As international aid trickled into Pakistan to help flood victims, Mark Malloch Brown, a former deputy secretary general of the United Nations, criticized the country’s leader for failing to make the scope of the destruction and the urgency of the need clear to international donors.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Brown told the BBC, “this is a very confusing crisis” and a visit by President Asif Ali Zardari to Europe – with a stop at his family’s chateau in France – while monsoon rains ravaged large portions of his country, had not been helpful:
The leadership of Pakistan on the civilian side has gotten off to a rather muddled and slow start. It’s very hard for donor governments — let alone donor public opinion — to be entirely convinced at the seriousness of a crisis when the country’s president is filmed at his own private chateau in France or continuing with government visits to the U.K.
Crises, it’s a terrible thing to say but, you know, they require disciplined marketing. There needs to be a clear message that lives are at stake and the whole of the domestic effort of the country is devoted to trying to save those lives.
Mr. Brown also said that Pakistan’s military leaders “were very effective in Kashmir a couple of years ago after the earthquake and again they seem to be sort of pushing the civilian leadership aside and taking control and frankly that’s probably good news.”
Her added that the relief effort was now a competition between “the efficiency of these two rival systems: Islamic relief agencies versus the one institution of the Pakistani state which works, the army.”
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