Pakistan Under Water

A boy rests at a new camp which opened for flood victims on August 14, 2010 in Sukkur. Pakistanis have become increasingly outraged with their government's slow response to the disaster and a lack of foreign aid. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Villagers shift their household items through a flooded area of Pathan Wala on August 16, 2010. Pakistan's devastating floods are now threatening ancient archeological sites, on top of leaving millions of people dependent on humanitarian aid to survive, an antiquities official said. (Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images)

Zahida Perween with her newborn twins in the hospital in Sunawa, in Punjab province, on August 9, 2010. Perween delivered her twins on the road before being delivered to the hospital by Pakistani soldiers. Around 13.8 million people have been affected by the floods, making the scale of the disaster worse than the devastating 2004 tsunami, a UN official said. (Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images)

A young flood survivor sleeps with her goat at a roadside tent camp in Nowshera on August 7, 2010. (A. Majeed/AFP/Getty Images)

Onlookers perched on a damaged bridge watch a flood survivor cross a river by rope in the Swat Valley's Chakdara on August 3, 2010. (STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images)

A flood survivor who is also an Afghan refugee carries a small bag as he joins others departing the Azakhel Camp near Nowshera on August 5, 2010. The UN has rushed a top envoy to Pakistan to address the urgent plight of 4 million people hit by the worst floods in generations as officials warned the crisis was spreading. (Farooq Naeem/AFP/Getty Images)

A resident shifts his belongings from a submerged home in Toree Band, 85 kilometers from Sukkur on August 6, 2010. (Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images)

Survivors line up to receive water relief supplies from a local charity in Pabi, near Nowshera, on August 3, 2010. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

Flash floods and landslides triggered by torrential monsoon rains have killed more than 1600 people in Pakistan and affected upwards of four million people, according to officials. Here a mosque and houses are seen submerged in flood waters near Nowshera on July 30, 2010. (A. Majeed/AFP/Getty Images)

Residents stand by flood waters that entered a residential area of Muzaffarabad on July 30, 2010. Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab provinces are the hardest hit by the disaster. (Sajjad Qayyum/AFP/Getty Images)

Residents of a flood-hit area of Nowshera evacuate to safety on July 30, 2010. A center of Pakistan's textile industry, Nowshera is traditionally famous for its spinning mills. (A. Majeed/AFP/Getty Images)

Women and children gather on higher ground after fleeing their homes in Nowshera's Mohib Bhanda area on July 31, 2010. (A. Majeed/AFP/Getty Images)

Survivors gather to receive food in Nowshera on August 1, 2010. (A. Majeed/AFP/Getty Images)

Flood victims on the outskirts of Peshawar evacuate their homes on August 2, 2010. (STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images)

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PAKISTAN, August 17, 2010 - Displacing over 20 million people, flash floods triggered by torrential rains have taken the lives of 1,600 people, according to officlals. The UN says Pakistan's devastating floods have affected more people than the 2004 tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake and this year's Haiti earthquake, combined, creating the region's worst flooding in living memory.

In a recent visit to the flood-affected areas, UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon described the destruction he witnessed as "heart-wrenching," saying the scale of the disaster was greater than anything he had seen before, urging all nations across the globe to speed up the aid to the country, where shelter and medicine are desperately needed.

Asia Society Associate Fellow Ayesha Haroon said, "Even as Pakistan's government, international aid agencies, political parties, and ordinary citizens rush to the aid of the affected, the scale of devastation across the length and breadth of the country is unimaginably huge."

In the Swat Valley, where reconstruction had been underway after a major military operation against the Taliban during 2009, surging waters have brought down bridges and left entire communities cut off. The spread of diseases such as cholera and diarrhea among survivors has become a growing concern. Renewed rain on Tuesday, August 3 slowed the relief effort by both local and international rescue efforts, amid steadily rising criticism of the government's response. Officials are coming to grips as more rain is forecasted for the rest of the week.

Speaking from Islamabad, Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Fellow Hassan Abbas commented, "Natural disasters are indeed unpredictable but in this case there were warnings ahead of time and the Pakistani state failed to prepare in time .... This is a very critical test for Pakistan, as it is facing crisis after crisis and international help is desperately needed. Based on interviews on the ground, I believe distressed people are losing hope in the state's capacity to do anything meaningful for them. Anyone who will provide them any solace and basic support will win their hearts and sympathy."

Haroon sounded a similar note. "In just one province, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, more than a thousand people, 65 bridges, dozens of villages, standing crops and roads have been swept away by the raging waters.

"With local livelihoods, crops, roads, bridges, rail tracks and houses destroyed across a major swathe of Pakistan, the cost of rescue and rehabilitation will be astronomical for the federal and provincial governments-continuously being pressured by the West to 'do more' in the war on terror ... The worry is that if there is no concerted effort by the national and international agencies to effectively rehabilitate the flood affectees, lack of credibility in the government becomes more entrenched and issues of parochialism, ethnicity, and nationalism will come to the forefront in the public discourse again."

How to Help

Information on relief efforts can be found at www.state.gov/pakistanflooding. Community members interested in giving immediate assistance can text the word "SWAT" to 50555 to contribute $10 to UNHCR's life-saving flood relief efforts on the ground.