Leading article: Aid is humane - and politic

The natural and human catastrophe of the flooding in Pakistan is on a scale difficult for most of us to grasp. Some 14 million people are now affected; thousands have lost their lives, tens of thousands more their livestock, land and livelihood. It is a crisis unmatched for the past 80 years and it commands a compassionate response. The Disasters and Emergency Committee appeal, on behalf of a number of charities working in the area including Save the Children and Christian Aid, has issued a moving appeal for help; it falls to us as individuals to respond as generously as we can.

And if individuals need to respond, so do governments. The British Government has in fact been prompt to give help; it has already committed £10m in emergency assistance, half of it through Unicef. After the meeting between Pakistan's President Zardari and the Prime Minister, still more aid is promised. It will help those in need of food, shelter and medicine, and the goodwill shown by the gesture has also helped to restore the relationship between the two countries, strained by David Cameron's tactless recent truth-telling about the attitude of some of the Pakistani elite to terrorism.

Mr Zardari regards the aid he has obtained as some sort of justification for his absence abroad while his country suffered historic floods. But Pakistanis and Britons alike will nonetheless be repelled that he has chosen to continue his foreign tour while people are suffering and dying at home. As Farzana Shaikh makes clear in The Independent on Sunday today, President Zardari's presence at home would achieve little. The real power in Pakistan is wielded by the military, and specifically by General Ashfaq Kayani. It still looks deplorable for a democratic leader to attend mass rallies in Britain for his party supporters while his country counts lost lives. His son Bilawal prudently stayed away: for President Zardari to be seen openly to advance his family's ambitions at a time like this would be political suicide. For all Bilawal's protestations yesterday, it still looked like party-politicking while the rains fall.

However, if the military under General Kayani's leadership is physically reaching parts of the country that the civilian authorities cannot help, that is a good thing. Better the military than extremist Islamist organisations, who use aid as a means of spreading a toxic ideology. The truth is that aid is a highly political, highly contentious issue. It is not only a natural human response to the needs of others, though it is that above all else. It is also a powerful instrument for winning hearts and minds, for showing the values of those who provide it.

Thus, Britain's aid to Pakistan is warranted on pragmatic as well as humanitarian grounds. The Department for International Development is doing the work of the Foreign Office. But the US, too, should be spending freely on aid to Pakistan – it has, commendably, already committed $35m – and deploying some of its resources from Afghanistan to the task. Heavy aircraft, with which the US is well provided, would be of some use in delivering food, tents and medicines to remote areas; arguably, so too would heavy-lift military helicopters. As ever, though, the world wins no prizes for its preparedness or planning for disaster.

Merely deploying some of the US military resources from Afghanistan to Pakistan would demonstrate the values that the US is seeking to promote in a region that is instinctively and viscerally hostile to it. This is not mere cynicism: the US government and people are naturally generous in responding to humanitarian crises, but aid to Pakistan is, right now, not only the right and natural thing to do but is also a sensible exercise in public relations, if sensitively handled.

What the meetings between David Cameron and President Zardari have achieved is a greater measure of co-operation between the two countries when it comes to intelligence-sharing and co-operation in combating extremism. This is not a one-sided relationship; we desperately need Pakistan in any effort to deal with Islamic terrorism at home. There is, indeed, an unbreakable tie between the two nations as a consequence of history, culture and the formidable Pakistani community here. It is useful that this has been said clearly.

But our aid will speak more eloquently about this relationship than anything Mr Cameron can say. That is why we should be as generous as possible now. Fortunately, Britain's charities are second to none in their experience of disaster relief, their humanity and their expertise. They can do much for a stricken population. And we can help them to do it.