ISLAMABAD, Feb 23: After a gap of 20 years and a long ethical and legal battle against heavy odds, the common citizens of the federal capital were able to walk again on Trail-5 up the imposing Margalla hills on Saturday.

The mood was sunny even on a cloudy day, as those gathered at Dara Jangla, including many students from local schools and colleges, admired the strenuous struggle which made the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate pack up and vacate the area two months back.

It was in early 1980s that the ISI encroached on this land of Margalla Hills National Park with the aim of converting it into a residential colony for its officers and their families.

“Since then the Margalla Hills Society had been trying to get this point vacated, first filing a petition in the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court,” remembers the society’s president Roedad Khan.

As he leads the walk up, Mr Roedad painfully reflects on how his society was told by the LHC to find an out-of-court settlement after the ISI officials refused to submit their statement to the court and were hell-bent on implementing the project.

Later, the battle had to be fought at the civil society’s front, the sole available option. And this time the struggle was not only against the residential scheme but also against a number of stone-crushing factories at four points in the national park area.

“This is a victory for the civil society and the residents of Islamabad, who kept the heat on,” he smiles.

The serenity and a sense of freedom, a trait of Dara Jangla, the starting point of Trail-5, now appears to be the antithesis of pent-up emotions and gloom that reign high over the Judges Colony lying at a stone’s throw on the other side of the road.

“The last time I walked on this track was with the late President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1980,” says Mr Roedad while elucidating how this treasure of nature was fenced off so that it may not be seen or touched by a civilian soul.

“These are like scars or tumours on a beautiful face,” he remarks as he draws the attention of a number of outdoor enthusiasts to the blown away tops and sides of a small hill.

In fact, the contractors had started using dynamites to bring down hills and smash them into stones, small and big.