Ignited Mind
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2010
- Messages
- 1,772
- Reaction score
- 0
War with India inevitable: Nizami
LAHORE Reiterating his stance that India cannot digest an independent and economically strong Pakistan, TheNation Editor-in-Chief and Nazaria-i-Pakistan Trust Chairman Majid Nizami has asked the people to be ready for a war with the neighbouring country on water issue.
Indian hostilities and conspiracies against the country will never end until she will be told a lesson, he held while presiding over a sitting on Pakistan-India relations; Our rulers new wishes at Aiwan-e-Karkunan Tehrik-e-Pakistan here on Saturday.
NPT Vice Chairman Dr Rafique Ahmed, Pakistan Movement Workers Trust Chairman Colonel (R) Jamshed Ahmed Tareen, former foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmed Khan, JUP Secretary General Qari Zawar Bahadur, Air Marshall (R) Khurished Anwar Mirza, Brigadier (R) Hamid Saeed Akhtar, JI Lahore Chief Ameer-ul-Azeem, Dr Munawar Sabir, Dr MA Soofi, Chaudhry Naeem Hussain Chattah, Naseeb Ullah Gardezi, Shafi Josh, Colonel (R) Ikram Ullah, Professor Muzaffar Mirza, Rafique Ghori, Sadiq Jarral, Yasin Watoo, Shahid Rasheed, Rafaqat Riaz and people from different walks of life attended the session.
The sitting was jointly organised by NPT and PMWT on the proposal of Majid Nizami.
Presenting track record of Indias bad plans and atrocities against Pakistan from Water and Kashmir issues to terrorism in Balochistan and separation of East Pakistan, the NPT Chairman stressed that war was the only solution to resolve these problems.
He regretted that the rulers, past and present, never followed the Quaids vision towards making Pakistan an Islamic welfare state. Had General Grassy following the Quaids order entered army into Kashmir, the situation would have been different, he said. However, he said that the separation of East Pakistan to form Bangladesh was to some extent, a fault of the people of Pakistan, but Indian role was fundamental.
We can compete India only by making Pakistan according to the vision of Allama Iqbal and Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, stressed Majid Nizami. He asked the rulers to be courageous and fight for the cause of Pakistani people.
Shamshad Ahmed, speaking in the context of the formation of foreign policy by parliament, held that policy making was not the job of the parliament but of the government.
He said that parliament made legislations but here the government had assigned it to format policies only to save its own face. He stressed that emotions should not overlap in the making of foreign policies and the recent steps for normalising relations with India were being taken by the government on American pressure. He added that Pakistani industry would be destroyed after free trade with India.
Dr Rafique held that trade with India was a conspiracy to stop the countrys development, regretting that the rulers did not thoroughly study about national matters.
Jamshed Tareen opined that rulers were weak in securing national interests, and a courageous leadership was the need of the hour.
Khursheed Anwar said that India could not wage an open war on Pakistan as it too was an atomic power, therefore it was hatching conspiracies to destabilise the country.
Dr Munawar Sabir, an educationist and professor at Punjab University, held that Kashmir was the core issue between the two countries and without settlement of this issue relation with the neighbour country was not viable.
He also rebuffed the trade with India until the settlement of the Kashmir dispute which he said was the jugular vein of Pakistan. He expressed surprise on how India could offer to export electricity having shortfall of hundreds of megawatt in its own grid.
Speakers stressed for the unity among people of Pakistan to develop the country as an Islamic welfare state according to the dream of Quaid and Iqbal.
War with India inevitable: Nizami | The Nation
-------------------
Pakistan: A Karbala in the waiting
Bashir A. Malik
Every year, April 1 brings to mind a bitter memory of what India did to starve millions of people in the Pakistani province of Punjab 64 years ago. It was the first salvo of the Indian water war against the infant State of Pakistan; the news shocked the nation. All protests, pleas and appeals by Pakistan fell on deaf ears of the disciples of Mahatma Gandhis gospel of peace and non-violence.
April 1, 1948, was no traditional April Fools Day for Pakistans Punjab. Rather it was a bleak day, when India suddenly closed the canals carrying water to West Punjab. Water is, undoubtedly, aab-e-hayat (water of life) for a largely arid and agrarian country like Pakistan with scanty and uncertain rainfall. Well anyway, back then hundreds of thousands of acres of standing wheat crops were badly affected. There was no water, even for drinking in the regions underlain by brackish groundwater. The main source of income of millions of poor people, including the newly settled refugees, who had migrated from India, was in jeopardy.
