Photo Gallery: Rebuilding in Pakistan
After the Flood 'We Are Grateful for Any Help'
The United States military transport helicopters arrive at daybreak, booming down from a sky where there is not a cloud in sight, now that the monsoon rains have ended. They land in the city of Kalam, on a knoll above the turquoise-blue river, rippling harmlessly into the valley as if nothing had happened.
Soldiers jump from the helicopters, which now make several flights a day to Kalam, bringing scaffolding needed to rebuild roads and bridges and carrying plastic bags of flour, rice, drinking water and medication. The soldiers are US Marines who have come from Afghanistan in their Chinooks and other transport aircraft. Until the middle of last year, their Pakistani allies were still waging war against the Taliban here in the Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan.
The enemy of the Taliban has arrived in the valley, but this time there are no bombs on board. The Americans have come to save lives.
The people of Kalam, bearded Pashtun men wearing woolen caps and women dressed in brown burqas, come to the helicopters to collect provisions. They know they would be lost without these foreign soldiers, without the food and donations from around the world.
The True Scope of the Disaster
The city was cut off from the outside world for 10 days. Some villages in the Swat Valley are still inaccessible today, five weeks after the flood. According to Red Cross volunteers on the hastily constructed airfield, four women and six children died in Gabral, a few kilometers away, only 10 days ago. They starved to death because the access roads to the village had been destroyed. Helicopters couldn't land in the village.
Kalam, in the northern Swat Valley, was one of the first places devastated by the flood in Pakistan. Only as the water subsides is the true scope of the disaster apparent. Some 70,000 people were left homeless, hotels and restaurants were immersed in the floodwaters and the harvest, the peaches and apples for which the Swat Valley is famous, will rot in the fields. The flood transformed this area into a gigantic riverbed, a wasteland of mud and debris.
A group of survivors has gathered around one of the few working TV sets in the city, watching videos of the floodwaters as they moved through Pakistan, from north to south, images of submerged parts of the Punjab, evacuations in Sindh Province, and refugee camps around the country. They know that a fifth of their nation was under water, more than 1,700 Pakistanis died and at least 18 million are now homeless or became victims of the flooding.
They feel let down by their president, Asif Ali Zardari, who traveled to Europe when the floods began and has now presented his solution to diplomats representing the donor nations. His proposal is to rebuild dams and floodgates in such a way that the water can simply be diverted into the desert the next time a major flood hits the country.
Pakistan, devastated and overwhelmed by the floods, is a country on edge.
A Grieving Mother
The survivors seem relieved as they shake hands with the foreign soldiers on the runway at Kalam and hoist sacks of food onto their shoulders.
Parvin Nissar, 26, squats on the sidelines. She has been rocking her baby for hours, almost in a trance-like state, unable to forget what happened on that morning four weeks ago. It was July 29, the day the deluge burst into the Swat Valley. The monsoon had been beating down for days, and Nissar walked to the river with neighbors, overjoyed by the blessing of rain, hoping for a good harvest and looking forward to a sumptuous Eid festival marking the end of Ramadan. But at about 11 a.m., as water levels continued to rise, transforming the Swat River into a deadly torrent, she took her two children and ran up the hill to higher ground.
Seven-year-old Fausia, Nissar's first-born, tore away from her mother, calling out that she wanted to fetch some food. From her perch on the hill, Nissar watched as her daughter waded through the mud in the courtyard of their house until the water rose to her chest. Then the first wave crashed over the house, knocking down stone walls like biscuits dipped in tea.
Then the second wave rolled in and Fausia was dragged away in the raging muddy brown waters. Fausia, like most people in Kalam, couldn't swim.
Her body was found on the riverbank 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Kalam a few days later. When Nissar went to the site to identify her child, she collapsed on the spot. When she spoke with her husband, a guest worker in Dubai, two days ago, she felt so guilty that she couldn't bring herself to tell him about their dead daughter.
Nissar wonders what will become of her in this valley, a place afflicted by one tragedy after another -- first the effects of the 2005 earthquake in nearby Kashmir, then the Taliban's reign of terror and the Pakistani military offensive against the Taliban, and now the flood.
Skiing, Trout Fishing and Headscarves
The Swat Valley was once known as the Switzerland of Pakistan. The first backpackers came to the region in the 1970s, traveling to China along the Karakorum Highway. They went skiing on the snow-covered peaks, fished for trout in the Swat River and smoked joints on terraces above the river while enjoying the panoramic views.
