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ISLAMABAD: What once used to be an exhilarating and liberating experience in the Margalla Hills is sadly becoming a frustrating exercise for the lovers of nature in the city.
It is no more a sanguine exercise to enjoy the sights and sounds of Nature. Shrill commands of “stop” and “move away” from gunmen guarding “sensitive areas” now regularly snap them out of their wonderment.
Hikers meet the jarring notes all over the place - at checkposts in Kelenjer Park, on hiking trails behind the Faisal Mosque where razor wires parameter outside military installations and recreation facilities, some hiding behind up to 12-foot high protective walls.
Some trekkers feel the fascinating attraction of Islamabad is becoming a fatal attraction.
It is uneasy hiking to the Rest House at Pir Sohawa, home to Rangers, from Faisal Mosque point where Navy have straightened the fences around their golf course and beyond to Kelenjer Park in the west where more military installations have appeared.
What worries hikers and environmentalists that they have been creeping in to park land, allegedly stealthily in the name of security.
Pakistan Navy rejected the allegation. Instead they claim to have “contributed to the Green by planting more trees”. The Rangers say the government provided them the space they have in Bari Imam and in Saidpur.
However, the Himalayan Wildlife Foundation and the Capital Development Authority have taken note of the alleged intrusions into pristine areas from Dara Jangla and through out west.
CDA has written to the interior minister requesting removal of Rangers from its rest house at Margalla Hills, sources in the CDA said.
CDA has three rest houses on the hills for the use of government officials. The Rangers have been occupying the Pir Sohawa for more than four years.
Deputy Director General Environment Wing CDA Malik Olya Khan said his department had sought “necessary action” by CDA’s Enforcement Department against the Navy’s encroachment of park land in straightening the fence at one corner of its gold course.
Director-General Public Relations Pakistan Navy Commodore Ifranul Haq however claimed that the golf course fence was for security and had “not been moved an inch”. On the contrary, he said the Navy improved environment and topography of the area “by replacing paper mulberry with 25,000 new trees”.
Meanwhile, the Himalayan Wildlife Foundation that manages the Margalla Hills National Park in collaboration with the CDA, has pointed to another military facility encroaching on Kelenjar Park by fencing at least 15-foot wide belt with razor wire.
“CDA knows exactly where the encroachments are. They are all marked in their records,” foundation’s director Vaqar Zakaria said.
“These institutions keep extending their soft borders over time in the name of security,” he added, sighing that they could not get past the guard post to approach the military officers about it.
CDA spokesman Ramzan Sajid said the CDA had not approved any development on CDA properties or protected areas. “Park property is not for sale. The whole idea is to protect nature,” he said.
Still, he rued, the Planning Commission, without telling the CDA, approved building facilities for the Rangers in Saidpur and the finance ministry released Rs180 million for the same.
All that happened when the CDA had rejected Rangers’ request for raising permanent structures for itself in green areas, according to the spokesman.
Two companies of the Rangers - 264 men in all - staying in the CDA’s Pir Sohawa rest house concede that the CDA rest house provides air defence to the city. The Rangers shared with Dawn the documents that showed that temporary facilities - boundary walls and out-houses in Saidpur village - were developed by CDA for them.
CDA spokesman Ramzan Sajid agreed that the Rangers were provided the rest house to secure the city but reminded that “that was only a temporary arrangement”. Many letters have been written to the Rangers to vacate the building since.
Another CDA official said the Rangers moved in the rest house after the bloody stand-off in Lal Masjid in which over 110 extremists, security personnel and innocent civilians were killed in July 2007.
