The devastating floods have inundated hundreds of villages across much of Pakistan’s fertile land. In Sindh Province in the south, the floodwater has effectively transformed what was once farmland into two large lakes that have engulfed entire villages and turned others into fragile islands. The flooding is the worst to hit the country in recent history, according to Pakistani officials. They warn that it may take three to six months for the floodwaters to recede.
So far, around 1,500 people have died — nearly half of whom are children — and more than 33 million have been displaced from their homes by the floods, which were caused by heavier-than-usual monsoon rains and glacial melt.
In Dadu District, one of the worst hit areas in Sindh Province in southern Pakistan, the floodwater has completely submerged roughly 300 villages and marooned scores of others. Across the province, around 40,000 square miles of land — about the size of the state of Virginia — is now underwater, officials say.
Where farmers once tilled fields of cotton and wheat, wooden motorboats now chug across the festering pond ferrying people between towns that were saved from the brunt of the flooding and their stranded villages. Scattered across the water are single sandals, medicine bottles and the bright blue books of elementary students that spill out from the windows of half-submerged schools.
Swarms of mosquitoes dance around the tree tops poking out from the water. Power lines dangle precariously close to its surface.
Tens of thousands of people whose homes were destroyed have been displaced to nearby towns and cities where they have found shelter in schools, public buildings, and along the roadside and canal embankments. They take refuge in tents cobbled together with spare tarps and rope beds they salvaged before the flood came.
Among the lucky few whose villages were not completely submerged, many have remained in their homes — effectively marooned. The Pakistani authorities have urged people to leave the isolated villages, warning that if thousands remain it could overwhelm already strained aid efforts, cause widespread food insecurity and spark a health crisis as diseases spread.
But the residents have their reasons for staying, they say: They need to protect their prized valuables — surviving livestock, refrigerators and tin roofs — from thieves. The cost of renting a boat and moving their family and belongings is too high. The prospect of living in a tent encampment is too bleak.
The US has urged Baghdad not to implement a court ruling forcing its semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to hand over oil extracted from its territories to federal authorities, warning it risks “a widening kind of economic crisis” in Iraq.
“Washington is quite concerned - that rushing forward and implementing this decision risks driving US firms out of Iraq, other firms out of Iraq,” Barbara Leaf, the State Department’s top Middle East diplomat, told reporters on Wednesday. […]
Leaf said she shared US concerns with leaders in Baghdad and Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, officially recognised as an autonomous region of Iraq since 2005, that following through on the court ruling would exacerbate the country’s economic woes at a time when it is already dealing with a political crisis.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has for decades been developing its oil and gas resources independently of the federal Iraqi government, passing its own oil law in 2007 to administer control of resources in its territory.
In February, Iraq’s federal court ruled that the KRG’s oil and gas law was unconstitutional and demanded that Kurdish authorities hand over their crude products. […]
Leaf said she shared US concerns with leaders in Baghdad and Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, officially recognised as an autonomous region of Iraq since 2005, that following through on the court ruling would exacerbate the country’s economic woes at a time when it is already dealing with a political crisis.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has for decades been developing its oil and gas resources independently of the federal Iraqi government, passing its own oil law in 2007 to administer control of resources in its territory.
In February, Iraq’s federal court ruled that the KRG’s oil and gas law was unconstitutional and demanded that Kurdish authorities hand over their crude products. […]
Besides irking Kurdish officials, the ruling has also unnerved energy majors and drawn the attention of US lawmakers.
In a letter sent to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in August, senators James Risch and Bob Menendez, the ranking member and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said “certain US companies” were being targeted by Baghdad’s application of the law.
“We urgently ask the administration to engage the KRG and the Iraqi government at the highest levels to allow for continued energy work in the KRI [Kurdistan Region of Iraq], which is integral to Iraq’s stability and prosperity, and to furthering Iraq’s energy independence,” the lawmakers wrote. […]
The country uses revenue from its oil reserves to fund 90 percent of the federal government’s budget.
ALT
