Why Sindh Opposes Kalabagh Dam?
Sindh opposes construction of Kalabagh Dam, because it is
environmentally hazardous, and it is intended for stealing Sindh's
share of Indus water, and for consolidating Punjab's political and
economic grip over Sindh.
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Kalabagh Dam is Environmentally Hazardous
The Sindh delta region, on which hundreds of thousands of native
Sindhis living in the coastal areas depend for their livelihood, has
already suffered immense damage because of illegal diversion of Indus
water by Punjab over decades. Peter Meynell of IUCN (International
Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources - the world's
largest conservation related organization) notes that "Indus Delta is
on the brink of an ecological disaster". Rejecting Pakistan central
government's callous attitude, he adds that it "is irresponsible to
say that we may as well cut off all the water and sediment reaching
the delta, since the damage has been done and since Pakistan needs all
the water it can get for energy and agriculture upstream. This would
be denying the remaining benefits of the delta to the coastal
communities and to the national economy". Experts recommend that at
least 30 Million Acre Foot (MAF) water should be allowed to flow
downstream of Kotri barrage.
"The Indus in Pakistan once brought down 600 million tonnes (of silt);
half reached the sea and half fertilized the alluvial plain. Today,
just 50 million tonnes passes the upstream barrages and dams...
Gazdar, who lectures at the Berkeley as well as the University of
Karachi, argues that building the Kalabagh Dam to provide yet more
water will "promise a rose garden but deliver dust". It is, he says,
"reminiscent of the Indus Valley Civilization downfall 3500 years
ago"; archaeologists are now uncovering strong evidence that this,
one of the world's earliest civilizations, was brought down largely
by accumulation of salt in its irrigated fields." - Fred Pearce,
"New Scientist", 1990
"If completed, the [Kalabagh] dam would trap an estimated two-thirds
of the sediments of the Indus River, which has the fifth highest
sediment load in the world. Critics of the project claim that by
increasing salinity and waterlogging, the project will further
degrade agricultural productivity of the Indus Basin as well as
destroy mongrove and riverine forests, fisheries, and the Indus
Delta." - World Rivers Review, 1989
"Sindh irrigation expert, and former Senator, Kazi has argued time and
again that historical records of WAPDA establish that total
availability of Indus flows cannot satisfy committed allocations. In
consequence, any additional upstream reservoir such as Kalabagh will
either lie unfilled in all 5 out of 6 years, or the Indus delta will
be lucky to get even a measly 10 MAF of water in only 1 of 6 years." -
Aly Ercelawn, Karamat Ali, Omar Asghar Khan, Citizens Alliance in
Reforms for Efficient and Equitable Development (CREED)
History of Violations by Punjab Dominated Pakistan Government
Punjab and Sindh have had a long-standing dispute over Indus
water. After independence of Pakistan in 1947, as Punjab has
imposed its will on Sindh in every other matter, it has also freely
violated agreements with Sindh about the Indus water.
Kalabagh Dam will give complete physical control of the flow of Indus
to the Punjab dominated central government. Through the history of
Pakistan, Punjab has repeatedly violated Sindh's rights on Indus
waters. When necessary, concessions have been illegally extracted
by Punjab through unrepresentative "leaders" installed by the center
to govern Sindh. To give some recent examples, the 1991 "Water
Accord" and the 1997 "National Finance Award", both were signed to the
detriment of Sindh. The latter was extracted from an unelected
care-taker Chief Minister of Sindh, appointed by the central
government. The former "accord" too was signed by an unrepresentative
government installed through widespread rigging admittedly funded by
the federal intelligence agency, ISI.
Further, even these very agreements have been blatantly violated
repeatedly. For decades the Tarbela Dam (constructed in 1976) has
been used for illegal diversion of Indus waters toward Punjab. Link
canals are illegally kept open through most of the year with little
recourse for Sindh. In these circumstances, Kalabagh will only
serve as an additional tool in the hands of Punjab to effectively
deprive Sindh of its water.
The current military dictatorship in Pakistan has
attempted to change loyalties of the staunchest opponents of Kalabagh
Dam by offering them lucrative positions in their illegal government. Some
of them recently resigned from the Sindh government. Others are
are still serving.
Resistance Movement in Sindh
Sindh has long resisted undemocratic and illegal military rules in
Pakistan. Sindh also has an indigenous movement to seek freedom from
exploitation and oppression by the Punjab dominated center. With the
history of their brutality in the 1971 Bangladeshi freedom movement,
where millions of innocent Bangali civilians were murdered by
Pakistan's Punjabi military, it is only expected that given Kalabagh
Dam, Punjab will attempt to starve Sindh into submission at times
of dissent. Now that Pakistan is a nuclear power, external
intervention is also less likely. No nation should have to live under
such a sense of absolute and permanent subjugation.
Click
to register your
protest
against Pakistan government's refusal to scrap the
Kalabagh Dam Project