Saturday, November 12, 2022
#Pakistan - The FAO has warned that about 6m people can face acute food insecurity in 28 vulnerable districts of Balochistan, Sindh and KP.
JANIB Gul Mohammad can feel a pall of gloom as he enters his home. And when his wife Kasbano serves him a meat dish, otherwise a rarity, he knows why. Another animal has perished. For his wife, it is a day of mourning; to him, another huge economic loss.
As if the floods had not caused enough devastation — destroyed their home and the rice crop — it is sapping life out of their livestock too. A few days ago, it was the fourth time in the last one month that he ate meat.He and his wife rescued all their six animals when they fled the floodwaters that submerged their home and took refuge on the embankment of a canal for two weeks before returning.
However, soon after being displaced, one pregnant cow, a calf and two goats died, Gul Mohammad said over the phone from his village in Fateh Ali Buledi, in Sindh’s Kamber Shahdadkot district. The cow and goat that are still alive will soon succumb, he said, estimating a total loss of Rs250,000.
“Our animals are dying from hunger and sickness,” he said. Insufficient fodder and the stress of displacement is making them weak. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 85 per cent of farmers have observed signs of animal disease outbreak in their communities.
Dr Nazeer Hussain Kalhoro, director general of the Sindh Institute of Animal Health at the provincial government’s livestock department, said the situation was alarming. In Balochistan, an estimated 500,000 animals perished; followed by 436,435 in Sindh; 205,106 in Punjab and 21,328 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. An estimated 1,164,270 animals have perished, while many more are on the verge of death.
Some animals drowned while others died of starvation as grazing land was covered with water. Consumption of contaminated water and eating wet fodder led to parasitic diseases making them weak.
With the veterinary infrastructure compromised the animals could not get vaccinated.
Livestock, the largest sub-sector in agriculture, contributed 60.1pc to agriculture value addition and 11.5pc to GDP during the 2020-21 financial year, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey. More than eight million rural families are engaged in livestock production and deriving more than 35pc-40 pc of their income from this source.
There are 42m buffaloes and almost 51m cattle in Pakistan, according to the Ministry of National Food Security & Research.
Sindh has an estimated 40m-50m livestock population, said Dr Kalhoro; it is also the worst-affected province in terms of losses, which he estimates to be Rs27,864,065,000. “Balochistan may have lost more animals, but it had smaller ruminants for personal use, not cash or dairy animals like the ones in Sindh.”
With no income, the farmers are selling their livestock to middlemen from Punjab, at a huge loss. Last month alone, Dr Kalhoro said, an estimated 4.5m animals were sold. According to several studies, faced with a crisis, small farmers are often forced to choose between selling their assets to buy food for the family or reducing their food intake to protect assets. Either way they face a loss — economic or nutritional — pushing families into poverty.
According to the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, the poverty ratio in Pakistan had declined from 57pc to 24.3pc in 2015 but has increased to 35.7pc recently.
Before the floods, the World Food Programme had carried out an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis of 28 vulnerable districts in Balochistan, KP and Sindh and estimated about 5.96m people to be in IPC phase 3 (crisis) and 4 (emergency) between July and November 2022, that would increase to 7.2m by March 2023. After the floods, the WFP and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) project the number of people requiring emergency food assistance (IPC3/4) to increase to 11m.
There was an acute shortage of fodder even before the floods. A major portion of by-products needed to make fodder was exported and small farmers were forced to import food for their animals. Now the situation has worsened and this has already resulted in a surge in the price of milk, meat, chicken and eggs, pointed out Shakir Umer, president of the Dairy and Cattle Farmers Association.
The loss of buffaloes and cows means an acute shortage of milk. Although Punjab manages 90pc of the country’s milk requirements, for small farmers in Sindh it will result in the loss of income.
The FAO has warned that about 6m people, which is 30pc of the rural population, can face acute food insecurity in 28 vulnerable districts of Balochistan, Sindh and KP and about 15pc-16pc of the population overall. In the 2022 Global Hunger Index, Pakistan is 99th out of 121 countries. The situation is bound to get worse with crops destroyed and food prices rising daily. Latest official estimates show that the area affected by the floods represents about 35pc of the total area where cereal, sugarcane and cotton were sown for the 2022 Kharif season.
Unicef estimates half a million children to face severe acute malnutrition, needing immediate treatment, and an additional 80,000 needing urgent medical interventions.In addition, 18,624,000 (or 11.24pc) poultry and 1,156 poultry farms have also been lost to the floods. This can have a huge impact, not only on the nutrition, but also on the livelihood of women in rural households.
