Floods add to 'bad luck of Pakistan'

SHIKARPUR, Pakistan (AP) - The water came in the morning, quietly sweeping across the rice paddies and into the village. Within hours, it was as high as a man's shoulder and Abdul Nabi had lost his harvest, his mud home and all 10 of his buffalo.

It had barely been raining at all.

Weeks after massive downpours first battered northern Pakistan, submerging tens of thousands of square miles, killing about 1,500 people and leaving millions homeless, those floodwaters are still sweeping downriver and through the south, adding one more layer of misery to people long accustomed to hardship.

"This is the fate of the country," said another flood victim, a bitterly angry man named Habib Ullah. "It is the bad luck of Pakistan."

Pakistanis have lived through a deeply corrupt political establishment, a long history of military coups, a bloody Islamist insurgency and widespread poverty. Up to a third of its 170 million people live in poverty. Six years ago, entire towns in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir were leveled by an earthquake that killed 80,000 people.

Now, after years of low rainfall that had left many farmers struggling at the edge of financial survival, they face the worst floods in generations.

"It's not just the scale (of the floods), it's the depth as well," said Arif Jabbar Khan, the humanitarian operations manager for the aid group Oxfam Pakistan.