A dam at Skardu

Another big dam on the Indus is more than a matter of technical feasibility; thanks to improper handling, it has become a political issue. As reported in this newspaper on Saturday, the Senate's technical committee has come to the conclusion that neither Kalabagh nor Bhasha is a proper site for a dam, and that it is a dam near Skardu that is more practical and desirable.

It observed that the Skardu dam will be able to store the flood water that becomes available once in a decade and that this water can be used to irrigate large parts of the country, including those downstream.

It will have a storage capacity of 35 million acres feet (maf) as against the Kalabagh and Bhasha dams' 6.1 maf and 7.3 maf respectively. While no one doubts the committee's technical competence, the point to note is that the committee itself reported a lack of consensus among its members.

There was no agreement, it said, on such basic issues as the filling criteria, the operation of the link canals, the total availability of water and its distribution among the provinces. The committee correctly suggested that these issues should be sorted out by the Council of Common Interest (CCI). Unfortunately, the CCI's record as a trouble-shooter is not very encouraging.

That the country needs another big dam on the Indus is obvious. More land must be brought under cultivation, and more power must be generated to meet the future needs of a population and economy that are growing. The Tarbela dam has more than done its job.

It is fast silting and has lost 30 per cent of its storage capacity for that reason. Desilting the reservoir could be a solution, but that would cost a huge fortune. That leaves the nation with no choice but to build another multi-purpose dam. However, can this be done without putting further strains on inter-provincial relations?

The small provinces have serious reservations about another dam. Sindh especially feels that another dam upstream will not only deprive it of its share of irrigation water; it will also have serious ecological consequences for the province.

Already, sea water has moved far inwards along the coast. This has adversely affected marine life in the mangroves, turned fertile agricultural land saline and hurt the coastal communities which depend on fisheries.

Sections of the farming community in Sindh believe another major dam will accentuate these problems. Large sections of people in the NWFP, too, have serious reservations about another big dam.

The issue needs to be settled through a consensus. Those who stand for the Kalabagh dam need to have Sindh's and NWFP's fears removed. This can be done by presenting the critics of the project with facts, statistics and hydrological data.

Conversely, those opposing another dam should come forward with technical facts and solid data to buttress their point of view. They should know that a politicization of the issue will not serve their cause.

While opposition to the dam comes from many well-meaning people, there is no dearth of trouble-makers who would like to make political capital out of the controversy. This must be resisted. The primary responsibility is that of the federal government.

It must try to convince the critics of the dam of the desirability of the project and confront them with technical data to convince them that a new dam will not hurt the interest of the small provinces. Any attempt to adopt a uni lateralist approach on the dam issue could damage national unity and bolster centrifugal forces.

Shifting paradigms

Thursday's agreement between Iran and Russia in Moscow to continue their cooperation in the nuclear field makes light of Washington's threat to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

The agreement comes after weeks of vitriolic rhetoric by Washington, accusing Iran of secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons programme - something that Iran denies. After meeting Iran's nuclear negotiator Hasan Rawhani in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin went a step further than agreeing to bilateral nuclear cooperation.

He said Russia was convinced that Iran had no intentions of pursuing a nuclear weapons programme. Thus, Moscow will provide Tehran with heavy-water fuel needed to enrich uranium and make operational the Russian-built nuclear power plant at Bushehr.

The US and Israel have opposed the project tooth and nail, prompting Britain, Germany and France to start negotiations with Iran to reach a compromise. The Europeans have offered to build a soft-water nuclear reactor that would not entail weapons-grade uranium enrichment.

The latest agreement with Moscow not only lends Iran the political and diplomatic support to continue its peaceful nuclear progamme but also makes the European offer redundant.

This is for the first time since the Islamic revolution of 1979 that Iran has been able to secure the confidence of any one among the exclusive club of five nuclear powers.

A signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has been subjected to increased scrutiny by the International Atomic Energy Agency after admission last year that it has the capability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, but insisting all along that it does not intend to do so.

The European and Russian moves to engage and assist Iran in its quest for nuclear technology should be seen as the emerging paradigm shift towards Iran by some of America's close allies in its war on terror - especially when seen against the backdrop of Iraq's occupation.

Community policing

The Sindh governor spoke for the vast majority of urban residents in Karachi and elsewhere when he said the other day that steps should be taken to establish a community-based policing system in the country's big cities.

Presiding over a high-level meeting at the governor's house, the governor was addressing a meeting comprising officials of the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee and a number of prominent citizens.

The CPLC has for the last few months instituted community-based policing in parts of PECHS, Karachi, and the experiment has shown positive results. One hopes that the concept will soon be extended to other parts of the city. The chronic law and order problems affecting Karachi call for such an overhaul of the policing system.

The situation in other big urban centres, such as Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar and Quetta, may not be as critical, but these cities too need a similar police system.

In doing so, it should be ensured that city residents have a say and a stake in the running of the system for it to be able to check crime effectively. What one sees instead is a police force which is manned mainly by recruits from far-flung rural areas.

Uprooted from their simpler environment back home, these policemen are thrown into the high-risk, high-tension urban milieu of the big city without being trained or able to cope with new pressures.

Hence the erosion of citizen's trust and lack of confidence in the existing police system. Elsewhere in the world, urban police comprise highly trained personnel recruited from or groomed in the very urban environment that they are required to police.

As for Karachi, mere recruitment of city-based candidates will not solve the chronic policing problems of this highly diverse and cosmopolitan city. This needs to be accompanied by specialized training, enabling the new recruits to perform their duties in a professional manner while showing respect for the norms and values of the residents of the city.

It goes without saying that the right mix of patience, endurance, and job satisfaction on the part of the community-based police force will have to be an integral part of the new dispensation for it to succeed.