The Pakistan Flood PR Failure

Given the scale of the flood disaster in Pakistan, it is distressing to see that the British media seems to be missing any sense of urgency about it. Any coverage seems to be being abrogated in favour of the urgent news that Wayne Rooney may have slept with prostitutes.

I am beginning to wonder if there is any racism involved here, ingrained in our reaction. The country is in turmoil, but we are busy with shaming and hounding our sportsmen. America is busy too – attempting to stave off a nut with a church to his name who wants to burn the Koran on September 11th. But the PR pressure and energy the American government is expending on saying that this bigot is wrong could surely be better spent helping the Pakistani people. We are talking about a disaster on a magnitude as great if not greater than Haiti. And yet nothing seems to be happening.

So is it a Muslim thing? Is this why the West is just not that fussed about helping Pakistan recover from the floods? I suspect that this is what the so-called ‘forces of evil’ who are currently helping in Pakistan will be telling the people they help. This is their chance to reach out and create more divisions – a PR exercise in igniting the powder keg that Pakistan has become, despite having once been seen as a safe Western ally in the war on terror.

Whilst others conduct psy-ops to infiltrate Pakistan in the name of charity, surely the West are creating further divisions by being seen to do nothing. We need to see the bigger picture – inaction now could lead to the creation of more angry extremists, more jihad, more terror and war.

Sadly, Wayne Rooney really is more interesting to the world at large than aid workers helping in the fields of Pakistan. But is recession and trouble at home really a good enough excuse for allowing further hatred and division to be bred? The polarisation of Pakistan for want of some food, aid, care and awareness would be a PR – and moral – failure of epic proportions.