Kalabagh dam: facts as they are

IT IS said about the Kalabagh Dam that it is the most researched project in the world. It was in 1953 that deliberations at government level started over this project. Pakistan and India signed the Indus Basin Treaty in 1960.

Following this treaty Mangla and Tarbela Dams were constructed and the construction of Kalabagh Dam was to be started towards the end of the seventies. Foreign donors did not come forward and it was not possible for Pakistan to finance it alone. It is said that by 1984, the availability of funds and the rest of the planning process were completed. If its construction was started then, it would have been completed by 1991.

The availability of water for agriculture increased from 67 MAF to 106 million acre feet because of Tarbela Dam. From 1990 to 2001 this amount of water has decreased to 102 million acre feet.

The main reason for reduction is silting of two main dams in Pakistan — Tarbela and Margala. Dams mainly serve to store water when there is plenty of rain. This not only controls flood but also makes stored water available during the dry seasons. We have seen the havoc wrought by floods this year. In case we had the Kalabagh Dam, perhaps the kind of flooding we saw down the rivers, especially in Sindh, would have been avoided.

The fact is that we will not be able to overcome the present rate of increase in population till at least the end of next decade. Therefore, the requirement of food grains will increase every year. It is expected that our population by then will be around 200 million. We know that with the present shortage of water we will not be able to have more grains and hence we need additional water to grow more food and other vital crops.

Our collective interest lies in being able to feed our people and we must plan to feed our future generations. We know that our population is growing at the rate of three per cent a year. The question is: can we produce the required amount of grains with the water now available for a growing population during the next decade? The answer is we cannot. Therefore, politics in this case should facilitate rather than hinder ways and means whereby we can produce enough farm products to feed our growing population in the years to come.

Since this is in our collective interest, politically we need to adopt measures to store the available water for our future needs. For this purpose it is most essential that we construct dams so that we can meet our present and future water requirements. At present all the planning process and the funding requirement from donors have been completed for the construction of Kalabagh Dam.

Some people are saying ‘No’ to Kalabagh but ‘Yes’ to any other dam. As far as Kalabagh Dam is concerned, there is no alternative. Rivers don’t change their courses to suit the will or expediency of some people so that instead of Attock to Kalabagh the Indus starts flowing from Attock to Rawalpindi. Kalabagh will stay where it is.

What is there that stops us from going ahead with this dam? A resolution passed by the NWFP Assembly for one. Secondly, a number of politicians feel that the construction of the Kalabagh Dam is not in the interest of Sindh. Both positions are based on political considerations rather than an objective view of the economic benefits to be derived.

With the construction of the Kalabagh Dam, an area of about 200 square kilometres will turn into a lake. Most of this lake will be located in the NWFP. Hence this province will enjoy most of the benefits from this artificial lake.

In this lake a few thousand tons of fish will be produced. Fisheries are a huge economic activity in the form of contracts for catching fish, construction of auction houses and boats; workshops, fishing nets fabrication, net repair works, running of refrigerated trucks, roads, etc. This way a few thousand people will get jobs and many more involved in fisheries-related economic activity. In addition, we will be able to export fish and earn valuable foreign exchange as Malaysia and Thailand have been doing for some years now. The time to set the stage for it in now.

Besides, a large area on the banks of this artificial lake will become forested. Timber from these forests will open up the possibilities of paper, and match industries wood for furniture and house construction.

As the lake is formed, water table around it will rise and ground water for irrigation will be available at a lesser depth. It will not be required to dig tubewells very deep. The rise in water table will turn barren land into rich soil for farming. This is the time to buy the barren land at cheap prices around the expected banks of the Kalabagh Dam.

There is a perpetual shortage of water in Tharparkar area in Sindh. While across the border, Rajasthan is no more a desert. India has brought water from the Punjab rivers on its side to Rajasthan and is producing grains for the country and prosperity for the people. People of Tharparkar, Cholistan and Thal had greater right over this water than people of Rajasthan. But unfortunately a dictator sold that water for only six million pounds to India. It was expected that people of Sindh would demand a canal for Tharparkar This demand can still be made provided the Kalabagh Dam is built a barrage at Sajawal is constructed. There will be some engineering difficulties but in this day of technological advance all difficulties can be overcome. The interest of Sindh lies in additional water, which we can get from the Kalabagh Dam. We saw that with the construction of Mangla and Tarbela dams, Sindh got additional water. Similarly Sindh will get additional water when Kalabagh is constructed.

