Pakistan Trainees Report on Flood Disaster

Eyewitness accounts of the devastating floods which have swept through parts of Pakistan were published by Open Minds trainees on a specially-created blog http://pead-openminds.blogspot.com/.

Although most of IWPR’s project areas were cut off by the huge floods, some trainees managed to send IWPR stories of both their experiences and how they have contributed towards relief efforts.

"Mothers have lost their little kids; brothers are searching for sisters and many others look for their loved ones in the flood waters flowing through their villages."
Sajjad Mubarak, a 16-year-old trainee

IWPR and its local partner Peace Education and Development Foundation, PEAD, launched the blog to host these stories. In the future, the blog will become the home for all reporting from IWPR’s network of young journalists, undergoing training as part of IWPR’s Open Minds Pakistan project.

IWPR’s Islamabad-based team is also working with our project media partners to publish trainees’ flood stories in the national media.

Sajjad Mubarak, a 16-year-old trainee comes from a rural area of north-western Pakistan which was one of the first areas to be exposed to the floods.

“Mothers have lost their little kids; brothers are searching for sisters and many others look for their loved ones in the flood waters flowing through their villages,” he wrote.

In the villages, Sajjad reported, “homes have been completely washed away … [and] many of the affected families have no option other than to live under the open sky in a very miserable condition”.

Sajjad also reported that women and children are being hit worst by the flood in his area. “The death toll of children is the highest of all because of their vulnerability; most of those who died did so due to the unavailability of food and water,” he wrote.

According to Sajjad, however, the Pakistani government has not done enough to cope with the effects of the flood.

“People firmly believe that [tiny amounts of aid] will reach the deserving and the rest will go into the pockets of politicians and the administration,” he reported.

Two Open Minds trainees living in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan also reported on the ongoing chaos and misery and the authorities’ inadequate response.

Nisar Ali and Dauad Ahmad described the onset of flooding on July 28 in their home district of Prang Ghar in Mohmand, part of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, FATA.

“The administration was not able to concentrate on rescuing the people affected,” they wrote. “They have no modern equipment or techniques, no helicopters or proper boats. They have no military forces available. If they had enough army troops, boats and skilled rescuers there would have been no destruction of human lives.”

The government should prepare an emergency response to such disasters which would save lives in the future, the trainee journalists concluded.

As well as writing a report, Sajjad decided to take further action to help flood victims, so together with a friend he collected hundreds of clothes and shoes and donated them to relief camps.

Sajjad attributes this effort to the training he received from IWPR’s Open Minds project and “where we came to know about human rights and were told about social activities and helping people in trouble”.

Elsewhere, Open Minds students have been writing conflict-related news stories after only three months of journalism classes.

In May 2010, the project expanded its operations into nine new schools, two of them in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where the Pakistani government has very little control and the army conducts operations against anti-government insurgents including the Taleban.

Students in these areas face multiple problems relating to army operations and insurgent resistance. There are no established local media outlets in FATA, and army movements make it very hard for any other journalists to get to these areas.

PEAD identified this problem during its previous work in the Ekka Ghund and Prang Ghar areas of Mohmand Agency, one of the districts of FATA.

Since PEAD secured two schools in these two areas to work with the Open Minds project, there has been some remarkable progress among the students.

In July, PEAD received emailed reports from three students who had never used a computer until Open Minds came to their school.

As part of the project, IWPR supplies participating schools with computers and internet connections, enabling them to participate in online debates with other schools across the country.

Muzamal Shah, a student from the government high school in Ekka Ghund, wrote about the poor quality of local education, which he said was because of “the shortage of qualified, honest, devoted teachers”.

The other students to email PEAD from the same school class, Asfar Khan and Zia ul Huq, described a recent fight over land containing marble deposits between two tribal groups, the Masud and the Gurbaz.

In Prang Ghar, students provided on-the-ground reporting on civilian life amid the ongoing war between the army and insurgent groups.

Dawood, a student from the village of Shkapoor, wrote short articles about the army-imposed curfew, a bomb which exploded near his school and a suicide attack that hit Prang Ghar on July 20.

In the blast, he reported, 100 people were killed and 180 seriously injured, with five subsequently dying of their wounds. Dawood was able to name several of the victims, and described how ten members of one family were killed.