Brave Pakistan army

The Kalabagh Dam   is a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Indus River at Kalabagh in the Mianwali District of Punjab Province in Pakistan. Intensely debated and deemed a necessity since its inception, if constructed the dam would have 3,600 megawatts (4,800,000 hp) of electricity generation capacity.[1]

History[edit]

In December 2004, then President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf, announced that he would build the dam to serve the larger interest of Pakistan. However, on 26 May 2008, the Federal Minister for Water and Power of Pakistan, Raja Pervez Ashraf, said that the "Kalabagh Dam would not be constructed" and that the project had been cancelled due to "opposition from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindhand other stakeholders, the project was no longer feasible".[2] In 2010 after the worst floods in Pakistani history, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gilani, stated flood damage would be minimised if the Kalabagh Dam were built.[3]

Technical facts and differing opinions[edit]

Bashir A. Malik, former chief technical advisor to the United Nations and World Bank, said, "Sindh and Pakhtunkhwah would become drought areas in the years to come if Kalabagh Dam was not built."[4] At the same time, former KPK Chief Minister Shamsul Mulk has stated that the "Kalabagh Dam would be helpful in erasing poverty from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, as it would irrigate 800,000 acres of cultivable land that is located 100–150 feet above the level of River Indus."[5] The Kalabagh Dam would provide 6.5 million acre feet of water to cultivate seven million acres of currently barren land in addition to the 3,600 megawatts (4,800,000 hp) of electricity it would provide.[6] In response to the push towards side-lining Kalabagh altogether in favour of the rival Basha Dam project, Engineer Anwer Khurshid stated that "Basha Dam is no substitute for Kalabagh Dam, not because of its altitude, which is high enough, but because no irrigation canals can be taken out from it because of the hilly terrain."[7]

Experts who supported the construction of the Kalabagh Dam at the 2012 "Save Water Save Pakistan" Forum included: Dr Salman Shah, former Finance Minister of Pakistan; Abdul Majeed Khan, TECH Society president; Shafqat Masood, former IRSA chairman; Qayyum Nizami, former Minister of State; Prof Abdul Qayyum Qureshi, former Vice-Chancellor of Islamia University, Bahawalpur; Dr Muhammad Sadiq, agricultural scientist; M Saeed Khan, former GM of Kalabagh Dam Project; Mansoor Ahmed, former MD of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission Foundation, and Jameel Gishkori, among others.[8] The participants of Save Water Save Pakistan At its conclusion, the forum demanded the construction of five dams, including the Munda Dam, Kurram Tangi Dam, Akhori Dam and the Kalabagh Dam, at by 2025 at the latest to store water and generate electricity to meet demand.

Conversly, Former Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) Chief Engineer, Engr. Shahr-i-Yar Khan has claimed that construction of the Kalabagh Dam is not suitable for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and will involve significant fiscal waste when compared to the many other suitable sites for proposed dams on the Indus River. Shahr-i-Yar Khan, who has trained abroad and served in various positions at the WAPDA, highlighted various issues related to construction of the dam, stating that it would have a number of adverse effects on the generation capabilities of the Barotha power complex.

The province of Sindh lies nearest to the sea on the Indus River ("lower riparian") and has been the strongest opponent of the Kalabagh Dam. Its politicians have presented many objections: Sindh's share of Indus water will be curtailed as water run off from the Kalabagh Dam will go to irrigate farmlands in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Sindh's detriment. Sindhis hold that their rights as the lower riparian have precedence according to international water distribution laws.

The coastal regions of Sindh require a constant flow of water from the Indus to the Arabian Sea to keep seawater from intruding inland. If the flow of water is stopped, the incoming sea water would turn many areas of Sindh's coast into an arid saline desert, and destroy its coastal mangroves. With the construction of dams such as the Tarbela Dam across the Indus, Sindhis have seen the once-mighty river become a shadow of its former glory downstream of the Kotri Barrage as far as Hyderabad. They fear that there is not enough water for another large dam across the Indus.

Sindh claims that the Indus only continues to flow downstream of the Kotri Barrage because of rain. Hence in years of low rain and with a new dam in place, Sindh fears the river would stop flowing. Damming the Indus has already caused a number of environmental problems yet to be addressed. Silt deposited at the proposed Kalabagh Dam would further curtail the water storage capacity of Manchar Lake and other lakes and wetlands including Haleji Lake.

President Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and other leaders, have promised "iron-clad constitutional guarantees" to ensure that Sindh get its fair share of water. However, these assurances mean little to most Sindhis, who claim that even the earlier 1991 Indus Water-Sharing Accord, a document already guaranteed by the constitutional body the Council of Common Interests, has been violated, and that Punjab has "stolen" their water without any concrete evidence.[citation needed]

Objections to the Kalabagh Dam in Sindh are widespread. The political parties of Sindh in the central cabinet who are supported by General Musharraf, such as the Muttahida Quami Movement, have strongly denounced the dam. Opposition towards the dam is such that the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML N) Sindh Chapter is in agreement with opponents of the dam. PML N's leader Nawaz Sharif, who as then Prime Minister of Pakistan, had stated in 1998 that he proposed to build the dam, retracted from his stance and declared that Sindh's viewpoint ought to be respected; no project, however essential, should be carried out that weakened Pakistan's Federation.[citation needed]

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) has two main objections to the dam:

KPK claims that the running of Cheshma-Jhelum link canal and overuse of water from the Tarbela Dam is a common occurrence.[citation needed]Although the entire canal system of the Ghazi-Barotha hydro electric project is in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the electricity generating turbines lie just 500 metres (1,600 ft) inside Punjab such that KPK is denied to resultant royalties.[citation needed]. While the reservoir will be in KPK, the dam's electricity-generating turbines will be just across the provincial border in Punjab. Therefore, Punjab would get royalties from the central government in Islamabad for generating electricity.[citation needed]. Punjab has however agreed not to claim any royalty on generation of resources from the Kalabagh Dam.

Concerns have been voiced that large areas of the Nowshera District would be submerged by the dam and that the wider area would suffer from water-logging and salinity, as has occurred with the Tarbela Dam. As the water will be stored within the Kalabagh Dam as proposed, water levels in city areas up to 200 kilometres (120 mi) away will rise.[citation needed]. However, engineers with expertise on dam construction repeatedly deny that Nowshera City could be submerged by the dam's lake. Punjab follows a paradoxical policy when it comes to canals to be run out from the Kalabagh Dam. It talks of a right bank canal which will supply water to D I Khan, but in dialogue with Sindh, rejects construction of the right bank canal as unfeasible.[citation needed]

Balochistan is not directly affected by the dam. Most nationalist Balochis claim that the dam is an instance of the grievances of smaller provinces not being taken into account. They have not commented on the dam following its cancellation.

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, announced that the fate of the project would be decided by a plebiscite. The decision came after Pakistan faced an extreme power crisis and acute water shortages. The government is currently seeking alternative locations for the dam.[2]

December 2004: General Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan, announces that he would build the dam in the larger interest of Pakistan.

29, November 2012: The Lahore High Court (LHC) orders the federal government to construct the Kalabagh Dam.[9]

TO understand them, there’s just two dates you need to know: 1971 and 1977. In 1971, the Pakistan Army contrived to lose half of Pakistan. In 1977, the Pakistan Army was back running Pakistan. Six years was all it took. And if 1971-1977 happened, what’s 2008-2014? Nawaz didn’t stand a chance. But Nawaz has also helped write his political obituary. Twice now he’s been called a liar. First, it was the Musharraf promise: the boys let it be known that Nawaz had reneged on his government’s promise to indict and then allow Musharraf to leave the country.

Maybe the Musharraf promise had been made or maybe it hadn’t. What was alarming was that the boys were quietly letting it be known that they thought they had a deal and the PM double-crossed them. In essence, the boys were accusing the PM of being a dishonourable man. That’s a perception — correct or incorrect, right or wrong — that you don’t want the boys to have. It explains what came this week. Briefly, Nawaz himself tried to shift perceptions, to collar Imran and Qadri and stick them in next to the boys.

Immediately, the boys hit back. This time there were no leaks, no background chatter, no carefully sown doubts. Sorry, Prime Minister, you’re a liar — it was direct, it was blunt and it’s devastating. You have to wonder if a third time will be necessary. Why would Nawaz do it? Even if he’s right — he hasn’t lied — and they’re wrong, why would he so casually let such poison flow so freely in so vital a relationship?

Take your pick. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t know better. Or he thinks it will work. None of them really make sense. It also doesn’t matter. The mandate was already dead. Now, Nawaz will survive on sufferance — their sufferance. You don’t make them out to be liars and stay in control of your destiny. The other thing you don’t do is call them out on their lies.

