June 08, 2006

The sound of blasting reverberates through what remains of a once dense forest on a dangerously steep slope below the Garial Ridge, mid-way between Jhika Gali and Bhurban; yet another new road is under construction. The roar of heavy machinery, the echoing shouts of boisterous labourers, a shrill warning whistle as yet another charge is primed to explode, all combine to shatter the previously natural peace as more trees bite the dust in the supposed name of progress.

This particular operation is intended to provide a ‘short cut’ from just outside Kashmiri Bazaar on the ‘known’ side of the mountain, to the lesser known village of Aliot lying on the main Kashmir Highway on the opposite side of the mountain. The new route will cut at least thirty minutes, if not more, off the travelling time from Jhika Gali to Khohala, the main entrance point to Azad Kashmir from Rawalpindi…or so it is locally claimed although the new Governor’s House at the Kashmiri Bazaar end of the road just may have something to do with it

This particular apology for a road, there is even a ludicrous roundabout on top of the ridge, is supposed to eventually connect with yet another partially constructed road which begins near the laughable, if it wasn’t so ultra-expensive, under construction Bhurban Cricket Stadium, then snakes around the previously pristine mountainside to, eventually, connect with the one on the Garial Ridge.

Neither road is, in reality, more than single track, poorly surfaced, where it is surfaced at all and has, despite an almost non-existent winter, deteriorated badly since being opened to traffic less than one year ago. The roads will be blocked if it snows and both, the one on Garial Ridge in particular, are extremely prone to landslides where the mountainsides have been completely destabilised by road construction and the associated, totally unprofessional, blasting.

Local residents celebrated the life changing arrival of road access, land prices shot up overnight along with illegally constructed houses, many of them ‘holiday homes’ and an entire way of life entered the pages of history.

Living, as we do, on the new link road from Bhurban, we are helpless witnesses to the changes around us. The ever increasing environmental degradation is rapidly destroying this mountainside, along with every other mountainside in the vicinity which has now been provided with some form of road access.

Amongst the very first vehicles to drive past our home was a pair of four wheel drive jeeps, hired from a village up on the main road, bursting at the seams with gleeful men. Nothing unusual about this except that they drove down at 2am and back up as the first pink rays of dawn pierced the sky above the Pir Panjal range of mountains across the Jhelum Valley over in Azad Kashmir. The intrusive revving of engines as the jeeps tried to get back up the very steep slope before our home woke us up and set our dogs barking madly. The timber mafia in action!

These new roads, intended to improve the standard of living for indigenous people, have allowed vehicular access to areas of forests which are now increasingly under threat. Not that these areas were totally ‘unthreatened’ before; local people have always stolen trees for fuel cooking and heating fires, for use in construction and to sell for a cash income whenever they get the chance.

Before the advent of the road, stolen timber was either manually carried out or hauled by mules and donkeys. The process now being so much easier, the volume of theft has increased accordingly with the locals, and government employed forest guards who are not themselves actively involved, happily accept a cash bribe to turn the other cheek.

After the deed come forest fires intended to destroy the evidence and, even at this ‘green’ time of year, forest fires are a daily occurrence which speaks volumes about how much timber is being stolen. Tree cover is becoming thinner and thinner, landslides more common, flora and fauna alarmingly endangered, even bird species have decreased over the last ten years, facts which we can personally testify to.

In this mountainous region it has always seemed that every other person is a property dealer and never more so than now. With land prices ranging from 800,000 to 1400,000 per kanal in this particular area now that road access is a reality, local people are either selling up and moving on to new pastures where their ‘loot’ doesn’t last long at all or selling off yet another parcel of land each time their existing money runs out.

Illegal constructions are coming up at a runaway pace with, naturally, even more trees being felled in the process. The pressure on extremely limited water resources obviously increases with every per head addition to the population, be it seasonal or otherwise. Tube wells are suddenly in vogue, aggravating an already acute problem by further lowering the water table, the lack of snow last winter has already resulted in numerous springs running dry, all this on top of the catastrophic earthquake last year which changed some underground water courses entirely.

New residents also expect to be able to sit around log fires in the evening, seeing this luxury as part and parcel of their mountain experience. No one seems to realise that the forests, indeed each and every single tree in the area, will cease to exist unless drastic action is taken.

The government instigated programme of providing piped gas to Murree and the surrounding villages will not, despite claims to the contrary, have much impact on the number of trees cut for fuel each year as, other than large hotels which mainly use bottled gas not firewood at the moment; local people will not pay the price for a gas connection let alone its monthly consumption.

Tree planting campaigns are launched from time to time but few people are concerned enough to get involved. A large landowner in the Bhurban locality did, surprisingly enough, accept a grant to plant hundreds of horse chestnut trees a few years ago. The tiny trees, planted far too close, left unweeded and un-watered, were mostly consumed by goats and those that managed to survive were bulldozed into obscurity when the same landowner decided that profit preceded environmental concerns, constructing a number of high-rise apartment blocks on his land instead.

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