Floods leave thousands homeless in Pakistan

"That night will stay with us forever, because our house was flooded within minutes. We had no choice but to leave immediately," says Bahadur Khan. He is one of more than 2,000 Afghan refugees living in the refugee village of Kheshgi, in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan.

Bahadur and his family have braved Pakistan's torrential monsoon rains since they began in June, but he was unprepared for the dramatic rise of the Kabul River last Saturday. The waters breached a nearby embankment in the early hours of the morning and he had just 10 minutes to get his loved ones safely to higher ground before his house was swept away.

It was the third time that the 60-year-old grandfather had to leave everything behind in his life.

"We had to leave Afghanistan when the civil war broke out in the early 1990s. Then I had to move again when my house was completely destroyed after floods washed it away in 2010," he says.

Pakistan has suffered regular floods in the past, but this year has been on a different scale, closer to the catastrophic floods of 2010, which left almost 2,000 people dead. This year's monsoon floods have killed more than 1,100 people, while some 33 million have been affected by torrential rains and flash floods that have left 6.4 million people in need of shelter, food and other essentials.

Pakistan is home to 1.3 million Afghan refugees, more than 421,000 of whom live in the most affected districts. Many others have come to Pakistan in search of medical care, to study and work, or to temporarily find safety or move to another country.

Originally from Kunar province in Afghanistan, Bahadur makes his living herding cattle and is an elder in his community. He worries about the future, especially the education of his 11 children.

The floods have brought more urgent concerns. For now, he is living near his partially destroyed village. "When we left our homes, we went to the higher ground nearby, where we spent the night in the open," he says. The next morning, staff from the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, arrived and provided a tent.

"We are grateful for the tents and shelter, and a mosquito net, but there are many other problems we are facing here," says Bahadur. "We are sleeping on the ground. We don't have drinking water or medical facilities, we don't get food every day and we struggle to feed our families. We need food to live," he emphasizes. "We even need food for our cattle."

The impacts of climate change do not discriminate between citizens and refugees. Across Pakistan, there are countless stories of people whose lives have been damaged by the catastrophic floods of recent weeks.

Just a few hundred meters from the refugee village of Bahadur, local Pakistani communities were also devastated. Saleem Khan, a 25-year-old farmer, was one of those affected.

The floodwaters arrived in the dead of night and invaded their house at three in the morning. "We were very scared. We've never seen such a frightening night. We were wondering how we were going to get through the floodwaters, but my father calmed us down: 'Don't be scared,' he said. Then we started moving towards the higher ground. We left everything behind. Our rooms were totally damaged," recalls Saleem.

The UNHCR team has also provided shelter for the displaced citizens. "But we need solar lights and fans," says Saleem. "We don't have a bed and I'm worried because there are snakes. And we have no food, so we can't eat."

Saleem says that the sugar cane and maize plantations, which are his only source of income, were destroyed by the floods, taking away the approximately 600,000/700,000 rupees (US$ 3,000) he would earn in a year. "Now that our house is damaged, we have to rebuild. It would be difficult to live in this tent for long," he says.

Both Saleem and Bahadur - citizen and refugee - now live in the same place and share the same difficulties.

Pakistan's government has launched a response and called for international support as floods continue to devastate many parts of the country. According to government figures, more than 287,000 homes have been destroyed and a further 662,000 houses damaged, while 735,000 animals have died and 2 million acres of crops have been flooded. There was also significant damage to the communications infrastructure.

The UNHCR has already provided 10,000 tents and thousands of other basic necessities, such as plastic sheeting, sanitary products, stoves, blankets, solar lamps and mattresses. Thousands of sandbags have also been distributed to help families build defenses around their homes. Assistance is being provided to host communities as well as refugee villages.

But much more help is needed. As part of a coordinated response alongside Pakistan's National Disaster Management Committee and other agencies, UNHCR has been delivering emergency items to the worst-hit western areas of Baluchistan and Khyber Paktunkhwa provinces since July, drawing on its existing stocks for Afghan refugees and host communities. Support is also reaching Sindh province, as the scale of need increases.

"What is urgently needed is rapid humanitarian funding," says Gayrat Ahmadshoev, head of the UNHCR sub-office in Peshawar, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. "Pakistani communities and refugee people staying in Pakistan say that these are the worst floods they have ever seen in history."

A UN funding appeal issued in support of the government-led response is seeking US$ 160 million to help more than 5 million people in the worst-affected areas. The aim is to cover the costs of essential items such as food, education and shelter, as well as reuniting families and protecting children who have been separated from their families.

Source: acnur.org