ISLAMABAD, (Reuters) – Pakistan said yesterday it will clamp down on charities linked to Islamist militants amid fears their involvement in flood relief could exploit anger against the government and undermine the fight against groups like the Taliban.
Islamist charities have moved swiftly to fill the vacuum left by a government overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster and struggling to reach millions of people in dire need of shelter, food and drinking water.
It would not be the first time the government has announced restrictions against charities tied to militant groups, but critics say banned organisations often re-emerge with new names and authorities are not serious about stopping them.
“The banned organisations are not allowed to visit flood-hit areas,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told Reuters. “We will arrest members of banned organisations collecting funds and will try them under the Anti-Terrorism Act.”
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari warned on Thursday that militants were trying to exploit the floods to promote their agendas — as they did after a devastating earthquake in Kashmir in 2005.
More than 4 million Pakistanis have been made homeless by nearly three weeks of floods, making urgent the critical task of securing enough aid.
In a sign of improving relations between the Pakistan and India since the Mumbai militant attacks in 2008, New Delhi said that $5 million in aid had been accepted after initial reluctance from Islamabad.
“We welcome acceptance of our offer by Pakistan’s government. It is a goodwill offer for solidarity,” India’s foreign ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said in New Delhi.
The decision comes a day after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke to his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani on Thursday to express sympathy and condolences.
Eight million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance after around a third of the country was hit by floods, with waters stretching dozens of miles (km) from rivers.
The floods have marooned villages and destroyed power stations and roads just as the government had made progress in stabilising Pakistan through offensives against militants.
There were increasing fears of disease outbreaks.
“With over 38,000 reported cases of acute diarrhoea already and at least one confirmed cholera death, the spectre of major cholera outbreaks is real,” Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta of the women and child health division at Aga Khan University in Karachi wrote in the Lancet medical journal.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said millions of livestock were at risk and at least 200,000 cows, sheep, buffalo, goats and donkeys had already died.
