Pakistan
In Peril
By K. Hussan Zia
11 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Two
years ago, Mr. John Briscoe, a senior advisor to the World Bank, warned
the government of Pakistan that ‘----- the survival of a modern
and growing Pakistan is threatened by (lack of) water. Pakistan has
to invest and invest soon, in costly and contentious new large dams.
‘Pakistan has very
little water storage capacity. The United States and Australia have
over 5,000 cubic metres of storage capacity per inhabitant and China
has 2,200 cubic metres, while Pakistan has only 150 cubic metres of
storage capacity per capita.
‘Pakistan can barely
store 30 days of water in the Indus basin. If something wrong happens
with the Indus basin, Pakistan has no alternative to feed its agriculture.
There is no latitude for error ----------’ (The Dawn, 20th Sept.
2005).
The warning is indeed dire.
According to IRSA, water storage in Pakistan has been reduced to half
of what is needed. For the past seven years, General Musharraf has declared
that any dam will be built only after ‘reaching a consensus.’
This is a very long time for a man who committed Pakistan to some one
else’s war on one telephone call. The people among whom he is
ostensibly seeking consensus are not responsible or answerable to the
people of Pakistan ; he is. The consequences of delay in reaching a
consensus, for which only he must take the blame, are horrendous, to
say the least.
It takes the better part
of ten years to complete the construction of a large dam. Work has not
started on even one of these. It is estimated that there will be at
least fifty million more mouths to feed in another ten years. To put
it in perspective, it amounts to feeding the population of Britain,
in addition, with progressively reduced amounts of water made available
for agriculture. Since this is clearly not possible, in the short term,
it will mean costly and continually increasing food imports. These can
only be sustained for a relatively short period. Ultimately, it will
lead to persistent famine.
Among other equally frightening
consequences, there will be shortage of drinking water, particularly
where the ground water is not fit for consumption, including the city
of Karachi. Tens of millions of people will be forced to migrate, causing
serious reduction in agricultural production and leading to large-scale
social disruption. One only needs to turn to history books to know what
tragedy it can wreak.
The conditions are likely
to be further aggravated by the vagaries and uncertainties of any climate
change. Lower riparians will suffer the most, not only due to water
shortage but also because of the renewed seasonal floods caused by diminished
storage capacity in the existing reservoirs. Bustling cities and towns
like Hyderabad, Sehwan, Sukkur, Ghotki, Mirpur, etc. will be ravaged
by floodwaters whenever there is excessive rainfall in the catchments.
The worsening situation will
lead to serious inter-provincial wrangling and disputes. In the worst
case, civil wars may erupt and the country could break-up. The possibility
of wars over water rights with India and Afghanistan cannot be discounted.
Since it is mostly the western countries that have exportable food surpluses,
they will gain a stranglehold on Pakistan.
It should not be difficult
for any one with interest in military history to comprehend the full
implications of the situation. Britain seriously considered surrendering
in 1943 when German u-boats in the western approaches critically disrupted
her food imports. Since then, she has drained marshes and cut down fruit
orchards and forests to raise crops and achieve self-sufficiency in
food production.
Pakistan also suffers from
serious power shortages. In addition to storing water for agriculture,
large dams are a cheap and non-polluting source of power supply. At
the current prices, it is almost ten times more expensive to generate
power from imported oil than indigenous dams. In an increasingly competitive
export market, it makes no sense to burden the industries with the avoidable
handicap of costly electricity from oil and gas fired power plants.
In ten years, the population
would be well in excess of two hundred million. In the absence of any
new dams, there would not be any where near enough water to meet its
basic needs. Power supplies will be drastically curtailed and become
hugely expensive. Government revenues would plummet due to precipitous
declines in agricultural and industrial production. Food prices will
go through the roof and there will not be sufficient funds to pay for
imports. Vast areas would start to become depopulated and the poor will
be dying in large numbers due to mal-nutrition and starvation. Inevitably,
it will lead to widespread break down of law and order.
That will be the time when
people will ruefully recall how precious resources were wasted to purchase
Boeing airliners, hugely expensive state-of–the-art weapons, build
the port at Gwadar, where no ships call, and fences to help keep hostile
regimes in power in neighbouring countries. They will feel taunted and
tormented looking at all the luxury housing schemes, office complexes
and tourist resorts whose inhabitants would have long since departed
to the safety of foreign lands.
They will also remember that
when there was still time, instead of building the vital dams, their
rulers offered feeble excuses in the childishly mistaken belief that
somehow these absolved them of the responsibility. Instead, they pre-occupied
themselves with fighting other people’s wars and ingratiating
themselves with parochial politicians with questionable aims and commitment.
If only they had spent less
time on perpetuating their hold on power and a little more on the problems
confronting the nation, the future might not have looked so bleak. What
a sad commentary on people who had seized power, ostensibly, to provide
good government. All they have managed is to bring a country that was
born after such great sacrifice and with so much hope, to the brink
of a sad end.
The writer is a retired Pakistan
Navy officer now living in Canada. He has written the book ‘Muslims
and the West: A Muslim Perspective,’ (AuthorHouse, USA) that analyses
the so-called clash of civilizations from the other side of the fence.
E-mail: [email protected]
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