The red Xs appeared on walls around Sahil Maseeh’s neighbourhood one morning in March.

They were visible on key points around their locality. No warning. No explanation. Just a cross in red paint, crude but deliberate, with CDA scrawled alongside — the signature of demolition.

Sahil lives in Allama Iqbal Colony in Islamabad’s Sector G-7, a neighbourhood that houses more than 1,000 Christian families. He has worked as a sanitary worker for the Capital Development Authority (CDA) for over two decades. His home — begun as a tent, finished in concrete — now bears the mark of eviction.

“How can we be expected to just abandon our own houses?” he asks. “We work for the CDA. We have lived here for 20 years.”

The CDA’s demolition teams have already destroyed several homes and shops in Allama Iqbal Colony. Resistance from residents temporarily stalled the bulldozers, but the red Xs remain — a daily reminder that their homes are on a list.

They built Islamabad’s homes, cleaned its streets and raised its children. Now the city’s metropolitan authority is demolishing their lives…

A BRUTAL IRONY

The Christian community of Islamabad forms the backbone of the capital’s most essential services. Men work as sanitary workers for the CDA itself. Women serve as domestic help across the city’s affluent sectors. They are the ones who keep Islamabad running — collecting its waste, cleaning its homes, maintaining its streets.

Yet the city has never produced a housing policy for them. The CDA has launched only one low-income housing scheme since the turn of the century — in the rural locality of Alipur Farash. It accommodated a few hundred households. The capital’s katchi abadis [informal settlements], by comparison, house an estimated 500,000 residents.

The 2023 census counts approximately 97,300 Christians in the Islamabad Capital Territory — about 4.26 percent of the capital territory’s roughly 2.3 million residents. Most fall into the lowest income bracket. Without informal settlements like Allama Iqbal Colony and Rimsha Colony, they cannot afford to live in the city they serve.

A single room in Islamabad rents for 30,000 rupees. Most of these families earn 45,000 rupees a month or less — hovering around minimum wage.

DISPLACEMENT REDUX

In Rimsha Colony, Sector H-9, the CDA decided that individual markings were unnecessary. The entire settlement has been slated for demolition.

Saba Farooq lives there. She works as a domestic worker, scrubbing floors so her family can eat. Her husband is a daily-wage labourer. Together, they built their home over years, pooling money from monthly wages.

“We have no option other than to leave Islamabad if they deprive us of our houses made with our blood and sweat,” she tells Eos.

Saba recalls that the CDA itself had previously shifted her family from Mehrabadi, another settlement on the outskirts of the capital, to what was then a jungle in H-9. They started from nothing and built again. Now the CDA wants them to leave once more, with no alternative housing offered.

Saba doesn’t know where they would go. There is no plan — not from the CDA, not from anyone.

‘I WAS BORN RIGHT HERE’

The demolitions have already happened elsewhere. In the localities of Saidpur Village, Bari Imam and Noorpur Shahan, the CDA has removed more than 800 structures.

Samiullah is 63 years old. He lived in Muslim Colony in Bari Imam until that operation. He was given two days’ notice. No rehabilitation plan. No place to go.

“I was born right here,” he says, his voice choking. “I am no longer capable of manual labour.” Samiullah says he has sent his family to live with relatives in Karachi. “But I cannot leave. I sleep alone under the open sky.” He gestures toward the rubble. “There were mosques here, madressahs here — everything has been erased.”

The demolitions have not only displaced families — they have pushed some of the city’s most vulnerable residents into a crisis with no apparent exit. Among the affected, the transgender community faces a unique horror.

Kashish had already been rejected by her family years ago. The settlement in Bari Imam was the closest thing she had to stability, where she had lived for 35 years. “Neither our families nor society accepts us,” she tells Eos.

“Now where do we go? A state is supposed to be like a mother, holding her children to her chest — but here we have been cast aside.”

THE OFFICIAL VERSION

Dr Anum Fatima, the chief metropolitan officer of the Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad, maintains that approximately 750 deserving families from Bari Imam, Muslim Colony and Noorpur Shahan village were already provided alternative plots in 2001, with compensation paid in 2003. She states that all subsequent constructions were illegal. She claims 612 acres of state land have been recovered.

For current residents — most of whom say they purchased their plots — there is no relocation plan and no compensation. The CDA’s position is that all construction on state land is illegal, regardless of how long residents have been there. The same argument is being used to justify the demolitions in Allama Iqbal Colony and Rimsha Colony.

Dr Fatima says that the CDA is currently focused on removing shops and structures on commercial land in the Christian colonies in sectors G-7 and H-9 — giving residents time to arrange alternatives.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Abidullah, originally from Kashmir, had run his shop in Bari Imam for many years. It was gone in a morning. He stood by the rubble and said nothing for a long time. Thousands like him worked as street vendors, mechanics, tailors and plumbers. When their homes were destroyed, their livelihoods vanished.

The demolitions have also affected students at Quaid-i-Azam University, who rented rooms in Bari Imam. Many have missed exams or dropped classes.

Alia Amirali, a human rights activist who is associated with the left-wing Awami Workers’ Party, describes the CDA’s actions as “open class war” — targeting the working poor while allowing real estate mafias to build illegal schemes with impunity.

On April 16, the Federal Constitutional Court ordered the CDA to finalise regulations for Islamabad’s informal settlements while hearing petitions against the recent demolition drives in the federal capital.

Rights groups, including the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, have also urged the Supreme Court to uphold its 2015 stay order against forced evictions without resettlement plans. The stay order was issued after a 30-year-old settlement in Sector I-11 was demolished, leaving more than 20,000 people without homes.

But, as activists and legal experts point out, a stay is not a solution.

As Amirali notes, the only long-term answer is formal housing schemes. Otherwise, the bulldozers will simply push essential workers into a deeper crisis.

Back in Allama Iqbal Colony, the red X is still on walls around Sahil’s home. He goes to work for the CDA every morning. He comes home to the mark they left.

The writer is a Dawn correspondent.
X: @umar_shangla

Published in Dawn, EOS, May 10th, 2026