable North-West Frontier Province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas. In response, the Pakistani government, in conjunction with the US, is actively trying to prevent organisations deemed hostile to the government, such as Tehreek-e-Taliban and the charity wing of Lashkar-e-Toiba, from delivering humanitarian aid in the flood-affected areas.
Any attempt to assist the tens of millions requiring urgent humanitarian assistance is a logistic exercise almost without peer. That this effort is taking place in the midst of a major global conflict to the north in Afghanistan as well as the on-going instability in Pakistan not only complicates this, but also highlights the political implications of aid and humanitarian relief in politically unstable environments.
Aid and humanitarian relief, despite their logic as addressing objective basic human needs, are intensely political enterprises.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been active since the 1980s in not just armed activities but also establishing hospitals, sanitation services and even ad hoc judiciaries in the absence of state institutions. The movement now sits in the Lebanese parliament with an effective veto over all vital legislation, a position of political strength built not only on their military capacity but also genuine popularity for their social presence.
In Algeria in the early 1990s, the Islamic Salvation Front ensured massive electoral popularity through the provision of basic services prior to the 1992 military coup that overturned national electoral results that would have seen them form an absolute Parliamentary majority.
Similarly, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia, prior to the Ethiopian invasion of 2006, was able to establish a de facto interim government in the southern part of the country because they bought with them a semblance of order in this war-torn environment. Indeed, sympathy for the Taliban in Afghanistan echoes that of the ICU in Somalia, a blend of oppression and basic service provision that presents viable alternatives to anarchy or government corruption and authoritarianism.
Awareness of this amongst governments and international organisations has not necessarily translated into coherent policies that can mitigate this trend. The US has been the largest single donor in Pakistan in a desperate bid to raise its profile in what has become the most vulnerable front for US global security concerns. Alongside this aid, the US has also sought to maintain pressure on the Pakistani government to not only maintain its security efforts in the north, but to extend the fight against Tehreek-e-Taliban into North Waziristan.
This has been a difficult position for the United States, one that may be seen as self-inflicted as efforts at ramping up security efforts in Pakistan in the face of the inevitable political vacuum that ensues with natural disasters have come at the same time as the US has announced its plans to draw down its own security forces in Afghanistan in July 2011.
What the floods have presented is an acceleration of the security dynamic that has been prevalent in the 'AfPak' region since 2006, where Taliban setbacks in Afghanistan have been off-set by gains through Pakistan. Where Tehreek-e-Taliban have continued their military campaign with the killing of up to 50 people in attacks since the floods struck the region, they have also threatened to target government and foreign aid sources should they stray into areas under nominal Taliban control.
Vital to any insurgency or terrorist organisation is the presence of a community of support, a significant portion of a local population that gives tacit assistance or direct logistic support to the organisation. Here, the ability of Tehreek-e-Taliban to supply aid in areas where the government is simply not able to allows them to further entrench their presence in the region, acting as the de facto state and highlighting the government's inability to provide basic levels of security and other needs in a desperate time of need.
The Pakistani government and the international community has not assisted this dynamic. The UN, for instance, has allowed special provision for the Pakistani government to sidestep the usual monitoring procedures for the allocation of aid funding.
Since the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal of the 1990s, the UN has had strict regulations on transparency for aid, rarely allowing it to go directly to federal governments to spend at their discretion. The scale of this disaster, alongside the deteriorating security situation has seen the UN loosen these conditions despite charges of rampant corruption within the Pakistani political system.
The disaster in Pakistan is the perfect storm of what is increasingly seen as the new interconnectedness of security, political, environmental, economic and humanitarian concerns under the rubric of human security. An environmental catastrophe such as this gives insurgent movements an opportunity to expand their operations, increase support and target vulnerable governments.
In the face of this, the international community remains without comprehensive tools to deal with such events. The already vulnerable Pakistani government faces an increasingly uncertain future, a fate that will directly impact on the continuing operations in Afghanistan and potentially re-set the entire operational logic for our military engagement in this