In the recent past, even in Punjab some quarters have started opposing the construction of the Kalabagh Dam. The reason they say is that it will create ill feeling among other provinces. Therefore, Kalabagh Dam or Chitta Bagh dam should not be constructed. Instead, some other dams may be constructed. For other dams even feasibility has not been completed, funding has to be arranged and therefore, it will take a couple of years before we should think of any other dam. Secondly, as said earlier, rivers do not change their courses to suit human convenience. Therefore, Kalabagh Dam is the most suitable site to construct the dam across the Indus River.

Apart from the provision of water for agriculture, equally important will be the electricity to be produced by the Kalabagh Dam. About 1200 MW power will be generated at the Kalabagh Dam, which would ultimately rise to 2,400 MW.

It is said that when dam’s lake will fill to the top, some cities of the NWFP will come under water. But all the cities are above the highest level of the Kalabagh lake. In this respect, two studies by foreign experts namely Dr Lianzhen of China and a group headed by Dr. Kennedy have confirmed that with the construction of the dam these cities will remain safe.

In 1929 when the highest ever flood level in the last century was recorded, some of the cities in the NWFP were inundated. At that time there was no Kalabagh Dam. There could be as heavy rains in the future also. It has been said that the outflow of this dam is the same as inflow. However, we should have contingency plans and carry out exercises for evacuation every 10th year or so for any such eventuality, regardless of whether we have this dam or not.

The Second inhibition is that the drainage in these cities could be affected. But since the highest level of the dam lake is below the city levels, drainage will not be affected.

It is said that a lot of farm land will go under water. It is correctly pointed out that 27,500 acres of land under agriculture will be submerged. But the loss will be more than compensated for by the equally good agricultural land, at present lying barren, which will be available for agriculture through tubewells. Owners of land in the area dispossessed by the dam will get double the amount of acreage of land irrigable by tubewells. Likewise, about 15 thousand households will have to be shifted elsewhere and resettled. It is said that all affected people will be placed in model villages where they will be better off economically than they are in them present location. The law of the land protects them. Dislocation caused by development projects has happened in many other countries. As a matter of fact, right now it is happening in China, which is busy constructing a bigger dam than the Kalabagh Dam, on Yellow river.

Inhibition are being expressed in Sindh that with construction of the Kalabagh Dam, Indus water flow will be weakened and hence seawater will intrude far into farm lands of this province, causing widespread problem of salinity. A study has shown that subsoil water is somewhat salty in areas north of Hyderabad and there has not been further intrusion of seawater.

The flow of aquifers in Sindh is north-to-south. Therefore, the flow of water cannot take place from lower to higher places. Hence, underground salt water that is found in areas around Hyderabad will not go beyond where it is at present. Similar instances at other places in the world are there to learn from. These are Mississippi River in the US, Yellow river in China and Nile in Egypt. A numbers of dams have been constructed over these rivers but seawater has not intruded in these countries. Similarly, the construction of the Kalabagh Dam will not cause seawater intruding far into land as it has not happened in those countries

It is being said that the reduction of flow of water in the Indus would damage the mangroves in the vicinity of the mouth of the river. Mangroves are the breeding areas for fish, Indus delta is spread over an area of 2,95,000 acres. Out of this, creeks cover an area of 74,000 acres. A study conducted by the NED University shows that all the fish in these mangroves grows equally well in salt and fresh water. Therefore, out of 38 million acre feet of water, if 32 acre feet flows out into the sea, the fish will continue to grow as now.

However, to remove any apprehension on the score engineering prevention is also possible. Locks can be installed in the creeks here so that water does not flow into the sea but stays behind in the locks in the creeks. If these locks are constructed these would prove to be a harbinger for inland water transport. Even though the Kalabagh Dam will not cause sea water intrusion, the people of Sindh may like to ask for the construction of locks in the creeks so that inland water transport can be developed as a bye-product of the dam.

Supply of drinking water to Karachi will reman unaffected. Karachi gets its water from Hub Dam and Kinjhar, and Dhabeji Lakes. The two lakes get water from the Indus. With the construction of the Kalabagh Dam Indus River will have over two million acre feet of additional water. If the Indus gets this much additional water, the supply Authorities instead of for Karachi could increase rather than decrease.

It has been reiterated a number of times that additional two million acre feet water will be available for agriculture in Sindh. So the insinuation that Sindh will turn into a desert is beyond comprehension.

Another inhibition expressed in Sindh is that that Punjab and the NWFP will dig more canals. The point is that under the water apportionment accord of 1991 no province can draw more than the fixed amount. Chashma Right Bank canal has been constructed by the NWFP and Thal canal is under survey in Punjab. No water beyond the apportioned amount can be drawn from the Indus.

