June 15, 2003

With a little help from the people and a lot of support from the government, Charsadda’s rural life is back on track

The rural outback of Charsadda district 20 kilometres northeast of Peshawar is among the most picturesque places in the entire province. Here, across a wide floodplain strewn with rocks, runs the alluvial-rich Kabul River under the distant loom of the Hindu Kush Mountains. The river also serves as a boundary between settled and tribal districts for beyond the far bank is Mohmand Agency. And here are also several smaller streams, meandering in languid tree-lined arcs through rich farmland to pay tribute to the larger Kabul. Even in midsummer when everywhere else the heat burns all colour to half-tones, the rich and vibrant range of the shades of green in this district is remarkable.

But it is not the picture postcard beauty that Charsadda is alone famous for. The alluvial-rich water of its several streams, channelized through neat squares of cultivation, brings it remarkable fertility. Matched with the tireless industry of her sons, this good earth bursts forth with productivity that is among the highest in the province. Here grows wheat and top quality sugar cane. If the district cannot boast of rice, it is because her farmers do not care for it in order to cultivate the more rewarding sugar cane crop.

The union council of Mamu Khatki was no different. That is, until the late 1980s when catastrophe struck in the shape of flooding in the Kabul River. Quantities of standing crops and swaths of prime farmland were washed away. Two years running did this calamity strike exacting a very heavy economic toll. In order to forestall farther damage, the government ordered a flood protection embankment. Raised on the right bank of the Kabul a couple of kilometres west of the village of Bhatian, the gabion pre-empted further flooding all right. But rivers are rivers and they do not behave in accordance with the best laid plans of men: the protective dyke caused the Kabul to divert to the northward.

Consequently, the channel that fed the irrigation tunnels of union council Mamu Khatki ran dry. Within the space of three years, the threat of flooding changed to a drought-like situation. Five villages, namely, Shigai Bala (Upper) and Payan (Lower), Garhi Nolo, Melogan and Bhatian with a total of one thousand and fifty households were effected. The rich farmland watered by the river, once the pride of the sons of these villages, began to wither away for it could now be irrigated only by one small spring. This spring, never much thought of in the good days, was too meagre for the five villages. Even though the water was distributed on rotation, conflicts rose. Sugar cane that once stood almost three metres tall would grow no greater than two — and that was only in the early years of the water famine. Its mature length fell farther still and yield per acre dropped.

Haji Mohibullah of Bhatian, all of 75 years old of gentle manner and kindly countenance, recalled the time before the protective embankment and the subsequent drying out of their channel. That was a time of plenty, he said. One acre of sugar cane yielded 20 pur (the large pan for heating the juice) of gur (unrefined sugar). And one pur was 80 kilograms. For comparison he says that in the bad days after the embankment was in place, they got no more than six pur from an acre.

With his 25 acres he was a well-to-do man in the old days. Fifty years ago he had resources enough to fly for the Haj pilgrimage. At that time few people flew; everybody else went either by sea or travelled overland. Then the prosperity he had known all along ended with the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century. Mohibullah and his friends were pleased to see the embankment go up, but little did they know what appeared a boon would turn out to be a curse.

Landless farmers were poor people, as it was. But when their channel dried up, says Mohibullah, poverty did not even spare the landowners among them. Half of the men folk within landed families were forced to go into nearby Charsadda or Peshawar to look for work on daily wages. The remainder, like Mohibullah, tried as best as they could to make a living out of the earth that was once good. But he remembers there were sometimes days when they would eat a stew of fodder and grasses. Millet became the staple diet, wheat a dream of the past. ‘It was a bad time. There was no water to irrigate the crops,’ he says and looking heavenward adds, ‘Only God was our Sustainer.’

The change in the river’s flow necessitated annual bulldozing to alter the river bank on the Mamu Khatki side in order to get the irrigation channel to flow again. The exorbitant cost, two hundred thousand rupees, was raised by contribution from the farmers of the union council. There was a catch, however: the old channel would flow only when the Mohmands completely cut off their supply. That is, it was entirely subject to Mohmand whims.

