ONE can only marvel at the callousness of the militants who have reportedly announced Rs2 million as relief for the victims of the flood.

Just as they attack a mosque full of men in Miramshah and kill a Peshawar FC commandant in a car bomb attack; just as they threaten to attack foreign relief workers who have been feeding, treating or rescuing their flood - hit compatriots; no less vicious are their recent suicide attacks on the police in Kohat and Lakki Marwat where innocent children, men and women were mercilessly killed.

What kind of torment is this? How terribly twisted minds do they have? It doesn’t really matter to them how many thousands of people have perished in floods etc. These men have committed death and destruction. How does anyone expect to bosom any compassion for them?

Floods have begun to recede. What might follow could be even more painful. There is going to be an outbreak of waterborne diseases, malaria, malnourishment and deaths from hunger, privation and despair.

Most affected are going to be children who have lost parents, and the old and the infirm that have their shelters and caretakers no more.

There are going to be different kind of crimes; the crimes of dearth and famine, food - snatching, child - lifting, and illegal occupation of remaining spaces.

Our LEAs are woefully ill-equipped to deal with these unusual crimes of the dislocated.

Hundreds of thousands of livelihoods have been wiped out. There will be a mad scramble for means to earn two square meals and equally gigantic jobbery too.

A new breed of job seekers would emerge along with the quintessential middlemen who would demand their pound of flesh too. A cyclical pattern of job - related misery will begin to form which may lead to many other social evils.

The existing social equation has been shattered and there is nothing to repair or replace it.

As a measure of the terrible confusion, men of means have started relief work in a haphazard manner hoping to keep the anger of the deprived at bay.

BRIG (Rtd) MEHBOOB QADIR

Rawalpindi