Through Kasur, affected by floods, families say they are exhausted by repeated displacements in a matter of months.
When the waters of the floods on the other side of the Indian border emerged in his town in the Punjab of Pakistan this month, Shama knew what to do: he gathers his four children and prepares to leave.
It was the second time this year that he had to flee, after leaving his home during the cross -border fight between India and Pakistan in May.
“How many times do we need to evacuate now?” The 30 -year -old mother said, her husband was transporting her 10 cows to a higher land in a boat. “We lost a lot during war days like children for children, and now water is forcing us again. Problems are problems.”
Shama’s terrible experience echoes Kasur, affected by floods, where families say they are exhausted by repeated displacements in a matter of months, first of the fighting, now from nature.
“The floods began earlier this month and only got worse,” said Mother Bibi Zubaida, 27, who lives with seven relatives in a three bedroom house in front of a mosque that now transmits evacuation calls.
From the mosque speakers, generally reserved for the call to prayer, a different message came: the boats were ready for anyone who wanted to leave.
“When you live here, you choose to live with the threat of war and the threat of floods. Where does one go?” Zubaida said.
Kasur is located a few kilometers from the Indian border. From their roofs and rescue boats, residents said they could see the control stalls of India on the horizon, a reminder of how closely their destiny is linked to the decisions taken on the other side.
The nations share rivers that were regulated for more than six decades under the Treaty of the Indo waters. India suspended that agreement earlier this year, after the shooting of 26 people for militants that New Delhi said they were backed by Islamabad, which Pakistan denies.
That attack triggered short but intense cross -border battles among neighbors with nuclear weapons, which led the villagers like Shama from their homes.
Then came the monsoon, and the rivers turned to the flood.
In narrow wooden boats, balanced families motorcycles, belongings and goats that tend with their children, while rescue workers were directed through the fields now became rivers.
Rescue worker Muhammad Arsalan said many villagers hesitated to evacuate. “People do not always want to leave because they are afraid that thieves steal what they leave behind. They are reluctant because they have already done it many times,” said Arsalan, who has transported more than 1,500 people safely by boat in recent days.
“They love their goats and sheep, sometimes they refuse to leave without them,” he added, stopping to clear the leaves trapped in the engine before restarting another race.
The Punjab Provincial Disaster Management Authority said the flows in the Sutlej River in Ganda Singh Wala were the highest in decades, after a rape in an Indian flood. So far, at least 28 deaths have been reported, with water pushing further south through Punjab and threatening new areas.
In India, the outbreaks of the cloud in the regions of Ramban and Mahore of Jammu and Kashmir occupied by India killed 10 people. Pakistani officials said that the crisis was worsened by India’s decision to suspend the Indo Water Treaty, stopping the exchange of decades river data.
Islamabad also accused India of releasing large volumes of water without adequate warning.
“If the treaty was in operation, we could have managed the impact better,” said Pakistan Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal Reuters on Friday.
India has denounced pakistan deliberately. He has blamed the rains of the incessant monsoon and said he issued multiple flood alerts. Two doors of the Madhopur flood on the Ravi River were damaged by the increase in water, Indian officials said.
Farmers say that the flood has destroyed their livelihoods. “Thirteen of my 15 acres are gone,” said Muhammad Amjad, a rice and vegetable producer. “Women and children are mainly evacuated. Men stay to protect what remains.”
Consecutive displacements have underlined the vulnerability of communities to Horcajadas on the volatile Eastern border of Pakistan.
Authorities warn that the crisis could get worse as climate change intensifies the monzons and disputes of the cross -border river, tension disaster planning.
“I have seen many floods, but now they come too frequently,” said Nawabuddin, a 74 -year -old landowner, remembering the most memorable floods he witnessed in his life: 1988, 2023 and now this.
“We do not want the war, we do not want excess water. We just want to live,” said Zubaida, whose newly renewed house and cultivation lands are now underwater.
Image of the header: Residents travel with their belongings in a boat while heading towards a higher terrain, following the rains of the monsoon and the increase in water level of the Sutlej River, in the village of Chanda Singh Wala, near the border between Pakistan and India, in the Punjab district, on August 29.
