The devastating flooding in Pakistan has spurred a macabre race between extremist Taliban Islamists and the West. Both sides are competing to arrive first with aid and thus win the hearts of locals in remote regions who have felt neglected or abandoned by their government for decades. The flooding has exacerbated those sentiments.

The man with the gray beard and the piercing eyes grabs a bottle of mineral water and fills a metal cup to the brim. “There you go,” he says, handing the container over to a sweating farmer in muddy clothing. “Drink, my brother, drink,” he says. “May Allah protect you!”

The young man gulps down the water as the older man hands a cup to the next person standing in line. Hundreds of people have lined up here for nothing more than a single cup of clean drinking water.

That, however, is also the extent of the aid provided by the extremists in Pakistan’s flood areas — a table in a tent and a banner on the fabric wall with the words “God is great” written in Arabic. Beneath stand a few cardboard boxes filled with water bottles. “I know it is little,” says Rahim Ullah, who is distributing water in Charsadda in northwestern Pakistan. “But it is more than others are doing for the people here.”