Some people say that enough water is not there for storage; and therefore the Kalabagh Dam may not be feasible. This year we have seen that there were excessive rains. Instead of being stored, it caused devastation, particularly in Sindh. It is said about Hub Dam that it has received so much water this year that it is enough for the next ten years.

Dams are primarily meant to store floodwater, which becomes useful in dry season. Kalabagh Dam will take in only 6.5 million acre feet of water. The fact is that in the driest conceivable weather, water below Mianwali where the Kalabagh Dam is to be sited located, water flows five times the quantity storable in the Kalabagh Dam Lake. Therefore this objection has no basis.

The point to the stress is that additional water that will be available to Sindh with the construction of this dam is most essential and there is no alternative to it. Of course, additional dams must be constructed but the Kalabagh project must be constructed without any delay. We must stop opposing it on political grounds without regard to the question of future progress and prosperity. We have seen in the recent past that because of poverty countries and empires have disintegrated. In case we do not construct this dam now, the poverty that is widespread in the country will become endemic and the future generations will hold us responsible for it.

The writer is a retired commodore of the Pakistan Navy.

Barking up the wrong tree

AS it happened, the two principal sponsors of the invasion of Iraq, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, were together when news came in that 27 more people had been killed in the third and fourth suicide bomb attacks in Istanbul in one week. They had to say something, and so they both tried to twist the atrocities into a justification of their decision to invade Iraq. This would be almost funny if it wasn’t so horrible, because the two incidents probably occurred because Bush and Blair invaded Iraq.

“What this latest terrorist outrage shows us is that there is a war — and its main battleground is in Iraq,” said Mr Blair. Mr Bush picked up the theme, declaring that “Our mission in Iraq is noble and it is necessary, and no act of thugs or killers will change our resolve” — as if the men who organised the bomb attacks in Istanbul hadn’t wanted the US and Britain to invade Iraq, or did want them to leave now. And the media lapped it all up, as if Bush and Blair were talking sense and the suicide bombers were ‘mindless killers’.

In the face of the torrent of deceitful propaganda, it has to be said again and again. The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with the ‘war on terrorism’. The only terrorism in Iraq is that which was caused by the invasion. The Islamist terrorists of Al Qaeda were delighted by the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. And the reason why there have been so many successful terrorist attacks in Turkey, Morocco, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and elsewhere in recent months is probably because of the diversion of intelligence effort to the war in Iraq.

One at a time. First of all, there was no more linkage between Saddam Hussein’s repressive but rigorously secular regime in Iraq and the Islamist terrorists of Al Qaeda than there was between the Mafia and the Khmer Rouge. There is absolutely no evidence for it, and the entire American and British intelligence establishments spent the time before the invasion of Iraq desperately signalling to their political masters (and later, off the record, to any media that would listen) that there was no such link.

They were not listened to because Mr Bush’s people were determined to have their war, and Mr Blair — well, that’s still puzzling. But it is clear, if you watch how their lips move, that both men are conscious of having practised a deception on the public. They regularly mention Al Qaeda and Iraq in the same breath in order to foster the illusion that there was a link, but they never actually say it in exactly so many words. Like most politicians, they know that you can fuzz, distort or evade the issue to your heart’s content, but you must never tell an outright lie.

The ‘terrorism’ in Iraq these days bears little resemblance to the almost metaphysical acts of existential hatred that struck New York and Washington two years ago and the global strategy that lay behind them. Iraq is just the mundane, functional terrorism of anti-colonial resistance from Algeria to Vietnam, carried out for the most part by the same sort of people — ex-army officers, political ideologues, young men with big chips on their shoulders — who would be doing the same thing in the United States if foreign troops suddenly took over the country. (You doubt me? Go get ‘Red Dawn’ out of the video store.)

The Iraqis who run this resistance movement doubtless use foreign Islamist fanatics to drive the truck-bombs whenever possible — ‘if the kid wants to die, let’s give him the chance’ — but there is no known link between the war in Iraq and Al Qaeda’s astonishingly ambitious project to seize control of the Arab and even the broader Muslim world. Which brings us, finally, to the question of how the invasion of Iraq has undermined the real ‘war on terrorism’.

Islamist terrorists really exist, although almost none of them are Iraqis. They are not as numerous or rich or well-organised as the propagandists would have us believe, and the damage they can do doesn’t begin to compare with what a real war does, but they are a serious danger that warrants serious attention. Trouble is, they haven’t been getting it.