The Mohmands thought they now owned the water of the Kabul River and decreed that the farmers of Mamu Khatki would get water only when Mohmand lands were sated. This was an arbitrary arrangement and more times than not, it turned out that Mohibullah and his friends got no water. There was no room for argument either: as people of the tribal area, the Mohmands mostly resolved arguments with guns. The farmers of Mamu Khatki, on the other hand, were citizens of settled areas and therefore never far from the long arm of the law. It turned out that sometimes there was not even enough water to make good the huge expense on bulldozing.

Bhatian, at the tail-end of the spring, was in a particularly desperate situation with over a hundred acres of farmland no longer cultivable. Some families sold their property and moved away. Mohibullah contemplated following suit. Ridiculously low offers for his land kept him from going, however. And that was just as well, he says with a smile, for shortly afterwards godsend arrived.

In desperation the farmers of Mamu Khatki knocked on all governmental doors. No help came forth; all they heard were tales of paucity of funds. When they had lost all hope of any aid they heard of Feroze Shah. This man was part of the Daudzai Project and working in this area several years earlier had become friends with the elders. Word was that he was still doing uplift projects. This time around he was working with an organisation called Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP).

Contact was made and Feroze Shah came visiting. All the grey-beards of Mamu Khatki turned up to apprise him of their desperate situation. But SRSP was already working in two union councils and institutional procedures laid down that it could not take on a third project in the same district. Yet the gravity of Mamu Khatki’s circumstances warranted immediate succour. After some deliberation SRSP decided to take on this union council as well. So it was that the first study to rehabilitate and line the old disused channel was carried out in March 2001.

There were disputes to be resolved. In view of past experience the main contention of the several villages in the immediate vicinity was that any more earthworks on the river would either cause flooding or deprive some villages of irrigation. Six months went by in consultations that sometimes became unruly and dangerous before any work could be taken in hand.

Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF), the sole indigenous donor agency of the country, provided the necessary funding. As long time partners with them, SRSP was counting on this support and it came willingly and without any waste of time. When the first bulldozer blade ran into the loamy soil at the mouth of the disused irrigation channel in September 2001, PPAF had put Rs 1,913,000 on the line. According to laid down rules, the community contributed the remaining Rs 487,000. Hard put for cash, the farmers of Mamu Khatki made a per acre collection as well as contributed in the project with labour.

One thousand five hundred feet (450 metres) of the old channel was excavated before it could be lined with stone and mortar. Under the loamy top soil lay a hard surface of rocks and clay but, says Mohibullah, they worked like men possessed. Admittedly most of the money came from PPAF, but the community had contributed a pretty sum as well. This was therefore their own project and they could not afford to let the money go waste. They were going to make it work.

Winter came and went and the stone-lining of the excavation proceeded apace. In June 2002 water flowed from the Kabul River into the new lined channel and to the fields of Mamu Khatki. Misty-eyed men, young and old alike, saw water as they had forgotten to see: a life-giving serpent meandering and rushing from field to parched field. Old Mohibullah’s first thoughts turned to the hundred acres that had remained fallow for the past decade. In his mind’s eye he saw it covered with sugar cane reaching above a grown man’s head.

Ten months after the first irrigation from the new channel I was in Mamu Khatki. With visible satisfaction Haji Mohibullah said he had forgotten they could grow such tall wheat on their land. As for the cane, their crushing machines had run a full one month and going. After many years there was enough to supply the nearby sugar mills as well. Of fodder there was so much that they were selling it in Charsadda. The best part of it all was that families that had moved away during the water famine were returning home. And that was in just the first year after the channel was commissioned.

The construction of the channel does not bring the story of union council Mamu Khatki to an end, however. Lined water courses in the entire village and a small storage dam are being considered next. Having seen the determination of the people of Mamu Khatki to change their lot, SRSP envisages it as a model union council in coming years. With projected funding to the tune of 30 million rupees and the people’s continuing support that is the target that SRSP is now looking out for.

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