Kalabagh Dam verdict is not implementable

ISLAMABAD: The Lahore High Court (LHC)’s order to the federal government to construct the Kalabagh Dam, mired in intense political controversy for decades, is going to provoke the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), especially its Sindh chapter, and some of its allies as well as opponents to aggressively dismiss it as inconsequential.

However, the order will please the main opposition party, the PML-N, which in the past has vainly attempted more than once to build the mega water reservoir. The judicial order is unlikely to be implemented by the present or any future government considering the mayhem and chaos that even talk to construct the dam would generate.

The LHC order is perfectly according to the Constitution, but is non-implementable because the project has unfortunately been made a political football since long, and no political administration will dare sail in troubled waters.

The bitterness in the language used by the PPP leaders from Sindh against the dam is similar, if not more rancorous, to that of the Sindhi nationalists, and it appears that both are in competition to outmatch the other in cursing the once proposed Kalabagh dam.

It is widely feared that the PML-N’s support to the court order at this point of time will cost it the alliance it has worked out with Sindhi nationalist forces, which are bitterly against the dam, and have protested against it many a time.

As per their plan, they are observing Friday as the black day against the Sindh People’s Local Government Act (SPLG), but will certainly direct their guns, forgetting their present agitation, at the dam if any concrete move to build it (for which there is absolutely no possibility whatsoever) was made at any official level.

In the past the Sindh and KPK assemblies passed more than one resolution against the Kalabagh dam, but on the contrary the Punjab assembly approved motions in its favour.

Benazir Bhutto always opposed the grand project, and President Asif Ali Zardari is not even slightly inclined to positively speak for it. He fully shares the views of the Sindh chapter of his party and is as much a hardliner as the rest of the lot. Even Mohammad Khan Junejo as prime minister was completely dismissive of the dam.

When Nawaz Sharif as prime minister was too much beleaguered due to the international outcry over Pakistan’s nuclear detonations in May 1998, he made an out of blue announcement to build the Kalabagh dam to offset the pressure. But he had to abandon it sooner than later as it gave rise to more problems due to the opposition of several elements from Sindh and KPK.

A Zardari ally, the PML-Q, stands for the dam but is unexpected to speak with the president about it because it wants to keep its alliance with him in any case, taking it to the next general elections.

Among the opponents, the Awami National Party (ANP) is number one enemy of the project, and once Khan Abdul Wali Khan threatened in the eighties that he would bomb the dam if it was built. However, many political forces in the KPK and key figures like Engineer Shamsul Mulk, who once presided over the Water & Power Development Authority (Wapda), strongly support the dam and dub the objections frivolous, baseless and uninformed. Even after Wali Khan’s death, his party has maintained opposition to the dam with same ferocity.

The best time to construct the dam came in 1977 when General Ziaul Haq imposed martial law. It was very brutal in its first few years and political forces were either running for life or had connived with the dictator but he frittered away the opportunity and used the Kalabagh dam for his political ends by stoking controversy over it. He was never serious to construct it.

Pervez Musharraf was no different. The promulgation of martial law in 1998 by him threw up another chance to take up the dam more sincerely with the political forces being scared or marginalised, but he too wasted that opportunity.

After a few years of the two military rulers, the fear they created remarkably lessened with their opponents starting loudly speaking against them. The initial years provided a good time to construct the dam.

Decades have been wasted in the name of “evolving national consensus” on the dam by successive governments for which no worthwhile effort has ever been made. The court order is not going to make any difference in the policy of the present and future administrations as they lack guts to accept the challenge.

The supporters and opponents of the project had been engaged in an endless debate that would rage again in the wake of the judicial direction. The callous lot does not come out with an alternative mega water reservoir in place of the magnificent dam.

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