Much of the Swat Valley was cut off from the rest of the country last week when a monsoonal downpour that started in June slammed into Pakistan, causing the worst flooding in its history.
The badly damaged road running north along the course of the Swat River has been slowly reopened in recent days, gradually revealing the extent of the damage.
In Bahrain, the hotels have disappeared, the mosque is like an empty shell and the main market remains flooded to the waist.
“It used to be a divine place, but now it’s just rubble,” sighs Muhammad Asif, 22, a university student.
“Everything has changed dramatically this past week. The river added to the beauty of the place, now it’s a threat,” he told AFP on Wednesday.
In summer, the city was particularly lively in the past, attracting up to a thousand tourists a day, who came to enjoy the enchanting landscape, with the majestic surrounding peaks and the clear waters of the river, near which hotels and restaurants were perched. .
It will probably take years for tourists to come back in numbers. And without them, the entire local economy is threatened.
– ‘Desperately need help’ –
“My hotel is still partially under water,” says Muhammad Nawaz, whose 40 employees in various establishments suddenly find themselves out of work.
“I remove the sand from my restaurant and look for furniture in the ruins,” he says.
The road now comes to a screeching halt at one bank, where a bridge that once connected the two halves of the city is now a heap of debris.
A rickety footbridge, crossed by men carrying sacks of rice, flour or sugar, makes it possible to reach the villages further north, inaccessible by road.
The trip, which before took only 20 minutes by motorbike to Karim Farman, takes almost four hours to walk, with some sections of the road remaining open to vehicles.
His village, Balaqot, has not yet received any assistance. “We desperately need help,” said Muhammad Amir, from the same village. “We absolutely need medicine. It’s very difficult to bring patients here.”
“There has been no electricity in our village for almost a week. People don’t even have a candle to light. Several people are suffering from diarrhoea,” he says.
The nightmare in Bahrain unfolded on the night of August 25.
Many residents say they were not warned of the risk. But tourists evacuated the hotels when the river started to swell.
– Months to rebuild –
Many in the local population believed that only buildings placed on the banks of the river were at risk. But they were quick to understand that the power of the waves was such that nothing was safe.
“Within minutes, the water suddenly surrounded my store from all sides,” says Aftab Khan. “I couldn’t take anything with me because I had to save my life first.”
The army arrived on Wednesday, local sources said, to help sort out the throng of people digging through the rubble and ease the river crossing on foot.
Helicopters pass frequently in the sky, tasked with bringing aid to isolated valleys.
A district administrative official who requested anonymity said it would likely take months for roads and bridges to be rebuilt.
“Before, this place was heavenly, but now even the locals want to run away from it”, summarizes Sheer Bahadur, a restaurant owner.
