By Ayaz Amir
BEAUTIFUL Punjab, fair land of the five immortal rivers (three of them since gifted by a military ruler to India), why, when so generous of heart, do you prove time and again so weak of understanding?
When you have so much to offer why are you so poorly served by those who claim to lead you? What vengeful fate brings you the poisoned gift of third-rate leadership?
Land of Waris Shah and Shah Hussain (their memories hallowed till the end of time), why, unwittingly, do you end up stoking burning resentment when, with all your heaven-bestowed advantages, you should be spreading tenderness and love?
Of all the lands which came together to form Pakistan, why must you always be the first to welcome every man on horseback who contrives to turn the country (not a small one, mind you) into an instrument of his will and pleasure?
You have the gift of enterprise and industry. There’s no corner of the world where the Punjabi has not ventured or is not to be found. Why did your good fairies deprive you of the ability to differentiate right from wrong and stand up for the right?
When East Pakistan bled you kept quiet. Indeed, to your lasting shame, you sided with the forces of oppression. When there was a movement in rural Sindh against the excesses of the Zia regime (1983), you made token noises of support but kept largely to yourself. Baloch gas lights your kitchen fires and keeps you warm in winter. Yet when Balochistan bled (1973-75) you were indifferent to its fate. When again the sounds of conflict are coming from that quarter you are silent.
Your capital, Lahore, was one of the great cities of the Mughal Empire, one of the great north Indian cities even under British rule, its cultural life more vibrant than anything to be seen in Delhi. Lahore, if true to its historic greatness, should have been Pakistan’s new frontier, fermenting-ground of new ideas. It has been just the opposite, the crucible of a narrow ideology. Of what good this ideology has been to Punjab it is hard to say. But for the rest of Pakistan it has been a permanent headache.
So no surprises when we consider that all the obscurantist winds to blow across the national landscape these past 50 odd years have arisen, in the first instance, from Punjab. In the light of this history it is at times hard to remember that this is the land of Waris Shah and Shah Hussain. Where Punjab should be Pakistan’s greatest unifying force, through generosity and wisdom the magnet drawing every other province to itself, the history of the last fifty years emphasizes its power to repel rather than attract.
Economic factors have brought the Frontier province closer to Punjab, in the process eliminating the more virulent manifestations of Pakhtoon nationalism. This is one of the good things to have happened since 1947. But the same cannot be said of Sindh and Balochistan where a sullen mood prevails. Lessening this mood of alienation should have been one of our foremost national priorities. Instead, six years of military rule have only made it worse.
As if that wasn’t enough, Islamabad’s sense of timing is always calculated to leave one speechless with amazement. When does Gen Musharraf choose to stoke up the embers of the Kalabagh controversy? Smack in December, the very month when Pakistan was dismembered 34 years ago. When do army helicopter gunships re-enact old scenes of strife and conflict in Balochistan? Again in December. No one can fault Islamabad with having a sense of history.
The general’s latest take on the situation is that he won’t allow Sindh to commit suicide. The people of Sindh should be grateful. Instead, they are likely to be alarmed out of their senses by this sweeping generosity. You can’t blame them. Many times bitten, they have ample reason to be constantly shy and cynical.
Islamabad and its chosen minions - like the information minister Shaikh Rashid and the parliamentary affairs minister, the one and only Sher Afgan - are injecting a lot of hot air into the atmosphere. We know what their priority is: playing to the president’s ear. If today the president were to say that for the sake of national unity he must also become chief justice of Pakistan, these same spokesmen will say wah, wah and applaud his wisdom.
We need an informed debate, not needless bluster. In all the heat generated by the Kalabagh controversy no one has been able to answer Sindh’s fears that the proposed Kalabagh dam will deprive it of its share of water from the Indus, its only lifeline.
Punjab has two rivers, Jhelum and Chenab, for its exclusive use while through the Indus Basin Treaty system of canals it also draws its share of water from the Indus. Sindh only has the Indus, no other river. When Gen Musharraf or the Water and Power Authority (Wapda) say that unless large water reservoirs are built, Pakistan will face drought-like conditions in the next ten years or so, the obvious implication is that water stored at Kalabagh, besides generating power, will also be used for irrigation purposes.
Well, let’s do a bit of map-reading. Kalabagh is in the upper reaches of Punjab. A right bank canal from there will benefit the Frontier (its southern districts). A left bank canal can only benefit Punjab. In any case, water drawn from Kalabagh for irrigation will mean lesser water flowing down the Indus. Which is precisely Sindh’s point that, as it is, there is less water in the Indus and if more is taken away, Sindh will be left with even less, thus violating its rights as the lower riparian with first call on the waters of the Indus.
With these facts stacked on one side it strains the imagination to believe, as the federal government desperately wants everyone in Pakistan to believe, that Sindh will benefit the most from the Kalabagh dam. The sums just don’t add up.
No one defies authority readily in Pakistan. We are just not made that way. So we in Punjab and Islamabad - Islamabad being Punjab in distilled form - should pause and ponder why everyone in Sindh, from the ruling coalition to the PPP to the MQM and even the Pir of Pagara, the quintessential establishment man, is opposed to the Kalabagh dam. Either the whole of Sindh has gone mad, in which case Gen Musharraf before attempting to save Sindh from committing suicide should provide it with urgent psychiatric help, or the centre must re-examine its assumptions.
Punjab likes to think of itself as the big brother of the Pakistan federation. By virtue of population and productivity it is. By virtue of any wisdom or large-heartedness at its command it is not. If Punjab really is big brother, it shouldn’t leave Sindh alone in its hour of distress. Rather than let Sindh cry itself hoarse over Kalabagh, Punjab should be voicing Sindh’s agony, Punjab which should be confronting the centre on this issue.
Indeed, Punjab should go a step further and say: enough of these games, enough of divisions fanned in the name of fake, spurious ideologies. We tried to keep the federation together by force in 1971 and look what happened. We should learn something from our reverses instead of making a habit of repeating them. Haven’t we suffered enough because of foolish policies in the past?
With the army stretched to the full in both Waziristans, a full-fledged military operation underway in the Kohlu area of Balochistan, never-ending curfews in Gilgit, the stupendous task of quake relief and rehabilitation still only half-begun, you would think this was not the time to open new fronts.
And certainly not the time to remain committed to building a huge new behemoth of an army headquarters (GHQ) in Islamabad; buy early-warning aircraft from Sweden; and go ahead with the purchase of two luxury aircraft for the prime minister’s travelling. A Senate committee had earlier voted against this last piece of foolishness. Lo and behold, under pressure from only God knows who, it has reversed its decision and re-voted in favour of the luxury jets. Obviously, there’s no early end in sight to the follies generated regularly in Islamabad.
These are the wages of tiredness. After six years and some more in the saddle, all the signs suggest that the present dispensation has overshot its script and has nothing more to say. So how does it justify its quest for longevity? Which probably explains why a controversy we might have been forgiven for thinking was dead and buried, has been revived as a national rallying cry.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm
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