Nearly two months after the massive floods devastated large areas in Pakistan, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) released a preliminary assessment that more than 1.31 million hectares of cultivated land in the country's four provinces and Pakistan-administered Kashmir had been destroyed. According to the FAO's initial estimates, the core provinces of Punjab and Sindh were hit the hardest, losing roughly 661,637 and 357, 372 hectares of land with standing crops, respectively. The loss to the agricultural sector (which accounts for nearly 20 percent of the country's gross domestic product) alone is somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.9 billion. This news comes shortly after Pakistan's finance minister, in a briefing to the country's top military and civil leadership, warned that the country (already suffering from a weakened economy prior to the floods) is headed toward a "complete economic breakdown" unless the federal and provincial governments and military authorities do not immediately consider enacting radical austerity measures. Exacerbating the economic situation is the fact that some 20 million people have been affected by the floods. This has amplified disillusionment with the state. There is a great deal of among the public that the country needs a revolution to get out of the current morass, while certain quarters are calling for the army to do away with the current political elite, who have a reputation for corruption. This is precisely the kind of restive situation the Taliban rebels hope to exploit to their advantage.
