John Home Robertson: Ignored victims of flooding disaster

Mohammed Marjan's house was swept away by the catastrophic floods in Pakistan three months ago. He and his wife and four children survived, but they now live in a tent in the Himalayan foothill village of Bagnowan, and winter nights are extremely cold for people in tents at 9,000ft.

Media coverage of the devastation of towns in low-lying areas further south inspired great generosity and a massive relief effort, but far less is known about the sheer violence of the flooding in the glens of Pakistan's mountain areas. People perished in the raging torrents, and there have been further casualties as people are forced to use dangerous improvised bridges to cross the changed courses of rivers.

I have just spent a fortnight with Edinburgh Direct Aid (EDA) in the remote Upper Neelum Valley of Pakistani Kashmir, and I was shocked first by the damage wrought by the freak monsoon rain of August 2010, and secondly by the fact that the massive international relief programme has delivered very little help to this badly affected remote mountain area.

The Upper Neelum and its tributaries like the Shuntur and Surgun nullahs could be compared with Scottish Highland crofting glens: steep valleys with common grazing up to the treeline and precious arable land around villages. This summer's 100-year record rainfall (300mm in 24 hours) sent an unprecedented surge of water down the burns and rivers with terrifying destructive power. The torrents carved away large swathes of terrain, including parts of villages, roads and farmland in some areas. Some houses disappeared altogether. Some have been partially demolished, while others are left teetering on the brink of crumbling cliffs carved out by the flood waters. The whole landscape of these village communities has been viciously transformed.

Mohammed Marjan's substantial stone and timber house, and hundreds like it, disappeared without trace. And it gets worse, because the criteria for providing shelter for victims require that they must have a site on which to rebuild. In his case the site has gone as well as the house - it is now in the re-aligned course of the Shuntur river. This cruel Catch 22 means that a homeless family does not qualify for emergency shelter because there is technically nowhere to erect it.

I spent two nights in a tent nearby last week, and the temperature is already close to freezing, so shelter and food must be the top priorities, but there is a lot more to do.Bridges and long sections of the valley tracks have been washed away, leaving precipitous cliffs and banks of scree; rural Pakistan's excellent mini-hydro power installations have been wrecked; and vital basic services like water-driven flour mills have been destroyed too.

EDA knows the area, having helped earthquake victims in 2005. So we used local contacts to plan a response to the flood emergency. EDA went to work immediately with 37,000 awarded by the Scottish Government's International Development Fund as well as generous voluntary donations.

Last week we climbed 20 steep landslide-strewn miles up the Shuntur valley, with essential help from sure-footed ponies - a new experience for this volunteer. Helped by an engineer from the Pakistani army garrison, we determined the materials and work needed to replace footbridges and tracks over gorges between villages, to repair water channels for mini-hydro schemes and mills, and where possible to reduce further erosion of land and houses.

EDA has procured hundreds of gabion cages and the cement required to start those tasks before the snow falls. Local people are already working flat-out to carry those vital supplies up the valleys on