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Some news sources were observing that the global response to the Pakistan flood is weaker than with the Haiti quake or Indian Ocean tsunami of recent past, even though the current Pakistan disaster is larger and affecting more people in a more strategically important nation. Over 10M have become displaced, and thousands have died (1,500 documented deaths, but the actual number is probably over 10X higher). Within 2 weeks, international donors pledged over $1B for tiny Haiti, but so far Pakistan has only received a $460M pledge from the UN (that hasn't amassed the funds yet), with $50-150M or so coming from the US. Of course the US gives a lot of aid to Pakistan in many forms, and the Obama/Bush admins have tried to boost social and humanitarian aid in order to improve relations and combat extremism (currently to the tune of $7.5B over 5 years). Maybe Washington sees this "opportunity" as a way to score goodwill points with Pakistanis and Muslims after years of bad relations (as was the case with tsunami relief). Plus the more gratitude ordinary Pakistanis have for the US, and the more our aid helps boost their quality of life, the more stable Pakistan and Afghanistan will be, and the safer we will be from Islamic terrorism and loose nukes. So really it's a win-win for all nations, but if the perception among Pakistanis is that the West doesn't care, or is withholding aid as "punishment" for their lack of cooperation in the war on terror (even though Pakistan has suffered greatly from our war), they may come to support us even less.
Some possible explanations for the less robust response to the tragedy:
1) Donor fatigue: more miserable dark-skinned people needing Western assistance is always a bummer.
2) Timing: Haiti and the tsunami both occurred during winter holidays, so maybe there was more good will in our hearts? Pakistan is in August, when Westerners are on holiday, not paying attention to hard news, or getting ready for back-to-school.
3) Location: apparently the flooding (the size of Lebanon) was so bad that it wiped out access to the worst-hit areas, and more may be coming. Only helicopters can get in, which makes it hard for government officials and journalists to document the tragedy and broadcast powerful images to our screens.
4) Politics: Pakistan is associated with terrorism and corruption, especially after the Wikileaks documents release. Maybe this causes us to feel less compassion, even though the victims of the flooding have never harmed and do not want to harm America and our efforts in Afghanistan. They may not love us, but they are not all Taliban sympathizers. However, if the international community and Pakistani government fail to provide even minimal aid to the desperate victims, Islamic groups will step in and fill the void (whether out of charity or for political gains), like in Palestine. Or maybe foreign donors feel like their aid would be wasted on graft or seized by militants, as was the case in Somalia.
5) Global warming denial: like Katrina, African droughts, and Southwest wildfires in the last decade, the Pakistan flood's unprecedented size may lead one to implicate climate change in the disaster. If so, it's damning for Westerners, because the least polluting poor people in equatorial nations tend to suffer the most from global warming, while the human component is mostly due to G20 economies and lifestyles. So the least responsible suffer most. If we don't give generously, to address a problem that may be of our creation, then that is pretty heartless. So maybe it's better to ignore it and be in denial than accept the guilt.
5) Islamophobia: no media sources are willing to acknowledge it, and it's somewhat related to point 4. But look at the Ground Zero mosque debate. Many European nations and the US have a negative impression of Pakistani Muslims, especially after the recent Times Square terror attempt. Yes it's true that we helped Muslim Indonesia a lot after the tsunami, but US-Muslim relations may have been a little warmer then, and Indonesians are the "good Muslims" in our book. Maybe we blame our struggles in Afghanistan on Pakistan (deserved or not), so we feel less about their current plight. This is ridiculous of course, because as I've said Pakistan has sacrificed and suffered for the war on terror much more than most Americans. It's not the people's fault that the ISI is working with the Afghan Taliban.
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