The unfair partition of united Punjab in 1947, which was manipulated by the Nehru-Mountbatten nexus, unjustly cut across the rivers and canal network. This left the headworks of some Pakistani Punjab canals in Indian Punjab. Thus, New Delhi stopped the supply of water to Pakistan from the canals flowing from India. It was in blatant violation of the Punjab Partition Committees unanimous agreement of July 1947.
On May 3, 1948, a Pakistani delegation went to New Delhi to plead with India to restore its water share in the canals. But it was like the water on ducks tail. On May 4, India pulled another weapon out of its arsenal. A statement was put before the leader of the Pakistani delegation and he was asked to sign it without changing a word or a comma - a condition for restoring the flow of water. It meant - sign or starve! So, the agreement was signed under extreme duress to save the lives of millions of Pakistanis.
However, this was not the end of the story, rather the beginning of a prolonged water dispute. A series of Indo-Pak talks were held under good offices of the World Bank in Washington DC in 1950s, culminating in the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960. It divided the Indus Rivers territorially. India was given the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi (eastern) rivers for its use; whereas, the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus (western) rivers were left for Pakistan. The treaty also allowed the construction of Mangla and Tarbela Dams on the Jhelum and Indus rivers.
The Indus plain irrigated by vast year round canal networks, particularly Punjab, was known as the bread basket of the country. Alas no more! The basket is empty and the mouths to feed aplenty! Unfortunately, this happened because of:
Firstly, the crippling water and power crisis, primarily due to the loss of water from the eastern rivers to India.
Secondly, the decrease in storage capacity of both Mangla and Tarbela reservoirs by siltation.
Thirdly, no large storage dam was built by Pakistan afterwards.
The Kalabagh Dam (KBD) was to be built by 1996. The construction was to begin in 1987 when it was stalled by regional politics of water. According to media reports, its construction was opposed by certain lobbies in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is said to be sponsored by a neighbouring country. In the meanwhile, the demand for water supply increased due to population growth, i.e. from 76 million in 1976 to 180 million today. Whereas, water availability fell from 40 to 50 percent short of demand; similar was the shortfall in power. Hence, this led to food and water scarcity, as well as unending loadshedding.
Moreover, the water flow from the western rivers into Pakistan is under serious threat by Indias dam building spree, thereon in blatant violation of the treaty in occupied Jammu and Kashmir. A US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report unveiled a shocking fact that India plans to build 190 dams on western rivers, ostensibly for hydropower plants to generate 33,000MW. All the dams - with 33 only on the Indus - are scheduled to be completed in six years; by 2017. The report also observed: The conflict between Pakistan and India over water resources is serious enough to lead to a war is indisputable.
What to speak of 190 dams, even a fraction, say fifth of their number, could be deadly for the safety and security of Pakistan. By cumulative impoundment of their storages at a crucial crop cycle say during the wheat sowing period - mid-September to end November - could leave millions of acres of land unsown, resulting in widespread famines and starvation in Punjab and Sindh. On the other hand, the simultaneous release of stored waters at the peak of floods in summer could cause more devastation in Punjab and Sindh than experienced in 2010. Either way, these dams could be a recipe for starvation and/or destruction in Pakistan.
Against this backdrop, the Indian policymakers seem to possess the mindset of their ancient guru Chanakya (like Machiavelli). Having achieved full control of the waters of western rivers, there may be little or no water flow downstream, even for drinking in Pakistan what to speak of irrigation. In such a situation, River Kabul flowing in from Afghanistan was the only source of relief for a small part of the country. But it also became a target of the Indian hegemony. New Delhi is financing and building 12 dams on River Kabul disregarding Pakistans historic water rights.
India would, thus, have under its control not only the waters of Chenab, Jhelum, and Indus, but also Kabul. It would be in a position to starve and strangulate Pakistan at will. In other words, because of these evil designs of the Indians, Pakistan is but a Karbala in the waiting.
n The writer is an engineer and former chief technical advisor, United Nations and World Bank.
Pakistan: A Karbala in the waiting | The Nation
