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Part 3 of a 4-part series.
GILGIT AND KOHISTAN DISTRICT, Pakistan -- "They've been very grateful, from my experience."
Army Sgt. Jesus Ramos quickly dismisses concerns back home that he and other U.S. forces participating in flood relief operations in Pakistan are facing hostility in what is frequently depicted as an anti-American nation.
"When we're downloading, they come up to you, shake your hand, smiles on their faces," he explains while resting before another full day of relief flights to the rugged north.
Some 12 weeks since the onset of devastating flash floods left a half-million Pakistanis stranded, U.S. forces are still actively assisting the Pakistani military with delivering aid to populations in need. They are flying food and materials to northern areas cut off after flash flooding washed out roads and bridges.
Though they are here at the invitation of Pakistan and can be forced to leave as soon as the government orders them out, U.S. embassy officials say they expect troops to be here doing this work until at least November.
The troops involved say they have all trained heavily in disaster relief work since enlisting, but many also admit that they never expected to actually be putting the training to work, expecting instead to be engaged in combat. Some service members with 20 years of experience say their Pakistan deployment is their first-ever experience with humanitarian operations.
But Pentagon officials believe that future service in the U.S. armed forces could be characterized more by the type of all-day back-and-forth airlifts to flood-stricken parts of Pakistan than by the counterinsurgency battles winding down in Iraq but still raging in nearby Afghanistan.
A tryout for future climate-related missions
In February, the U.S. Department of Defense released a quadrennial defense review report that for the first time linked global warming directly to national security hazards. The report calls climate change an "accelerant of instability" that could increase the frequency and severity of natural disasters, taxing civilian disaster relief capabilities and requiring more regular military support.
DOD has been among the first on scene responding to a string of mass-casualty disasters caused by earthquakes, including the devastating quake in northern Pakistan in 2005. But many believe the Pakistan super-floods of 2010 represents the first time U.S. forces have been called into action in response to a major climate change disaster.
"We helped out with the [2004 Indian Ocean] tsunami a couple years ago, Haiti just this year," recalled Capt. Clark Noble, a helicopter pilot in an expeditionary unit of the Marine Corps. "It's now a regular part of our duties."
Riding with and interviewing the men and women engaged in efforts here shows that, for most enlisted personnel, relief work in foreign lands is among the most welcome and rewarding parts of their service. It's also almost as exhausting and stressful as combat, and not without its own levels of danger and deadly threats, especially in northern Pakistan.
"I wouldn't say that you're any more or less nervous; I'd just say that it's different," explained U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer William French, a helicopter pilot comparing his service here to a tour in Iraq. "I'm not nearly as concerned about someone shooting at me, but I'm still always thinking of that."
U.S. military assistance in Pakistan's north consists of two main operations. The Marine Corps was flying C-130 airplanes from Chaklala Air Base near Islamabad to Gilgit and Skardu in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. This area finds itself isolated after the flood destroyed parts of the famous Karakoram Highway. The cities are world-renowned as launching pads for trekking expeditions into the scenic mountains and are used to hosting foreigners.
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4 Comments
Add Comment"There is no scientific evidence that this is the case"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, but that is just plain false. There is an abundance of SCIENTIFIC evidence that climate change caused these extreme floods. You seem to be confusing "scientific evidence" for "absolute proof." No scientific conclusion is 100% guaranteed.
Early snow melts, from galciers like Puncak Jaya, meant rivers were already swollen. When combined with "historically high" rainfall there was no place for water to go.
Sunny today and rainy tomorrow is weather. What we're seeing is long-term climate change: spring is coming earlier every year, plants, insects and animals have extended their ranges northward hundreds of miles (bringing tropical diseases with them), the Northwest Passage is opening in the Arctic, and the polar ice cap getting smaller and smaller every summer. The decade from 2000 to 2009 is the hottest on record.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClaiming that the climate is not warming is simply a lie. Even the most vociferous semi-respectable global warming skeptics do not deny it's happening. They claim instead that humans are not responsible. They say it's the sun, the earth's orbit, or a normal cycle that we don't understand. They say that humans are too few and too insignificant to affect climate on a planet wide scale.
But that's just ignoring the facts. There are almost seven billion people on the planet. In the short span of 150 or so years we have been burning coal, gas and oil that took billions of years to lay down. Natural processes cannot absorb that huge influx of CO2. As China and India begin to consume hydrocarbons at higher and higher rates the process will only accelerate. That CO2 is staying in the atmosphere and producing greenhouse warming.
We also know that deforestation has dramatic effects on climate (look at the difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Humans have chopped down 20% of the Amazon rainforest. Crops such as corn and soybeans allow more moisture to evaporate from the soil and promote a hotter and drier climate than trees and other rainforest vegetation do. Worldwide we are cutting down trees, burning them for fuel or just letting them rot at an alarming rate. All of this causes CO2 levels to rise, while eliminating the carbon sink that these trees represent.
Finally, humans do control enough power to drastically change the climate: large numbers of nuclear weapons detonated simultaneously could send enough material into the stratosphere, which would cause a nuclear winter and another ice age. While burning fossil fuels doesn't have the same immediate impact, in the long term it's probably even more naked energy used to produce a gas that's choking our planet.
"There was no flooding last yr and there was this yr"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgain you are factually wrong. There was flooding last year, just not catastrophic flooding, like this year. The reasons why are many, the glacier melt was not as bad last year, the monsoons did not start as early and were not historically heavy.
Also, as another poster mentioned you seem to be confusing weather (short term, local effects) with climate (long term, global).
As I said before there is an abundance of scientific evidence to support the conclusion that climate change played a major role in this years flooding in Pakistan, and nobody is more convinced of that that many Pakistani's themselves.
Are Pakistan Relief Efforts a Training Exercise for Climate Change Disasters?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, it is a climate change disaster