
We’ve seen these headlines before. Heard anchors screech body counts as if they’re in a competition for the highest number. Hundreds of lives lost, thousands displaced, homes swept away and losses that won’t ever be compensated. Pakistan is once again in the midst of a ruthless monsoon season, which began in late June, and on the radar is the country’s mountainous north — Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit Baltistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Last week, unprecedented flash floods left behind a trail of wreckage in Buner, Swat, Shangla, Mansehra, and beyond. A week before that, Muzaffarabad bore the brunt of monsoon rains. Almost a month back, 37 villages across GB were declared calamity-hit. Visuals coming out of the region are terrifying; monstrous rivers unleashing their wrath and sweeping along anything in their way, from main city bazaars to entire villages. According to a report by the National Disaster Management Authority, at least 392 people have died in KP from June 26 to August 18. The number of fatalitie...