A plan that will destroy the Margallas

Shifting the capital from Karachi to the present site of Islamabad, a city located at the foot of the Margalla Hills, was one of the first decisions the 1958 Martial Law administration took. The decision was principally taken by Ayub Khan as the Chief Martial Law Administrator and his military colleagues; the top civilian officialdom simply gave it shape.

Apart from the military’s political compulsion to shift the capital from the southern tip of the country in Karachi, a port city, to close to Rawalpindi — the headquarters of the Northern Command in undivided India — where the GHQ of the army was quite naturally located after Partition, there were many other reasons to move the capital.

One of those reasons was related to the climate of the area. Ayub Khan loved the Potohar region, especially the valley of Islamabad, for its pristine environment and great climate. Army officers used to roam here on casual, weekend partridge shoots. Based in Rawalpindi, they were just seven miles away from the area. At that time, game in this area was aplenty. In fact, this remained the case well into the 1970s and the 1980s. As the town expanded, the game withdrew into the hills and because protection rules were strictly enforced, it flourished.

Partridge, brown and black, sisi, pheasant, wild hare and barking deer have lived in the Margallas happily and people who have trekked here will bear witness to that. During the mating season, their calls ring across the valley. The wild boar, snakes, cobra, the rhesus monkey have all lived here. Even a leopard has been sighted from time to time. Porcupines, foxes, jackals and raccoons also live here.

Dr TJ Roberts, an acclaimed authority on the wild life of Pakistan, recorded in his two-volume work on the birds of the country, species of birds typical only to the Margallas. Mikko Pyhala, a Finnish ornithologist and the charge d’affaires at the Finnish Embassy in Islamabad, trekked with me on different trails of the hills, and told me that the Margallas were home to a variety of wild life and some rare bird species. He believed that the Margalla Hills needed to be preserved. He was not at all happy at the expansion of the road leading up to Daman-e-Koh and the eateries that had slowly started to mushroom around the Chawki ridge. Considering the environmental pros and cons, we agreed that a road was, at best, a mixed blessing and those in authority should think twice before laying it.

Less than 25 years later, grossly violating the Margalla Hills National Park, created under the Islamabad Wildlife Ordinance in April 1980, multistorey restaurants and other structures have come up, the road through it has been lit up and hundreds of thousands of trees have been cut, changing the climate, driving away the wild life and disturbing the ecological balance of the area.

The Margallas are now under renewed attack. As if all the desecration done to it was not enough, the Capital Development Authority is planning a tunnel through the Margallas to connect Islamabad to Haripur. No reason has been given about why this is necessary. Haripur is not too far from either the GT Road or the Motorway. This wretched nation, devastated by violent crime, ethnic strife, galloping inflation and poverty, is now losing its environment too. Before approving such a project, the government will do well to remember that according to Transparency International, big construction projects are often a major source of corruption.

That this is being done under Nawaz Sharif as prime minister is ironic, as in an earlier tenure, on April 20, 1991, he gave a directive to all concerned to preserve the sanctity of the Margalla Hills National Park. At that time, Mian Sahib found it “imperative that immediate steps be taken to stop further deterioration of the physical, biological, historical and cultural resources of the national park … for the benefit of the present and future generations”. Please, Mian Sahib, have a heart. Let us preserve the sanctity of the national park as you once directed. The Margallas, as Ms Dushka Ahmad put it, is our family silver. Let us not squander it.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2013.

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