Major disaster in Pakistan. How can we help?

From drought to flood http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ae400046-ab70-11df-abee-00144feabdc0.html From the link:

"The Indus has not been kind to Mohammed Maitlo. His one-acre farm in Pakistan received so little water for irrigation this year that his wheat crop was stunted. Then the river burst its banks, destroyed his home and pushed his family into the ranks of the millions dispossessed by the recent tragic floods.

Mr Maitlo’s story is repeated by hundreds of thousands of peasant farmers across the southern Sindh province, where until a few weeks ago people were preoccupied with worsening water shortages, not an unwelcome surplus."

"Before the flood, the Indus had shrunk to little more than a muddy puddle in parts of Sindh, forcing farmers to rely increasingly on wells drawing saline groundwater that saps the fertility from their soil, hitting yields of cotton, rice and wheat.

Farmers cite the diversion of upstream waters to feed farms in the populous Punjab province, Pakistan’s agricultural heartland, as the chief drain on their river’s vigour. Skewed patterns of ownership place most of Sindh’s land in the hands of an elite who win a disproportionate share of waters distributed through a rotational irrigation system.

Melting Himalayan glaciers because of rising temperatures, have exacerbated Pakistan’s shortages, according to a 2009 report by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The World Bank says Pakistan could face a “terrifying” 30-40 per cent drop in river flows in 100 year’s time.

The result is that Pakistan may be more prone to both droughts and flood. As more water is diverted to feed agriculture, average flow speeds have fallen, dumping silt on river beds. Shallower channels are less able to cope with sudden rainfall, rendering Pakistan more vulnerable to extreme flooding.

In the weeks leading up to the recent floods, angry farmers marched through villages in Sindh demanding access to water. Those who can no longer turn a profit in the fields are increasingly resorting to banditry or migrating to urban shanties."

 

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Expressing a link of HD photography: Pakistan In Need

 

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The children's facial expressions look like over worked stressed out middle aged adults,

 

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yeah, I had to take a second look.

 

I think of all those billions being spent on war right next door and I wonder at peoples priorities.