Later, Pakistani's affluent middle class discovered the area, with its cool temperatures, as a summer getaway. They came from the big cities of Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, picnicked next to cool waterfalls and honeymooned in hotels with names like Heaven and the River Inn. Women didn't wear burqas in those days but simply covered their hair with headscarves.
Modern young Pakistanis wished the whole country could be more like Kalam, a village surrounded by a breathtaking landscape, full of life and more cosmopolitan than the rest of the conservative Swat Valley. But it was a vision that would eventually be destroyed by earthquakes, the Taliban and the war against terrorism.
When the first extremists came to the Swat Valley in 2007, they quickly established a state within a state, introduced Sharia as an exclusive legal system and infiltrated the entire country. They banned CD shops and girls' schools, and men who dared to shave their beards were publicly flogged. In Mingora, the largest city in the valley, beheaded people were left on the streets as a warning to the rest of the population. Life also ground to a standstill in Kalam. The tourists stopped coming.
Under pressure from the United States, the Pakistani army launched a military offensive in May 2009 to recapture the valley from the Taliban. Tanks were brought in, the houses were bombarded with heavy artillery and 2 million residents fled to refugee camps. Kalam became a ghost town, and only at the beginning of this year did residents feel safe enough to return.
In July, they held a Peace Festival at the spot where the US soldiers are now landing and Nissar is mourning her daughter. They grilled lamb kebabs and relished in their ability to enjoy the things that were forbidden under the Taliban -- dance performances, bands playing music, table tennis contests for women. The hotel owners expected to see their best season in years, with every hotel room in the town sold out, ready to host some 6,000 tourists from throughout the country.
But the flood came instead.
The Will of Allah
Today Kalam is a ghost town again. The river has carved out a new bed three times as wide as before. Some 120 guesthouses washed away. The Heaven no longer exists and the River Inn is nothing but wreckage.
What used to be a waterside promenade is now a steep embankment running down to the river. The cars of the tourists who were flown out as soon as the monsoon subsided are still parked there, an avalanche of metal and a reminder of what happened.
Much will now depend on who helps the people of Kalam rebuild their city -- the government, the Taliban or the West.
Ahmed Zeb, a 32-year-old teacher, doesn't believe what many are saying here, that the flood was Allah's punishment. But he does believe that it was a natural disaster caused by global warming, that it will happen again and that people here must prepare for it. He stands on the riverbank, arguing with the bazaar merchants, trying to convince them not to rebuild their shops down along the river, but higher up on the safe knoll where they celebrated the Peace Festival and where the American helicopters are now landing. That, he says, would be a symbol of the future, of a new and stable Pakistan.
Zeb says that the flood disaster is the biggest opportunity his stricken valley has ever seen. Things are moving ahead, he says, but it will take years to rebuild. Nevertheless, the world is growing together, and the United States, which many believe is the enemy, is bringing help and changing the minds of people in the valley.
But what about the Taliban? Have they truly been vanquished, and have they disappeared beyond the hills forever? What will happen in a few weeks, when the Americans are gone and Kalam is on its own again? Will the Taliban regroup and gain strength, taking advantage of a weakened Pakistan?
The Voice of the Taliban
A bearded man walks into a teahouse in Fatehpur, a village 50 kilometers south of Kalam. There has been no electricity since the flood. Five men stand up in the flickering light of oil lamps and embrace him without saying a word. He smoothes out his white robe, sits down, crosses his legs and begins to pray. It is 3 a.m. during the month of Ramadan, and the men are sitting down for a last breakfast before dawn and the daylong fast.
The man's name is Haji Sahab, the honorific Haji signifying that he has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, though he is only 26. His voice is unpleasantly high, but it's a well-known voice in the Swat Valley.
Haji Sahab served as an announcer on the Taliban's propaganda radio station for two years, reciting verses from the Koran for hours and preaching the benefits of living by the rules of Islam. He never played music. Music, says Haji Sahab with a stern look in his eyes, distracts people from Allah. He smiles over the government's and the military's assertions that there are no longer any extremists in the Swat Valley. "They destroyed our radio station, but we're still here," he says.
