Asad Ali and many of his neighbours are gathered in Mujh Gali of Dubair Bala, surveying the area where once around 20 houses stood. All that remains now are stones and debris.

The devastating flash floods triggered by the torrential rains have wreaked havoc in the northern parts of the country. Dubair valley in Lower Kohistan is one such area that has suffered serious destruction. Ali from Mujh Gali laments that all they are left with now is the clothes on their bodies.

According to Muhammad Saadi, an elderly man from Dubair Bala, their roads, bridges, pedestrian paths, everything has been washed away by the floods. Dubair is the area where four people from Sanagai were washed away after waiting for help on a rock in the middle of a swollen stream. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government was criticised heavily for not coming to their aid despite repeated calls.

The government, Saadi says, simply does not respond. Relief service has yet to start in the area despite the passage of a week.

In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa the majority of the damage was done by sudden flash floods that have washed away much of the infrastructure in its way

Hafeezur Rehman, a social activist from Kandia, in Upper Kohistan, says, “The area has been in complete darkness as all the mini-power stations, water mills, irrigation channels, cultivated lands and crops have completely washed away.” According to local MPA Didar Khan, Kandia road, which was damaged in the 2010 floods, has not been reconstructed even after 12 years.

Kalam, a tourist site, has been cut off since the floods hit the area and inhabitants of the nearby areas of Manykyal, Aryana and Utror are shelterless. Rehmat Ali from Mardan, who worked at a hotel in Kalam, meets me in Bahrain in Swat valley; here onwards no road exists anymore. It took him and his friends hours to reach Bahrain on foot, he tells me. Sherin Zada, a senior journalist from Swat, is stranded in Kalam after being flown there in a helicopter for news coverage. He too would have to go back walking from Kalam to Bahrain.

In Madyan, Swat, two neighbourhoods — Engar Abad and Hospital Colony — located along the Bashigram river, have been completely destroyed. I stand on a heap of rubble, some 10-12 feet high, where once there were houses that lit up in the night. Now there is nothing but destruction, darkness and silence.

Said Alam, a primary school teacher, says, “It was like doomsday for us when our houses were swept away before our eyes.” He says heavy rain-triggered flood has left no mark of the houses in Engar Abad which was home to mostly poor labourers.

“Most of flood affectees are living in their relatives’ homes because the government has not established any camps for them,” Alam tells Eos. “Except for some media persons, no one has visited our flood destroyed area, but local politicians did visit us,” he says.

Ahmad Nazar is a middle-aged man who was running a shop in the Madyan bazaar. It is evening now and darkness has fallen over the ruined valley. I listen to his story in a narrow street as we use mobile torches to see each other’s faces and find our path. “I came to my house and there was heavy rain,” he says. “I shifted my family to my father-in-law’s house and put my daughter’s gold, cash and valuables in a bag and took them to my shop in Madyan bazaar. But the deluge hit my shop before it came for my house, and took away everything I had kept there for safety,” Nazar says. Nazar is left with not a single penny to his name.

The sheer magnitude of the floods in almost every part of the Malakand and Hazara divisions, is apparent also in Shangla district, where around two dozen houses have been damaged and four people have died.

Shoib Zada, a cab driver in Bisham in Shangla says the bridge connecting their area with the rest of the district collapsed and there was only a pedestrian route left in the mountains. The route is arduous and long for them to carry food, flour, etc., from the bazaar, while managing the hard and dangerous terrain.

The Karakoram Highway, which connects Gilgit-Baltistan and China with Pakistan is also damaged at several points. Similarly, the Karora-Kana road of Shangla tehsil was shut for at least a week, forcing people to walk on foot.

With the assistance of the military helicopters, the commissioner of Malakand Division, Shaukat Ali Yousafzai, has been able to transport food and medicines to the affected people in Kalam and around 1,000 people have also been evacuated throughout Malakand division.

The main road of Khwazakhela-Kalam has been restored up to Bahrain for the movement of light traffic and work still continues to open it for two-way traffic. Kalam road, on the other hand, will take far more time for rehabilitation — it has been completely washed away at more than 20 points.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Shangla. He tweets @umar_shangla

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 4th, 2022