What matters most in a war against terrorism is intelligence. There is a strictly limited mass of talent in Western intelligence agencies which has the technical proficiency, the Arabic language skills, and the personal attributes needed for the intelligence gathering job — maybe as few as a couple of thousand key people. They should be concentrating their efforts on Al Qaeda. For the past year, most of them have been employed instead on some aspect of the project for ‘liberating’ Iraq (whatever that may mean) — and you can’t be in two places at once.

The Islamist terrorists who plotted the attacks on two Jewish synagogues in Istanbul on 15 November and on the HSBC headquarters and the British consulate in the same city on the 20th, killing fifty people and injuring many hundreds, would have tried to do it whether Iraq was invaded or not. They didn’t need excuses to attack. The difference is that if the intelligence services had been paying attention to Al Qaeda instead of barking up the wrong tree (bush) in Iraq, they might actually have been stopped.— Copyright

George Soros’ millions

BILLIONAIRE financier George Soros may be the new central banker of the Democratic Party. He’s given $10 million to America Coming Together, a Democratic voter mobilization group aimed at defeating President Bush.

He pledged another $2.5 million to the liberal group Moveon.org for a television advertising campaign highlighting “Bush policy failures,” and as much as $3 million to a new Democratic think tank, the Centre for American Progress. Which leads to obvious questions: This is campaign finance reform? Wasn’t the whole point of the new campaign finance law to get big checks of this kind out of politics? Are these huge donations healthy for small-d democracy, not just big-D Democrats?

The central reform of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation was to stem the tidal wave of “soft money” contributions from wealthy individuals, corporations and labour unions to political parties: Each party raked in about $250 million in such checks in 2000.

It was inevitable that some of this money would shift to outside groups. Indeed, the groups had become players even during the heyday of party soft money. Now, they’ve become even more important. That’s particularly true for Democrats because of the GOP’s advantage in hard money, the limited-dollar contributions that remain available to parties.

The emergence of these groups doesn’t mean the campaign finance law was for naught. McCain-Feingold severed the toxic link between big cheques and politicians. Politicians can’t solicit money for these outside groups, and the groups are limited in plotting strategy with candidates or parties.

Republicans are angling to make the Soros-backed groups look like a Democratic end run around McCain-Feingold, but Republicans and their allies haven’t been shy about using such entities in the past, and that’s apt to be true in the 2004 campaign as well. A critical question will be whether the money goes to groups that are required to disclose their receipts and spending (so-called 527s), such as most of those backed by Soros, or whether the checks will flow to nonprofit groups that don’t have to reveal their finances — a far more dangerous development.

There remains something unsettling about those Soros checks. Soros, who spent $5 billion to promote democracy around the world and $18 million to spur campaign finance reform in this country, told The Post’s Laura Blumenfeld that defeating Bush is “the central focus of my life.”

True, there is a difference between a check motivated by an ideological worldview and one prompted by economic self-interest. But such outsize voices, on the left or right, pose dangers to a democratic system: No one wants one deep-pocketed person picking the next president. For Democrats thrilled with the Soros millions, imagine conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife opening his bank account on behalf of Bush.

“I do not represent any special interest,” Soros says. “My contributions are made in the public interest.” Soros may not be seeking a rider on an appropriations bill, but who is he to determine the public interest?

The Soros donations point up another problem: Disclosure is critical to an effective campaign finance system, yet no information about Soros’ recent generosity will be on the public record until February, when the next reports are due. Soros has been commendably open about his gifts, but if a wealthy donor wanted to make a big and stealthy splash during the primaries, the information wouldn’t be public until after Iowa and New Hampshire.

Remember Republicans for Clean Air, the mystery group that attacked John McCain during the 2000 primaries? That episode prompted Congress to require that such groups report their activities, though the nonprofit loophole remains. It would be a minor change, with a big payoff, to require that these shadow political parties follow the same disclosure schedule as the parties themselves.

— The Washington Post

Sitting on the fence

THE future role of Pakistan’s men of the cloth in the political development of the country, is becoming, if one could borrow a phrase from Lewis Carroll, ‘curiouser and curiouser.’

For the last ten months or so the MMA, a loose amalgam of Islamic parties, which banded together to contest the national and provincial elections, has remained largely undecided on the issue of whether or not to support the political system created by President Musharraf. And the way things are going, there is a strong likelihood that the MMA will continue to sit on the fence.

The religious parties in Pakistan have the dubious distinction of never having had an effective political voice in the few elections which were held in the past, during the brief interludes of what passed for democracy in a long history of military rule.