Nawaz knows plenty of their lies. As does anyone who’s dealt with the boys and dealt with people who’ve had to suffer the boys. Stories, apocryphal and true, suffice. Just this term, Nawaz has caught them twice. Once, he was told the Taliban were lying, that there were no non-combatant captives. Then the Achakzai line to Karzai was opened to get the real story from the other side. Nawaz knew he was being dissembled with.

How strong are they? Nawaz knows. He once told the story of the other Pakistan, the one they contrived to lose in 1971. Nawaz went there, some years ago, and met all the big guns, the fearsome political rivals and the boys in charge there. Each one of them complained about interference and those three letters: I.S.I.

Isn’t it extraordinary? Bitter rivals they are over there, opposing camps, fiercely divided — and yet all speak about our boys and all say the same thing.

Playing all sides against each other in faraway Bangladesh? You’d think everyone has forgotten about Bangladesh, or would like to forget. But that’s our boys: they never forget. It doesn’t take much to figure out what they can do with home advantage. So many sides, so many angles, so many games, so many Qadris and Imrans — always one bottom line: they stay strong; everyone else stays weak.

But Nawaz keeps quiet. As did Zardari. As do all the civilians. Because to call them out is to invoke a wrath that can bring all your skeletons tumbling out. And you don’t want your skeletons to come tumbling out.

Where to now? The transition has ruptured. If that wasn’t dismal enough, there’s no one on the horizon who can help put it back on track. So now we have to go big, to look at epochs and what makes them. There’s two that matter so far.

The boys and their system were forged in the first decade of this country’s existence. Ayesha Jalal in The State of Martial Rule has explained it more convincingly and eloquently than anyone else: in the shadow of the Cold War and in combination with regional and domestic factors, the structure of the Pakistani state was forged. That’s the edifice, that’s the system, that’s the boys and what makes the boys the boys. But the boys are in denial. There is a second epoch. Fast forward to the late 1970s. Three events in quick succession, the meaning and combined effects of which the country has yet to figure out: Zia and his Islamisation; the Shia-Sunni schism reignited by revolution just when petro-dollars were coming into their own; and the Soviets wading into Afghanistan.

The civilians haven’t been allowed to grow, but events — blessed, cursed, events — have grown. Everything the boys are contending with, the big changes they have been forced into stem from those events. See, one hundred and seventy five thousand troops in Fata fighting Islamist militants. So change is here, we’re already living it and the boys are struggling to cope. Which means, eventually, either they’ll have to make choices or events will make the choice for them. When the rupture does come though — when things break apart — it may not be the civilians who will get to collect the pieces and put Pakistan back together; it could be something far uglier.

But that’s the risk. Because Zardari failed, Nawaz is failing and Imran is a failure. But, most of all, because the boys think failure is victory. That’s what got them from 1971 to 1977. And that’s what’s got them from 2008 to 2014.

A week after the shocking assassination attempt on Pakistan's prominent television talk-show host, Hamid Mir, Islamabad has failed to locate and arrest the perpetrators. The Pakistani government has deflected attention from the whole issue of the attack on the senior journalist by instead recommending punitive action against Mr. Mir's Geo Television, Pakistan's biggest private news channel, for suspecting the involvement of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the country's top intelligence agency, in an attack that has tremendously scared and outraged the journalist community in Pakistan.

It was less than a year that the world delightedly welcomed the first ever transition of democratic rule in Pakistan from one elected government to another through general elections that brought Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's center-right Pakistan Muslim League (P.M.L.) into power. It is ironic that now a democratic government has decided to move against the independent news media which was liberalized under Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf in early 2000s.It is easy to speculate why Sharif's government has chosen to side with the military instead of the media. Since the military enjoys overwhelming powers, including the ability to oust the democratic government, the latter believes it is not worth spoiling the relationship and trust of the military only to defend a journalist who vocally criticizes the army's policies. In order to explicitly assure the military that it stands with those accused of masterminding the attack, not the victim journalist, the Ministry of Defense requested the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), the highest body in Pakistan that grants or revokes licenses of the news channels, to shut down Geo Television.

