Pakistan
THE LATEST: FLOODING DEVASTATES THE NATION The summer of 2010 produced Pakistan's worst flooding in 80 years (more on Pakistan's 2010 floods here). In a televised address on August 14, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said that 20 million people, about one-ninth of the population, had been displaced by the disaster. Millions were left without food, shelter and clean water. Flooding began on July 22 in the province of Baluchistan. The swollen waters then poured across the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province in the northwest before flowing south into Punjab and Sindh. Even as Pakistani and international relief officials scrambled to save people and property, they despaired that the nation’s worst natural calamity had ruined just about every physical strand that knit this country together — roads, bridges, schools, health clinics, electricity and communications. The devastation raised fears of further instability in the country, a central pillar of American regional str...