In Pakistan I met a young man called Gul-a-Lala, which in Pashtun means “Flower of Paradise”. He is an Afghan refugee who lives in the village of Azakhel, in Nowshera district, which is north of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.
Gul-a-Lala escaped from war in Afghanistan to make a new life in Azakhel. But at the end of July the Monsoons arrived. His house was flooded together with the rest of the village. And when the waters receded they left behind a mess of bricks, broken wood and mud. Like many other victims of the floods in the north of Pakistan, he has been hit twice: he lost everything in the war and then he lost everything again with the floods. His traditional clothes were dirty, and his bare feet muddy. When he knew who I was he asked me in perfect English: “What is Europe going to do to help us?” For his village I had an answer – we were there to assess how a cash-for-work programme can help them rebuild, and relief is on the way. But this is just one drop in a sea of troubles. With more than 17 million people affected, spread all the way from north to south, and often in hard to reach places, Pakistan needs all the help it can get. Read the full entry
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I am at Brussels airport with our civil protection team for a last-minute briefing before they take off for Japan. The 14 Europeans in the team are en route to coordinate the European Union’s contribution to the massive relief efforts going on in the areas affected by a triple disaster: one of the strongest recorded earthquakes (so strong that it shifted the Earth’s axis), a powerful tsunami wave, and one of the Century’s most serious industrial accidents. Read the full entry