It can take as many as 15 years to recover if things remain the same. Dr Kalhoro has come up with an emergency livestock rehabilitation plan for Sindh and if that is implemented, he is sure the sector can recover in four years.
This entails restocking among others. In the first phase, for instance, some 10,000 most vulnerable households may be provided with one milking buffalo; another 50,000 with five goats (one male among them) and 10 birds (one male). In addition, they can be provided with vaccination services, treatment of sick animals, feed, mosquito nets and spray, as well as construction material for the reconstruction of animal sheds.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1720440/livestock-loss
Imran Khan Pushes Pakistan to the Edge
The former prime minister challenges the idea that it isn’t a state with an army but an army with a state.
Is Imran Khan Pakistan’s savior or its destroyer? His legion of passionate supporters hope his continuing confrontation with the country’s army will allow him to return to power—Parliament ousted Mr. Khan in April—and cleanse Pakistan of corruption and misrule. More likely, the 70-year-old former cricketer’s vainglory and taste for brinkmanship could tip an already turbulent nation into chaos. Either way, the U.S. and its allies should brace for instability in the nuclear-armed Islamic Republic.
The latest flashpoint came last week after a failed assassination bid interrupted a protest march by Mr. Khan and his supporters to pressure the government to call early elections, which aren’t due for about a year. The shooting killed one person and wounded Mr. Khan in the leg. Authorities say they quickly arrested the would-be assassin, a religious zealot. In a confession video leaked on social media, he accused Mr. Khan of seeking to rival the prophet Muhammad.
Mr. Khan isn’t buying this explanation. He blames the attack on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and Faisal Naseer, a major general in the army’s Inter-Services Intelligence. Messrs. Sharif and Sanaullah have denied Mr. Khan’s charges, as has the army. In a statement, the army called his accusation “baseless and irresponsible” and suggested Mr. Khan was threatening “the honour, safety and prestige of its rank and file.”
Mr. Khan’s public tirade against a senior officer “suggests a vendetta and signifies a major breach in civil-military relations,” says Aqil Shah, a Pakistan expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This is all the more remarkable given both Mr. Khan’s longstanding friendliness with Pakistan’s army and the central role it plays in the country’s government. In the 75 years since independence, generals have directly ruled Pakistan for about 33 years. For much of the rest, the army chief has been the power behind the throne. As the old axiom goes, Pakistan isn’t a state with an army but an army with a state. Now that is threatened by a politician who used to be viewed as the army’s puppet.
Angered by the shooting, Mr. Khan’s supporters have blocked traffic and clashed with police in Lahore and Rawalpindi. In Peshawar an angry mob gathered outside the fortified home of the general in charge of the region. On Thursday, Mr. Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, resumed its march to Islamabad, without the injured Mr. Khan. Mr. Shah thinks that Mr. Khan’s message to the army is clear: “If you don’t play ball with me, I will go all the way and discredit and shame you as an institution.” Since his ouster, Mr. Khan has called on the army to pressure Mr. Sharif for early elections, accusing him of delaying so that his government can appoint an army chief after the current one retires later this month.How the crisis unfolds matters beyond Pakistan’s borders. The military’s outsize role in Pakistan’s government has long presented a security problem for the U.S. and India, among other nations. The army has fueled a long-running insurgency in India-controlled Kashmir and provided safe haven to the Taliban during its successful campaign to oust NATO forces from Afghanistan. After the 9/11 attacks the ISI reportedly established a special cell to hide Osama bin Laden a stone’s throw from the country’s premier military academy. Jihadists as far apart as Bosnia, the Philippines and Indonesia have been linked to Pakistan. The army reportedly aided rogue nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan’s smuggling operations in Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Despite this malign record, the army has also earned a reputation as the most functional institution in a dysfunctional country. Its officer corps has largely resisted factionalism and remains bound to its chain of command by intense unity and discipline. Moreover, though the army controls vast business interests, it is generally regarded as immune to the kind of day-to-day bribery that marks the country’s civilian institutions. Some scholars regard the military as the glue that holds the country together. If the army collapses, Pakistan might collapse along with it.
Mr. Khan’s public broadsides leave the generals with few good options. Firing or transferring Gen. Naseer, the ISI official responsible for domestic politics, would signal weakness in the face of Mr. Khan’s bullying. But not acting places them on a collision course with arguably Pakistan’s most popular politician. In either case, ordinary Pakistanis—already reeling this year from floods and a tanking economy—likely face even more instability.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/imran-khan-pushes-pakistan-to-the-edge-inter-services-intelligence-army-parliament-assassinations-election-taliban-11668115875?mod=opinion_featst_pos2
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