Parched Pakistan feuds over $18 bln dam projects

KALABAGH, Pakistan, June 27: High above the Indus river, straight white lines painted on the chaparral-covered hillsides mark the site of an ambitious, 7 billion dollars dam project.

President Pervez Musharraf wants to build five dams of which the Kalabagh dam, his top priority, is the biggest to head off Pakistan's looming water crisis and cut energy costs.

''We cannot delay. I will not let Pakistan commit suicide over water shortages,'' Musharraf said recently. The dams, which could cost as much as 18 billion dollars, are meant to be completed by 2016.

Pakistan has talked for decades about building a dam at Kalabagh, but work has barely started because of fierce rivalries between the various provinces North West Frontier Province, Punjab and Sindh through which the Indus river flows.

''This is Pakistan, it happens over here, projects are started, then stopped when new people come,'' says Zareen Khan, a turbaned 65-year-old villager in Kalabagh.

Khan has seen surveyors visit his village, whose name means ''black garden'', many times before.

''They just draw lines and leave.'' Dormitories that were originally built for teams of engineers, now provide shelter for the village goats. The engineers left in the 1980s before excavations even began.

For all Musharraf's sweeping powers he amended the constitution following a coup in 1999 he is unable to force through plans for the controversial dams, especially with elections due in 2007.

Kalabagh, downstream from where the Soan and Kabul rivers flow into the Indus, is in Punjab near the boundary with North West Frontier Province, or NWFP.

Of Pakistan's four provinces, only the central province of Punjab is in favour of the dam.

''They are against the Kalabagh dam because they are against the Punjabi people, as there are more of them in the armed forces and bureaucracy,'' said Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and an advocate of the dam which is likely to create jobs in his constituency in Punjab's Mianwali district.

WEALTH AND POWER

Punjab is one of the wealthiest areas of Pakistan, a cause of much envy in other provinces. Punjabis also dominate the officer class in the army, which has repeatedly played a role in the country's politics, leading to widespread resentment.

''We don't trust them at all,'' said Qamar-uz-Zaman Shah, a critic of the project and veteran opposition leader from southern Sindh province, where the Indus drains into the Arabian Sea. Sindhis fear that if the dam is built, Punjabi landlords will use the water to irrigate their lands, depriving farmers in Sindh of a precious resource and causing an ecological calamity in the Indus delta. And politicians in NWFP say that an estimated 90,000 people will be displaced by the reservoir.

But proponents dismiss this as political scare-mongering: Sindh will have more than enough water, and displaced people will be relocated easily and generously compensated.

Desperate for an economic breakthrough to support the world's sixth-largest population, Pakistan needs more energy and water.

Kalabagh's 3,600 MW power station will pump out low-cost energy equivalent to 20 million barrels of oil a year. At today's prices of around 70 dollars a barrel, that would mean savings of about 1.4 billion dollars in Pakistan's oil import bill.

Fresh water availability has fallen from 5,200 cubic metres per capita in 1947 when Pakistan was formed from the partition of India following independence from Britain to less than 1,000 cubic metres currently, making it one of the most parched nations in the world.

During that time, the population has shot up from around 30 million to 160 million, and the economy is picking up steam.

SCORCHING HEAT

''The bottom line is clear Pakistan is currently close to using all of the surface and groundwater that it is available, yet it is projected that over 30 percent more water will be needed over the next 20 years to meet increased agricultural and industrial demands,'' said a World Bank report released last year.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz called on Pakistanis to pray for rain this summer as temperatures hit 50 Celsius in the south, and water levels in reservoirs and irrigation canals fell to perilously low levels.

Monsoon rains due in July, cannot arrive soon enough. In some parts of the capital Islamabad and the neighbouring city of Rawalpindi, water shortages are common and the long-range forecast suggests it will only get worse.

The World Bank warns that climate change will cause a glacial meltdown in the northern mountains, leading to flooding over the next 50 years. After that, river flows in the Indus basin could fall by up to 40 per cent.

Pakistan stores enough river water to last 30 days.

Dams are needed if the country can find the money, notably from international investors who would like to see less political volatility before sinking big bucks into long-term projects.

''Construction of the Kalabagh dam is the objective of my life,'' Musharraf told lawmakers from affected areas in May.

But the villagers of Kalabagh are unconvinced he'll succeed.

''I've been hearing about the dam since 1952, but they just keep talking and talking,'' says wizened Zareen Khan.

Reuters