Wanted a bridge for Yarkhun valley

By Zar Alam Khan

WINTER in most parts of Chitral brings miseries. But for the last over two years summer has become even more traumatic for the dwellers of the far-off Yarkhun valley. From April to October each year, residents in hundreds of villages dotting the valley on both sides of the river up to the Boroghil pass on the border of Afghanistan remain deprived of even free movement to and out of the area.

The only jeep-able bridge over the Yarkhun River connecting the valley of over 35,000 people with other parts of the district was washed away in August 2006. The stranded people have knocked all avenues for its reconstruction but the government has not moved to resolve the problem.

The previous provincial government punished the area by putting the project into the cold storage because the residents had not voted for the religious parties’ alliance. Without sanctioning funds, the district government headed by the MMA nazim last year asked a contractor to start work in order to hoodwink the public but the contractor soon left the area. The residents later voted en masse for the PML-Q candidates. Soon after winning the elections, MNA Shahzada Mohiuddin and MPA Ghulam Mohammad visited the area and assured the people that the project would now be taken up on a priority basis. The MPA later inaugurated work on the reconstruction of the bridge by opening a plaque at the site. But this time too the contractor stopped work after drilling a few borings because the provincial government had not sanctioned funds for the project.

The residents said they were facing untold miseries in travelling to other parts of the district. Women, children and the elderly are the worst affected, as they cannot cross the narrow, long and dangerously hanging pedestrian bridge which has become the only source of communication to the area. The bridge can become a death trap as its condition has dilapidated due to excessive use particularly by loaders shifting all types of goods. One person died while crossing the river near the destroyed bridge last year.

Taxi drivers have started looting the locals. Passengers having luggage or accompanied by children, women or sick persons in particular become their victims.

Supply of essential commodities to the valley has also been badly affected, resulting in unbridled rise in the prices. Local traders have fixed prices of essential items on their own, saying they pay extra fares to the transporters after crossing the bridge. The villagers used to supplement their income by selling fruits, vegetables and other agricultural products but now they have also been deprived of this source of livelihood due to the blockade of the area.

Even basic healthcare facilities are non-existent in the valley. A dispensary had been set up in the Dizg village by the district health department a few years back but later it was also closed down and the staff transferred out of the valley. The closure of the area has multiplied the miseries of those needing immediate medical treatment.

Students especially girls from Istach, Dizg, Khruzg and Mahting take the risk of their life by daily crossing the pedestrian bridge to attend schools in Brep. There is only one high school for boys in the over 200-km-long valley while no institution has been set up for girls to continue education after middle level.--DAWN

TMA Chitral allocates funds for Tajikistan road

Report Zahiruddin, Chitral

Tehsil Council Chitral passed its annual budget for the current financial year in its session presided over by its convener Sardar Hussain while tehsil nazim Sartaj Ahmed Khan was also present on the occasion.

The tehsil nazim told the local journalists that funds have been allocated for the construction of Chitral-Tajikistan road but did not tell its amount. In the budget, not a single penny has been allocated to keep the city clean and dispose of the garbage which is the largest civic problem, the residents complained.

They said the construction of Chitral-Tajikistan road is beyond the mandate of the municipal body and it will incur billions of rupees whose executing agency can be only the National Highway Authority.--Chitraltoday.com

Naib nazim resigns over minister's remarks

Report Bashir Hussain Azad, Chitral

District Naib Nazim and convener of the District Council Chitral Sultan Shah has tendered resignation from the post against some remarks passed by Provincial Minister Saleem Khan about the house on Thursday.

Earlier, the minister had been invited to address the house, which was on its monthly session at the end of which some members of the house asked questions from him. Some of the pinching questions irritated the minister who said he was not answerable to the house, and with this left the house. The house members then made a rumpus objecting to the remarks of the minister on which the convener announced his resignation and said with the insult of the house he would not like to chair its session any more. Sources in the Council secretariat said as per procedure, the resignation of the convener is being sent to the District Nazim for further action.--Chitraltoday.com

Unesco urged to save ancient sites in Mastuj

Report Bashir Hussain Azad, Chitral

Public representatives and social circles including Noor Wali Shah, Zaffarullah, Maj (r) Ahmed Said, Rehmat Ghafoor Baig and Bulbul have asked Unesco and the archaeology department aswell as Hazara University to save the important archaeological site of Lakhapo Dok in Mastuj from the land mafia who want to construct a rest house on it.