Haji Sahab joined the Taliban to fight for more justice in his valley. The Taliban in Swat were local residents like Haji Sahab, dissatisfied with wealthy, greedy employers and furious with the corrupt political elite and the ineffective legal system. Haji Sahab, as a teenager, made a living by selling chutneys and flatbread, and he often had to wait months to be paid his monthly wage of about €60 ($76). By the fall of 2007 the Swat Valley was firmly in the hands of the Taliban. Haji Sahab says that he felt accepted at the time, but he doesn't say whether he fought and killed.
The Pakistani military captured Haji Sahab in March 2010. He says he was held, tortured and interrogated for the next three months, and that he was only released because he is still able to count on sympathizers. "They let me go because the people in my village applied pressure, and because they told the military that I'm a good and honest man."
Now Haji Sahab owns a grocery store, and even Pakistani soldiers shop there, though they don't know who he is. He lives modestly and keeps a low profile. Since the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, Haji Sahab lives in constant fear of being arrested and tortured or killed by an American drone.
Since the flood, Haji Sahab has spent much of his time repairing his house and praying. Like most people in the Swat Valley, he too sees this natural disaster as a punishment from God. Quoting from the Koran, he says: "Because of their sins they were drowned (in the flood) ... And they found none to help them in place of Allah."
How does he feel about US soldiers flying over his village to Kalam to distribute food and medication?
Haji Sahab hesitates, then says: "We are grateful for any help."
But didn't Islamists call upon local residents to reject American support? Didn't the Taliban threaten to kill Western aid workers? Haji Sahab shakes his head, scratches himself under his prayer cap and says nothing for a few moments. "If, as we suspect, it turns out that the foreigners are engaging in politics and are not here to help the people, we will continue to fight."
Azam Effendi also fears that gratitude for foreign assistance could turn into violence. He regards it as his mission to prevent people from returning to the Taliban now that the flood is over.
Effendi, 56, is a tall man with a moustache and a booming voice. He is wearing the same traditional robe as Haji Sahab, the former voice of Radio Taliban, and he too grew up in the Swat Valley. But that is where any similarity between the two men ends.
Effendi is a retired brigadier general, successful and vain, and the walls in his house are covered with military decorations. He is also a large landowner, a wealthy man with enormous fruit plantations stretching up the mountainsides. Still, he doesn't have a generator. He says: "What would my poor neighbors think, sitting in the dark at night, if they saw the lights on in my house? They would be furious, of course."
Prospects for the Future
During the war Effendi remained in his village, Bagh Deri, to protect his estate and the residents. His farm was caught between the two fronts. His former soldiers from the nearby barracks fired on his country house because they believed Taliban fighters were hiding there. But the walls are also riddled with the extremists' bullets, which killed one of his employees. Nevertheless, Effendi supports the war against the Taliban. "They spread fear and terror. The government had no choice. It had to act. But wouldn't it have been better if we had won them over instead of blowing up their houses?" Effendi believes that this could have been achieved by building schools, workshops and irrigation systems to eliminate the farmers' dependence on costly water pumps.
He walks out of his country house and takes a few steps toward a wooden mosque decorated with carvings. Young men and women from his village built the mosque in a workshop he had set up for them. He says that they worked on it for eight years, and that he paid them for their work. Retired General Effendi sees the mosque as one of his alternatives, a place of reconciliation, an offer to the government and the Taliban to meet and talk to one another.
Effendi wants to be an intermediary between conservative and modern Pakistan. He describes the extremists' way of thinking as traditional, not backward and stone-aged. He fasts and prays but, like many high-ranking officers, he also goes to parties where alcohol is served. There are books by Lenin and Mao, as well as a book of Irish jokes, on his bookshelf. He doesn't object to employing a man as his farm manager who is married to three women and has 13 children.
Since the flood, Effendi has been distributing bags of food to people in the villages around Kalam. He knows they need more than bottled water and granola bars. They need a goal and a future, he says. He used his own money and the donations of friends to rebuild a destroyed road, and he plans to start building a girls' school soon. "I want to offer the people in the valley prospects for the future," says Effendi. "It's the only way I can prevent them from switching to the other side."
The first helicopter of the day is now taking off from Kalam, the devastated city in the Swat Valley. The 45 survivors on board, people with diarrhea and broken arms, are being taken to a hospital. Most are leaving their homeland for the first time, and as they gaze down at the turquoise-blue Swat River, the wind blowing away their caps and raising their burqas, they vomit out of sheer excitement and smile bravely. The American soldiers pass around water bottles to the survivors of the flood as they fly away.
