ICRC provides flood relief , calls Balochistan 'severely affected region'

GENEVA/QUETTA – The International Red Cross Committee that had to shut down its office in Quetta in May amid threats from Baloch freedom fighters or sarmachars has moved swiftly to aid victims of floods in Balochistan.

“A string of natural disasters that caused widespread suffering and devastation in Balochistan in 2010 seems largely to have gone unnoticed outside this arid south-western province,” the I.C.R.C. said in a carefully drafted Press release Friday.

The I.C.R.C. described Balochistan as a “severely affected region.” It said floods in the Bolan district in March were followed in quick succession by destructive winds and coastal flooding from cyclone Phet in early June.

“Before the current catastrophic floods focused the world spotlight on Pakistan in early August, the population in Balochistan was already feeling the effects of flooding rains in the third week of July,” the I.C.R.C. said

The I.C.R.C. came under fire of the Baloch sarmachars who said it was doing precious little to help Baloch victims of natural disasters and man-made disasters, maintaining the Baloch are in double jeopardy as they are also victims of Pakistan's state terrorism.

At least a quarter million Baloch tribesmen are internally displaced persons as they were forced to flee their homes amid Pakistan military jet and helicopter attacks on Baloch freedom fighters in a ruthless military operation that started in 2005 and is still on-going.

Max Wigmann, acting chief of the I.C.R.C. operations in Balochistan confirmed on the phone from Quetta that at present there was “minimum expat presence at the I.C.R.C.”

Despite restrictions on the movement of expatriate staff within Balochistan, the ICRC said it remains committed to bringing aid to people in need.

In February last year, U.N. High Commissioner for refugees in Balochistan John Solecki was kidnapped and his driver shot dead by the Balochistan United Liberation Front. Solecki was freed after a two month long ordeal.

The premier international relief body, acting through the Pakistan Red Crescent Society, said it responded to the first bout of monsoon flooding in July by distributing food for 21,000 people in the flood-affected Sibi district towns of Talli and Sultan Kot.

"In the third week of August, food and other items for 70,000 flood victims in Balochistan were purchased, packaged and shipped by the ICRC to Pakistan Red Crescent branches in the worst flood-affected areas of Jaffarabad, Nasirabad and Sibi districts, for distribution to flood victims in Balochistan. Relief supplies were also provided to people displaced from Balochistan to camps in Sindh and southern Punjab”, said Pascal Cuttat, head of the ICRC delegation in Islamabad.

"As conditions worsened in Balochistan, we were concerned that flooding would prevent us from getting a second shipment of relief supplies to the province and other southern areas by road from the ICRC logistics hub in Peshawar, so we opened a new aid pipeline in the port city of Karachi," added Mr Cuttat.

Cuttat held talks this summer with one of the main Baloch resistance leaders Hyrbyair Marri in London and also met his younger brother Mehran Baluch in Geneva to end the Baloch freedom fighters misgivings about the I.C.R.C.

The I.C.R.C. has also been in contact with Munir Mengal, a torture victim and chair of the Paris-based Baloch Voice Foundation.

“We have been in touch with all asides involved, and the results have been positive” Sitara Jabeen a Pakistani spokesperson for the I.C.R.C. said on the phone from capital Islamabad. She confirmed that the office in Quetta was not fully operational yet and that the I.C.R.C. has only a “skeleton staff” but tried to downplay the situation by explaining that overall in Pakistan there were very few Western staff. She said barely 10 percent of normal expat staff strength is presently stationed in Pakistan.

Balochistan remains one of the poorest and hardest hit areas in the country and, despite the strength and resilience of its people, one least able to recover from the current disastrous floods, the I.C.R.C. said.

Texas-sized Balochistan was incorporated in Pakistan at military gunpoint on March 27, 1948 against the wishes of the freedom-loving Baloch people after whom the land is named. So as not to further annoy the Baloch freedom fighters, the I.C.R.C. refrained from calling Balochistan a province of Pakistan.