NEW YORK — Americans are giving a paltry amount for relief efforts in flood-stricken Pakistan compared with other overseas disasters. They were more than 40 times more generous for the Haiti earthquake.
Reasons include the slow-motion nature of the calamity, relatively scant TV coverage and the fact that the strategic Muslim ally is viewed warily by many Americans.
No disasters are alike. Yet a month into Pakistan’s flood catastrophe, with 8 million people in dire need and a fifth of its territory affected, the donation comparisons are startling.
InterAction, an umbrella group for U.S. relief agencies active abroad, says its affiliates have raised about $12 million thus far for Pakistan, compared with more than $500 million at the same stage of the Haiti earthquake-relief effort this year.
The American Red Cross, traditionally the biggest recipient of disaster-relief donations, has collected about $2 million for Pakistan and is dipping into a contingency fund to support its work there. At the same stage, it had raised about $100 million in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, more than $670 million for Hurricane Katrina and about $230 million for the Haiti quake.
“People find it complicated to understand our relationship with Pakistan — how the government works, who to trust,” said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which has been tracking the donations.
In Haiti and the nations hit by the tsunami, the devastation’s scope was apparent immediately to anyone who saw the graphic images on television. In each case, the death toll surpassed 200,000.
Pakistan’s floods, in contrast, worsened over a period of days — and the outside world was relatively slow in realizing the scope of the catastrophe in a country wracked by the Taliban insurgency. The flood death toll, estimated at 1,500, is viewed by some experts as misleadingly small, given the scale of the dislocations and the long-term damage to Pakistani society.
Samuel Worthington, president of Inter Action, has been urging Americans to overcome any doubts about Pakistan’s political and security problems, and to be as generous toward the flood victims as they were to victims of the tsunami and Haiti quake.
“Pakistan is a very diverse country, with a population that tends to be labeled through a very small subset of terrorists,” he said. “You have a large population, whether it’s lawyers or farmers, who simply want to live in peace. That story doesn’t get told, but it needs to be told, especially when they’re suffering.”
Washington has been the largest donor to the flood-relief effort, allocating $200 million to date. Yet a recent Pew Foundation poll found nearly six in 10 Pakistanis viewed the U.S. as an enemy; only one in 10 called it a partner.
