Pakistan In Peril
By K. Hussan Zia
11 October, 2007
Countercurrents.orgTwo 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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