Pakistan's Epic Flooding Crisis

Epic flooding in Pakistan. We look at the pain – and politics – of the flood.

**For information on how you can help flood victims, the U.S. State Department recommends going to Interaction.org to see charities — secular and religious — that are accepting donations now.

It’s hard to take in the scale of the flooding in Pakistan right now. It’s epic. Vast. Overwhelming. Monster monsoon rains that have brought the deluge over huge portions of the country.

A fifth of Pakistan, under the flood’s reign. Millions displaced, clinging to treetops and outcroppings, hungry. Seventeen million acres of the country’s most fertile cropland, submerged. Reports of cholera.

And all this in one of the most volatile nations on earth, where history, and the Taliban, and nukes and the Afghan war all jostle. We look at the humanitarian crisis, pain, and politics in Pakistan’s flood.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:

Zahid Hussain, reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Adil Najam, director of Boston University's Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and professor of International Relations and Geography & the Environment. He blogs about Pakistan-related issues at pakistaniat.com.

Shandana Khan, CEO of Rural Support Programmes Network, the largest network of development and relief agencies working in Pakistan.

Mosharraf Zaidi, columnist for The News, Pakistan's biggest English-language daily newspaper.