Flooding & Landslides in Afghanistan:
Is this act of God, and can it be prevented in future by
adapting to climate change? (v 1.0)
Yesterday (2nd of May,2014) a sad apparently
natural tragedy happened in Badakhshan province of Afghanistan, initial reports
suggesting that some 2,000 may have been buried under mud after a huge
landslide.
However as Kabul is busy with elections,
the issue of people buried under mud is not attracting much attention from the
ruling government or from the presidential candidates. They are busy in “more
important” things such as making alliances for a run-off election.
NATO and ISAF (International Security
Assistant Force) this morning in their official statement said that they are
aware of the situation in Badakhshan but are waiting for permission from the Afghan
government to assist people in the area. Is if they have asked permission for
bombing Afghan villages, running their private dentition centers or detaining
innocent Afghans.
The educated group (manipulated
group would be more appropriate word) of Afghan population who has access to
internet and of course express themselves on Facebook and other social media are
coming up with profile messages such as ‘we are with you Badkhshan’. It
beyond my understanding what actually this means, just sitting like a lazy
bulldog behind their laptops/iphone and writing ‘we are with you’ to a group
who do not have access to electricity and access to internet. So the question
is, to whom you they talking? Are they making fools of themselves or is it the
hypocritic qualities that they inherited from their elders over the last 30
years.
The interesting part of this
accident will be the stories that will come out after a few weeks. We have a
tendency to justify any act. Since this act (the landslide) would be brought
under the category of ‘Natural Disasters’. And Afghans, being inspired-Muslims
would surely justify this as an act of God as well. I will not be surprised to
hear stories such as, these two villages were involved in drug business and
using drugs therefore God demolished them and many other similar stories. The problem with such stories is that it will provide an excuse for the responsible authorities not to act for prevention of
such tragedies occurring in the future.
In order to prevent or mitigate such catastrophes in future we have
to agree on that holding God accountable for such acts is not going to lead us
to any practical solutions. With current technology and knowledge we more or
less know about the underlying processes happening before any similar incident. Many
developed countries such as Switzerland, Norway etc which have more or less
similar terrain to Badakhshan and to the rest of mountainous Afghanistan, have
managed to avoid or mitigate such tragedies occurring. They have successfully applied methods for slope stabilisation, mapped landslide vulnerability, and integrated disaster management policies in their development planning, Afghanistan could learn
some lesson from them and exchange experiences.Extreme events observed in Afghanistan such as the flooding in Faryab, Badghis province, which took the lives of more than 150 people, and then just one week later this sad event of the landslide in Badakhshan, are becoming more common place. With climatic variability and in the absence of any climate change adaptation strategy, mountainous topography, ever faster melting glaciers, unplanned housing, rapid land-use changes and lack of water management infrastructure, such events of extreme flooding, landslides etc, and human and animals causalities caused by it should not surprise us.
The government should act quickly
rather than wait, and take a pro-active approach towards human induced ‘natural
disasters’ scrapping the tendency for reactive actions. The Afghanistan
National Disaster Management Authorities (http://www.andma.gov.af/)
should work as a cross-cutting sector with better cooperation with other
sectors rather than working as an independent body.
And finally a request on behalf
of poor Afghans, to whom Afghanistan has given nothing but only troubles, that the
so called ‘high officials’ including the current presidential candidates should
leave their comfort zones for a while and visit those people in trouble. Not only for taking pictures with a smile on their faces while standing on a mass grave, but should eat
with them from their plates, drink from their glasses, and stay for a few
nights in their cottages to get a real sense of their lives. Otherwise they should
stop selling this nonsense of ‘nation representatives’.
Masoom,
Thoughts of writing this piece
came after reading the sad news (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27265516
)of landslide that destroyed two villages in Badakhshan and killed more than
2,000 people.
Contact: masoom.hamdard@gmail.com
