ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan remains desperately short of the money it needs to cope with the floods that have devastated the country in the past two weeks, the United Nations warned Tuesday as the scale of the disaster continued to grow.
A government relief fund established by Pakistan's prime minister has collected just $1.4 million, a spokesman said. The United States has provided $76 million in cash, and other countries and international agencies have pledged about $280 million more, which will be distributed through the government, the U.N. and nongovernmental organizations. The World Bank is to make $900 million available.
Those amounts, however, are nowhere near the billions needed to deal with a calamity that has swept through more than one-fifth of Pakistan's land mass, wiped out crops in the agricultural heartland, affected more than 20 million people and has many people worrying that the government itself could collapse. The Finance Ministry has warned that the floods probably will halve the nation's projected 4.5 percent economic growth this year.
"This is probably the biggest emergency on the planet today, and we need to respond keeping that in mind," Daniel Toole, the South Asia regional director of UNICEF, said at a news conference Tuesday in Islamabad. "It's beyond what any government or any one organization can do by itself, and beyond what we can expect the Pakistani people to respond to."
Who's giving?
Much of what the international community has pledged has yet to be delivered.
According to the latest figures from Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, the United States heads the list of donors with $76 million in cash, plus goods and services that are said to be worth $11 million. Great Britain is No. 2, with $50 million. China, which is popular in Pakistan, has offered $9 million.
There has been criticism of Muslim countries for not giving enough, which seems to have stung some to reach into their pockets. Saudi Arabia has delivered $44 million, while Turkey is to give $11 million.
Many energy-rich Middle Eastern countries are being less than generous, however. Qatar has pledged just $400,000. Pakistan's neighbor to the west, Iran, is giving $800,000, while the United Arab Emirates has no pledge that the Pakistani authorities have recorded.
"The people of Pakistan will see that when the crisis hits, it's not the Chinese, it's not the Iranians, it's not other countries, it's not the EU. It's the U.S. that always leads," Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said last week on PBS's "The Charlie Rose Show."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend a special U.N. General Assembly session Thursday to push for more aid. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is due to arrive in Pakistan this week to assess the situation for himself.
In addition to sending cash, the U.S. has 19 helicopters ferrying relief goods and rescuing about 3,500 people.
