I’m afraid we have some serious self-analysis to do
FAISALABAD: While the recent ban on hunting the Houbara bustard in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa came as a sigh of relief to many, we best not engage in any premature jollification. In February 2016, the BBC did a piece on Pakistan’s Houbara bustard hunting industry, which detailed that despite a nationwide prohibition on hunting the bird from the Supreme Court, sheikhs from Saudi Arabia can gain permits to illegally poach the bird during the hunting season. Evidently, the motive for such a practice is to maintain some form of diplomacy among the elites of both nations.
This is an alarming predicament, because the Houbara bustard has been assigned the status of an endangered species due to declining populations throughout its range, and is, therefore, protected by laws both local and international. Should the species go extinct, the unlawful collaboration between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia will be viewed as a key factor in driving the birds to disappearance, and the consequences may go beyond the involved parties. It is, hence, the government’s solemn responsibility to investigate the matter and put an end to this anarchy.
The number one rule of diplomacy is that a country must preserve its own legal integrity before letting other nations tarnish it. The sheikhs need to come up with recreational activities that are not above international laws. And, if the political fate of these leading Muslim nations will forever lie in the hands of an endangered songbird, then I’m afraid we have some serious self-analysis to do.
Ali Nadeem Bhatti
Published in The Express Tribune, December 15th, 2016.
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