Interestingly, US drones have now launched more than 100 deadly strikes in Pakistan since President Barack Obama came to power. In other words, US drone attacks in Pakistan have more than tripled under Obama claiming lives of more than 700 people compared to 200 under his predecessor, George W. Bush.
The US embassy has denied that Shahbaz airbase (from where drone attacks are reportedly being launched) was controlled by American authorities. "These allegations are completely false. Shahbaz airbase in Jacobabad is a Pakistan Air Force base, commanded and operated by PAF forces," the embassy's spokesman said in a statement.
However, the ground realities belie this denial.
According to the Nation, a leading Pakistani newspaper, the Pakistan Air Force was denying all manner of access to the airbase because of the presence of US personnel who had come along with the Block 52 F-16s, which were delivered at this base and had US conditionalities including the presence of US personnel to "keep an eye" on how the planes were used by the PAF.
While the PAF was responsible for the security of the base, it was the pressure from the US on security grounds, that was preventing access to the base-even of Pakistanis who had been involved in carrying out building work at Shahbaz, the paper added.
Organizers of national and international NGOs told The Nation that they could not reach Jacobabad to provide food and drinking water to as many as 500,000 to 700,000 flood victims due to strict security conditions adopted for Shahbaz Air Base.
Reluctant response from the donors
Only a small fraction of the six million Pakistanis desperate for food and clean water have received any help. With hundreds of villages marooned and highways and bridges cut in half by swollen rivers, food rations and access to clean water have only been provided to around 500,000 million flood survivors, UNICEF Regional Director for South Asia Daniel Toole told a news conference in Islamabad on August 17.
The United Nations has warned that up to 3.5 million children could be in danger of contracting deadly diseases carried through contaminated water and insects in a crisis that has disrupted the lives of at least a tenth of Pakistan's 170 million people.
The UN launched a 460-million-dollar appeal for donations on August 11. However, the UN has complained that foreign donors have not been quick or generous enough given the scale of the disaster. After a two-day session of the UN General Assembly ended Friday, the amount of international aid pledged for Pakistani flood victims still fell well short of the $US460 million in emergency aid that the UN has appealed for. Despite the increased amounts of aid pledged over the past two days, UN humanitarian chief John Holmes told Associated Press that the UN's appeal was not fully funded. "At the moment, we're about 70 percent funded, about $350 million," he said. Perhaps the reluctance may be due to earlier reports that during General Musharraf's regime about $ 500.00 million disappeared from the aid provided to the earth quake victims in 2005.
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