In the wake of the serious charges of the Ministry of Defense that Geo Television allegedly harmed Pakistan's 'national interest' and disrespected the top intelligence agency by blaming them for the attack on Mr. Mir, PEMRA has now asked Geo Television to plead until May 6th why it should not be shut down.While we await the submission of Geo's official statement, the Pakistan army, in the meanwhile, has already unleashed an arm-twisting campaign to alienate the Pakistani public from Mr. Mir and Geo by accusing them of not being sufficiently patriotic. This is an old but a highly dangerous ploy applied by the army to punish its critics.

Furthermore, Dawn, a widely respected English language newspaper, reported that the cable operators in several townships taken Geo's transmission off air in parts of the country. The army seems to be the driving force behind these repressive and punitive measures against the independent media.

Despite intense government pressure, Mr. Mir, who still has a long way to fully recover from his injuries, reiterated his charges against the I.S.I. in a statement read out to the media by his journalist-brother, Amir Mir, on Thursday. In one of his first interviews after being critically shot, Mr. Mir told B.B.C. Urdu that elements close to the Pakistani military establishment were threatening to attack him again."They are asking me to leave Pakistan," he said, adding, "These are people who appear as friends but deliver the messages of my enemies."

In an article Six Bullets and Seven Nights, Mr. Mir charged that Pakistan was run by the army chief instead of the elected government.The attack on Mr. Mir highlights two concerning patterns of paranoid behavior in the Pakistani society. First, the Pakistani government and the public, in recent years, have developed this disconcerting attitude of blaming the victim. It has somewhat become the new normal and totally acceptable to blame the victim of a terrorist attack instead of condemning the oppressors.For instance, when Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in 2007, General Musharraf said no one but Bhutto herself was to blame for her death because she stood up outside her car to wave to her supporters during an election campaign.

In 2011, a large portion of the Pakistani public and the media blamed Salmaan Taseer, the governor of the Punjab province who was shot by his own security guard for disputing the infamous Blasphemy Law that mostly discriminates and penalizes the religious minorities in Muslim-majority Pakistan.Pakistan's right-wing media and conservatives also blamed Malala Yousafzai, the teenage education activist shot by the Taliban for her outspoken position on women's education. While some conspiracy theorists insisted that the attack had actually never taken place, the others believed the west used her as a propaganda tool against Islam and Pakistan.Charges on Mr. Mir of defaming Pakistan's armed forces and pleasing 'our enemy' are absolutely congruent with this unreasonable mentality of blaming the victim.

Second, the Mir episode has brought into public attention a grim and dark side of the Pakistani news media: the willingness of some media houses to voluntarily succumb to the military's anti-media measures hoping to be rewarded financially with government advertisements and awarded with medals of patriotism. ARY News, a private news channel and Express Group, which owns a private news channel and two newspapers, have attracted criticism for overtly siding with the military during this hard time on the media and reporters.

Refusing to be censored on the issue of the attack on Mr. Mir, senior Express News talk-show host and veteran journalist Imtiaz Alam resigned from his job on April 22nd.

"It was Express TV/Express Tribune yesterday [alluding to the past attacks on Express Group] ... it is GEO today and tomorrow it could again be Express or any other group," he warned his bosses who, in their response, accepted Mr. Alam's resignation but publicly accused him of "spitting venom, making wild accusations against the ISI".Likewise, ARY has used its platform to campaign against Mr. Mir. In one such show, the panelists of a talk-show questioned if Mr. Mir had actually been shot. They brazenly wondered why Mr. Mir was still alive and shot in the lower parts of his body, instead of his chest.

Shows that incite or glorify violence is not journalism. It is media-terrorism.

What we have seen during the past few days on Pakistan's media landscape cautions us not to be overly optimistic about the future of that country's "vibrant" news media. There is still a long way to go. The media faces extraordinary internal and external challenges. From within, sections of the media suffer from calamitous willingness to submit to the army pressure, chronic disunity and alarming lack of accuracy and professional accountability. On the external front, the media remains under such perpetual threats from the army and the Taliban that it will constantly remain vulnerable to censorship and even possible threats of permanent closure for being too honest.

Follow Malik Siraj Akbar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MalikSirajAkbar

Irfan Siddiqui is the Urdu columnist, known to be the great supporter of former prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif. He started writing his columns on Nawaiwaqt^[1]. In July 2008, Irfan Siddiqui left Nawaiwaqt and joined Jang^[2]. He has been found criticizing Pervez Musharraf and his regime in Pakistan, very bluntly. He was also unhappy with the late Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan Peoples Party, and wrote the same in the columns. He is currently serving the Jang group of newspapers.