Addressing a press conference here, they said on the plateau of Lakhap, the remains of the Gandhara grave culture have been found by the archaeologists which are of rare nature. They said the archaeological sites should be preserved as national cultural heritage and their excavation must be carried out so that the history of the people could be traced on scientific lines. They said the archaeology department of Hazara University is busy in the excavation of such sites in many parts of the district and Mastuj was yet to be included in their list. They said some quarters in the district had aborted it and wanted to raise a rest house at the site. They said the construction over the archaeological treasure will be a great national loss of heritage. They also urged the Unesco high-ups to protect the sites and include it in world heritage.--Chitraltoday.com

save ancient sites of Chitral

This is with reference to a news item about “Aryan grave site in Chitral”. The news item reveals the department of archaeology is engaged in excavating important archaeological sites in various districts of NWFP including Chitral. I would like to draw the kind attention of the federal and the NWFP governments, the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organisation (Unesco) towards the proposal of the construction of officers' mess and guesthouse at the important archaeological site of “Lakhapo Dok” in Mastuj, district Chitral. The site is situated on 200 feet high mound with the remains of graves dating back to 600 BC. It is pertinent to mention that NWFP government constructed the building of a high school on another archaeological site at Brep, in Mastuj tehsil of Chitral, in 1978. "Noghoro Dok” in Brep houses the remains of a 2nd century AD fort and Budhist relics of great significance. I appeal to the culture department, archaeology department and Unesco to play their active role in protecting the 600 BC archaeological site of “Lakhapo Dok” from being raised to ground in order to erect an unnecessary officers mess and guesthouse at the site

Bashir Hussain Azad

Chitral
Chitraltoday.com

Govt advised against Kabul route for power import

Dawn

By Zar Alam Khan



ISLAMABAD, Aug 3: Elected representatives of Chitral have called upon the government not to yield to international pressure and go for the shortest and most viable Wakhan-Chitral route for the proposed import of electricity from Central Asia.

Talking to this correspondent, MNA Shahzada Mohiuddin, MPA Ghulam Mohammad and Mastuj Tehsil Nazim Shahzada Sikandar ul Mulk said Pakistan should not take risk on the vital national project by acceding to the proposal to opt for the Afghanistan route.

They pointed out that for the NWFP such an initiative also translated into opening up of a much-needed second trade corridor along the Khyber Pass, as the proposed route was not only geographically closer to Tajikistan and Kryghistan but was also very secure since it had remained peaceful throughout the three decades of war and strife in Afghanistan.

The World Bank estimates the project cost at around $600 million.

Given NWFP's close proximity to Tajikistan by a mere 35km, that is the distance separating Chitral from the Central Asian country, it becomes the natural choice for laying the high voltage transmission line via Boroghil Pass, the very junction separating the Amu Darya (Oxus River) from River Chitral (better known as Kabul River in NWFP).

They said on the Chitral side, a jeep track already exists up to Chikar (Petch Utz) at a distance of only 11km from Boroghil right across which a truck-able road exists on the Afghan side of Darwaza. The Tajik border town of Langar is a mere 13km away from Darwaza while the distance from Chitral's border to Khorog, the provincial capital of GABO (Gorno-Badakshan Autonomous Oblasc), is just 13 km – all having a truck-able road.

Moreover, Chitral is already linked with the national power grid and the transmission line via the valley would cover only 700km to reach Peshawar.

One of the proposed routes for the power import will run through Afghanistan’s Kunduz province, Salang Pass and Jalalabad before reaching Peshawar, stretching 170km in Tajikistan, 430km in Afghanistan and 50km in Pakistan.

In contrast, they said, the Wakhan-Chitral route would run 370km in Tajikistan, only 30km in the Wakhan corridor of Afghanistan and 310km in Pakistan.

They said policy makers would have to think twice about the Afghanistan route, as even Nato and Afghan forces have been unable to ensure their supply lines from Pakistan.

Another proposed route would run via the Ishkuman valley of the Northern Areas covering 70 per cent hard rock and pass through three major glaciers and three mountain ranges – Karakoram, Hindukush and Himalayas – before covering around 1,300 kilometers to reach Pakistan's nearest national grid.

