Warnings Were Funded. Warnings Were Known. Warnings Never Reached.
Entire valleys in Gilgit Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were swallowed in minutes, families torn apart as rivers rose with a fury long foretold. Mothers clutched their children against walls of water. Fathers dug bare-handed through mud where their homes once stood. This was not a surprise of nature. It was a disaster foretold, funded, and ignored. And that truth is more chilling than the floodwaters themselves: the State knew, and still let its people die. Can we dare to ask the State what is the worth of its people’s lives in its ledger of priorities? #flooding
Entire valleys in Gilgit Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were swallowed in minutes, families torn apart as rivers rose with a fury long foretold. Mothers clutched their children against walls of water. Fathers dug bare-handed through mud where their homes once stood. This was not a surprise of nature. It was a disaster foretold, funded, and ignored. And that truth is more chilling than the floodwaters themselves: the State knew, and still let its people die. Can we dare to ask the State what is the worth of its people’s lives in its ledger of priorities? #flooding
Over the last fifteen years, Pakistan has taken in hundreds of millions of dollars for disaster preparedness.
•The World Bank gave $188 million for the Hydromet and Resilience Project.
•The UNDP Green Climate Fund pumped $37 million into GLOF-II for GB and KPK.
•Japan funded radars in Karachi, Islamabad, and Multan, the Karachi Doppler alone worth $18 million.
•The ADB financed flood resilience across Sindh and Punjab.
With this scale of investment, Pakistan should have a modern, responsive early warning system. Instead, we have a graveyard of projects polished in reports, dead in reality.
•PMD runs the radars but cannot deliver timely, localized alerts.
•NDMA, empowered under the 2010 Act, should command in crisis. It behaves like a post office.
•PDMAs remain starved, politically ignored.
•Deputy Commissioners treat warnings as memos, not life or death orders.
The result? Forecasts exist in Islamabad. Villages drown in Swat and Hunza.
•The World Bank gave $188 million for the Hydromet and Resilience Project.
•The UNDP Green Climate Fund pumped $37 million into GLOF-II for GB and KPK.
•Japan funded radars in Karachi, Islamabad, and Multan, the Karachi Doppler alone worth $18 million.
•The ADB financed flood resilience across Sindh and Punjab.
With this scale of investment, Pakistan should have a modern, responsive early warning system. Instead, we have a graveyard of projects polished in reports, dead in reality.
•PMD runs the radars but cannot deliver timely, localized alerts.
•NDMA, empowered under the 2010 Act, should command in crisis. It behaves like a post office.
•PDMAs remain starved, politically ignored.
•Deputy Commissioners treat warnings as memos, not life or death orders.
The result? Forecasts exist in Islamabad. Villages drown in Swat and Hunza.
History Repeats
•In 2010, floods killed nearly 2,000.
•In 2022, over 1,700 died and damages topped $30 billion.
•Each time: disaster → pledges → reports → neglect → disaster again.
This is not climate change alone. This is state negligence on repeat.
The state can send thousands of police to a rally overnight, but not to evacuations. It censors tweets in minutes but cannot send SMS alerts to flood zones. It signs billion dollar deals but pleads helplessness when a $20 million warning system fails.
This is governance by abdication.
•In 2010, floods killed nearly 2,000.
•In 2022, over 1,700 died and damages topped $30 billion.
•Each time: disaster → pledges → reports → neglect → disaster again.
This is not climate change alone. This is state negligence on repeat.
The state can send thousands of police to a rally overnight, but not to evacuations. It censors tweets in minutes but cannot send SMS alerts to flood zones. It signs billion dollar deals but pleads helplessness when a $20 million warning system fails.
This is governance by abdication.
The Hard Fixes
More donor projects will not save lives. Structural change will:
1.The Prime Minister’s Office must directly oversee early warning and response.
2.NDMA must become a command authority, not a postman.
3.PMD must be audited for accuracy and equipment uptime with accountability at the top.
4.Provinces must run evacuation drills and maintain community sirens.
5.Deputy Commissioners must face penalties when they fail because their failure kills.
The Final Question
Can we dare to ask the Government: if it cannot protect its citizens from disasters it already knows are coming, then what legitimacy does it have left to govern?
The floods in GB and KPK will be remembered not as acts of God, but as acts of betrayal by a State that knew, that had the means and still turned its back.
More donor projects will not save lives. Structural change will:
1.The Prime Minister’s Office must directly oversee early warning and response.
2.NDMA must become a command authority, not a postman.
3.PMD must be audited for accuracy and equipment uptime with accountability at the top.
4.Provinces must run evacuation drills and maintain community sirens.
5.Deputy Commissioners must face penalties when they fail because their failure kills.
The Final Question
Can we dare to ask the Government: if it cannot protect its citizens from disasters it already knows are coming, then what legitimacy does it have left to govern?
The floods in GB and KPK will be remembered not as acts of God, but as acts of betrayal by a State that knew, that had the means and still turned its back.
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