In the 1970 national elections, in which the Awami League of Shaikh Mujibur Rahman spectacularly trounced whatever opposition there was in the eastern wing of the country and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party registered a resounding victory in West Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami, which at the time was the best organized of the religious parties and symbolized for most people the religious opposition in the country, couldn’t win in a single constituency.

The last national and provincial elections changed everything. The administration’s concerted plan to ensure that the PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s faction of the Muslim League were not only cut down to size, but would be incapable of forming a government, left the field wide open for the religious alliance which emerged as the third largest party in the country.

The election symbol of the Book and the intensive door-to-door campaign orchestrated by the organizers, certainly helped, and there was no doubt that the men of the cloth would do considerably better than they had in the past. But no political analyst could have possibly predicted the extent of their electoral success.

That is why the MMA is considerably anxious to hang on to what it has managed to achieve. This is not only the first time that it has tasted political power in Pakistan, it is also the first time that the component parties have ignored some of the fierce ideological differences that inhibited attempts to unite them in the past.

Unlike the PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s faction of the Muslim League, who knew they could never come to power as long as President Musharraf was calling the shots, the MMA has a definite stake in the system. Their leaders know that they could never achieve the same result in any future election that might be held in the country. If a former British prime minister, the late Harold Macmillan, could be exhumed and resurrected for political comment on the MMA, he might echo the view held by most analysts. ‘They’ve never had it so good.’

The MMA continues to have a firm grip on the popular imagination in the North West Frontier where it has formed the government, and where anti-American sentiment is at its strongest. The MMA was also provided a generous share in the Balochistan cabinet, which was not warranted by its parliamentary strength in that province. Nevertheless, the King’s party continues to woo the men of the cloth, rather than the members of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy.

It is generally believed that there is a tacit understanding between the MMA and the prime minister that the former would discreetly continue to support the King’s party, provided the government would give an assurance that it wouldn’t interfere in the NWFP and Balochistan.

There have also been attempts to induct MMA leaders into the federal cabinet. But the latter politely declined. A number of reasons have been given for this reluctance to sit on the same side of the fence as the King’s party.

While the MMA is aware that its future depends on maintaining good relations with the president, it cannot be seen as officially aligning itself with the current head of state. After all, President Musharraf is still supporting a superpower that was instrumental in reversing the foreign policy of the country which resulted in considerably weakening the Taliban, that ragged band of fierce religious fanatics, spawned by the JUI and the ISI, to combat Soviet occupation Afghanistan, effectively eroding the patronage of the Jamaat-e-Islami for Gulbadin Hikmatyar.

So the MMA continues to adopt the stance of a responsible opposition party that is opposed to the Legal Framework Order and president Musharraf. Like the PPP and the Nawaz League, it is opposed to a president who insists on continuing to wear his battle fatigues. But so far the MMA’s opposition has been largely symbolic and at times a little theatrical and limited to passing resolutions and threatening mass demonstrations which never take place. Its leadership is intelligent enough to realize the fact that a head-on collision with the army would be disastrous.

The PPP and the Nawaz League know they can never enjoy a share in the government, as long as Parvez Musharraf stays in the driving seat. His opposition to the leaders of the two parties is deep and intense. And if it finally came to the crunch and the president decided to dissolve the assemblies, they know the opportunity of springing back at some future date, would always present itself. In spite of the turncoats, of which Pakistan appears to have an unusually large number, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto can never be written off. They will always be a thorn on the side of the army.

It’s a little different for the component parties of the MMA. If the assemblies were dissolved, they know they would return to the political wilderness from which it would be well nigh impossible for them to claw back to a position where people would once again take them seriously. It is therefore imperative for the MMA that nobody should rock the political boat. And so the MMA and the government put on a delightful charade in which both sides give small concessions to each other.

The government turned a blind eye when the MMA introduced the Shariat Bill in the NWFP assembly and destroyed the few cosmetic accoutrements that remained of a once secular society — something that was unthinkable in the days of Ayub Khan. And the MMA graciously extended the date when the president would take off his uniform and continued to sidetrack all attempts by the ARD to have a joint movement against the turncoats in the assembly and the Senate. .

How long the understanding between the MMA and the president will last is difficult to predict. The leaders of the religious alliance strongly disapprove of President Musharraf’s unstinting support for President Bush, and believe, like most Muslims do, that the so-called war on terror is really a euphemism for the war on Muslims.

Their position is complicated by their deteriorating relationship with the two opposition parties whom they condemned four months ago for boycotting talks on the LFO. Today, the MMA leadership is in the peculiar position of wanting to be in the forefront of the struggle to get the president to remove his uniform, without surrendering the privileges it carries.