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To seek or not to seek aid? How India, Pakistan have dealt the question — Bhuj to Sindh

Mutual aid between Pakistan and India during times of natural disasters dried up post-26/11.

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New Delhi: Pakistan is facing its worst floods, people are dying and lakhs have been displaced. But humanitarian aid isn’t reaching fast, especially from places that can make faster delivery possible. In a situation that requires fastrack movement of aid material, two statements by Pakistan finance minister Miftah Ismail capture what geopolitics can (not) do for a huge population facing a crisis.

“We can consider importing vegetables from India,” the minister said Monday. Two days later, he said in a tweet, “More than one international agency has approached the govt to allow them to bring food items from India through the land border. The govt will take the decision to allow imports or not based on supply shortage position, after consulting its coalition partners & key stakeholders”.

This wait before “consultations are over between coalition partners & key stakeholders” makes life miserable for those waiting for help to arrive, and some members of the Pakistani public appear divided on the credibility of their finance minister.

In response to Ismail’s tweet, one Pakistani supported the idea of seeking Indian aid but another labelled Ismail as a “nice joker”, suggesting to not believe the minister’s latest statements.

And it’s not the first time that bilateral relations or diplomatic tangles have delayed or denied aid.

Uncertainty remains over what the decision will be, with India expressing its openness to provide aid in the form of food and medical supplies but insisting that two-way trade between India and Pakistan would not resume anytime soon.

Mutual aid between Pakistan and India during times of natural disasters relatively dried up post-26/11. But the early 2000s were different as neither government hesitated to help its neighbour and historical adversary.

At the height of the second wave in 2021, when India was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, then Punjab CM Amarinder Singh had requested PM Narendra Modi to create an oxygen corridor with Pakistan via the Wagah-Attari border. The call to procure oxygen had come after Pakistani PM Imran Khan’s offer to help India. But India did not go ahead with this offer, prompting Amritsar MP Gurjit Singh Aujla to label Modi’s “denial” of Punjab’s repeated request as “deadly for patients in Punjab who don’t know which breath would be their last breath”.

In July 2010, when a significant portion of Pakistan’s provinces was devastated by floods to the tune of nearly 2,000 deaths and an estimated economic impact upwards of $ 43 billion, the international community answered Pakistan’s call for aid. However, Pakistan reportedly expressed reluctance to accept aid from India at first before belatedly “welcoming” it in late August. India had sent truckloads of potatoes.

But the approach between the two countries hasn’t been uniform. After the Bhuj earthquake, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had accepted aid from Pakistan that donated 13 tons of relief material consisting of food and blankets, among other essentials. On Republic Day in 2001, Gujarat’s Kutch district was devastated by an earthquake that killed nearly 20,000 people and injured lakhs, that included grave destruction of property and lives lost.

Mutual aid was the order of the day even in the 2005 catastrophe when more than 80,000 people died on either side of the border after a powerful earthquake struck parts of Jammu and Kashmir, including the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK)’s Muzaffarabad, and parts of KPK, such as Balakot. India had crossed both the Line of Control and the Wagah Border to deliver Pakistan with consignments of supplies and essentials.

“The first consignment of 25 tonnes of relief supplies had reached Islamabad early on Wednesday by an Il-76 flight, the first Indian cargo relief aircraft to land in Pakistan since the 1971 Indo-Pak conflict,” the Hindustan Times had reported at the time.

According to Oxfam, “the international response to Pakistan’s flood emergency has been sluggish and ungenerous compared with relief efforts after previous disasters,” said a Guardian report earlier this month.

It wasn’t until earlier this week that aid through food, medical supplies and makeshift tents began trickling in from the likes of China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, but for many affected adversely by the flash floods since as far back as June this year, this may well have been a case of “too little too late”.

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