Drought imperils Pakistan's 'very unity
U.S. Water News Online
SINDH, Pakistan -- Dhani Baksh remembers when the Indus River raged through Pakistan's southern province of Sindh -- the lifeblood of fishermen and farmers.
But now, after two years of drought and record low snowfalls in northern Pakistan, the once mighty Indus is a mere trickle in some places. Fishing has been decimated, farmland is parched, and rioters have smashed windows and overturned cars to protest water shortages in Karachi, the country's largest city.
"It is the most serious water crisis in decades," declared Mohammed Hussain Pahanwar, a leading irrigation engineer.
Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz is predicting Pakistan will lose $1.2 billion in agricultural revenue, and agricultural experts and political analysts are warning of troubled times ahead.
Entire villages have relocated from the Indus River's banks, where fertile silt dumped by the river's floodwaters helped give birth to an early civilization some 5,000 years ago.
At Kotri, 120 miles northeast of where the Indus flows into the Arabian Sea, fisherman Baksh said that at 72 he's too old to leave. Instead he hauls his rickety wooden boat out into the shallow river water to pull in a meager haul -- a few small prawns.
Most of the farmland in Sindh, Pakistan's southernmost province, is irrigated by a network of canals that are now mostly parched.
"The wheat production in Sindh has fallen by almost 40 percent," said Qamaruzzaman Shah, chairman of Pakistan Chamber of Agriculture.
The government is predicting wheat production will fall to 17.5 million tons this year, compared with last year's record 22 million tons.
Agricultural specialists also predict a bad year for cotton, which was planted late because of the water shortage. Rice and sugarcane won't fare much better because they are thirsty crops.
The country's economy is heavily dependent on agriculture. The drought means economic growth won't be as high as predicted, incomes will shrink and the unemployment rate -- already around 50 percent -- will rise.
Add to that the financial burden of importing wheat. Agricultural authorities estimate Pakistan will have to buy 1.2 million tons of wheat to make up the shortfall caused by drought. That will hurt the country's meager foreign exchange reserves, which stand at about $1 billion.
The troubled financial implications of the drought are second only to the political mess it is creating.
For much of the last week, demonstrators took to the streets daily in Karachi, a city of 14 million people that is the country's financial hub. Dozens of people have been arrested and entire business districts shut down.
The water shortage has caused bitter bickering between provinces. People in Sindh blame some of their water troubles on Punjab to the northeast, Pakistan's most prosperous province.
The Sindh provincial government has accused Punjab of damming rivers and reducing the water supply to the southern province in violation of a water distribution agreement. People in Sindh also accuse the Punjabi-dominated army of being biased against their province.
"The water crisis threatens the very unity of the country," said Pahanwar, the irrigation expert.
In Sindh, the crisis has united political rivals and given extremist Sindhi nationalists a weapon with which to mobilize public support for their demand for greater autonomy or outright independence.
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