The Northern Areas currently has no link with the national grid and work on the Basha-Diamer Dam will take at least 10-15 years. In contrast, if the transmission line were to follow the natural plateau of the Boroghil route into Chitral, it encounters no glaciers and follows the river bank with no mountain passes at all.

Interestingly, studies by the German organisation GTZ put Chitral's power generation capacity at 6,000-8,000 megawatts, making it a potential source of cash to propel the national economy.

Indigenous electricity generated from River Chitral, the NWFP's largest river, can be added to the same Central Asian transmission line, making it a dual purpose and cost-effective proposition, they added.

Without electricity, the province’s industrialisation through the creation of US-sponsored Reconstruction Opportunity Zones will also remain a pipe dream and so will be the desire to wean people away from militancy into gainful employment.

They said Americans who were encouraging the project to resolve the power crisis in Pakistan should also be keen to boost the economy of the NWFP by linking it to Central Asia. Upon completion, this route will also supplement the province’s income side-by-side the Khyber Pass as both the northern and southern portals of the Lowari tunnel meet around November this year

Helicopter to the roof of the world

As part of an ongoing series, Ray Nayler blogs about life in Central Asia.


Every Wednesday and Friday in Tajikistan, weather permitting, the Aga Khan foundation flies a helicopter from Dushanbe to the remote city of Khorog, in the Pamir mountains at an elevation of 2200 meters (7,200 feet) above sea level. If space allows, and you happen to work for an NGO here in Tajikistan, and have some business in the autonomous region of Gorno-Badakshan, you can sometimes get a ride. Gorno-Badakshan is the home of the Pamiri peoples, Ismail Muslims whose native languages are a series of obscure Eastern Iranian offshoots with fewer that 100,00 native speakers, Anya and I were lucky enough last Friday to benefit from the Aga Khan’s largesse, and hitched a ride on the helicopter to Khorog, where we planned to conduct recruiting for one of our programs as well as a re-entry seminar for our FLEX alumni, high school students freshly returned from the United States, in this remote corner of Tajikistan.


To use the phrase hitched a ride makes it sound as if it was easy, but there were, as always in Tajikistan, a number of bureaucratic hurdles to jump through, from getting permission for entry to the Gorno-Badakshan Autonomous Region to getting space on the helicopter itself. But all of the bureaucratic hassles melt away as the sleek Bell lifts from the Dushanbe runway and the ragged patchwork of agriculture at the edges of the capitol, the rusty bones of industry and scrapyards, give way to crenellated hills and wide, drying river beds with ribbons of water veining through them, reflecting the sun like mirrored glass. The helicopter banks gracefully southeast as the passengers, ears muffled in protective headphones against the engines’ roar, settle in to some of the most spectacular scenery the world has to offer.

As we move further from the capitol, the mountains grow drier, more violently twisted from the flatlands below, and more imposing. Knife-ridges of rock lay exposed to the eroding wind, and layers of sediment hardened to granite lay tilted to the sky by tectonics. From far off, it appears as if the loose earth is running down the mountains like water. Soon we are flying not over but through the mountains, with grey sentinels rising around us and white flashes of snow that grow, over time, to glaciers grinding their way down the mountainsides and, as we hover over Afghanistan, sawblade ridges of stone outside our windows. Below, the Pyandzh River winds its course, and villages nestle up to, splashes and streaks of cultivated green in the arid, twisting scene.

On the Tajik side of the border, the houses are soviet-style, of concrete or sometimes mud-brick, their pitched roves clad in corrugated tin or fiberglass. On the Afghan side, the mudbrick homes are more chaotically aligned, their rooves flat, and they cling to the mountainsides more closely, reserving the scarce flatland for little amoeba-shaped fields fed by canals from the mountain rivers. On a trip by car to Bamyan from Kabul a few years ago I got a closer view of these canals, which provide a lifeline to the little mountain communities along the arid river valleys. The canals angle less steeply from the riverbed, along the base of the mountain. The Pyandzh River valley, above which we are now flying, receives less that 8 inches of water in a year. It is snowmelt which feds the river. Below the line of the canal, everything is green. Above it, there is no vegetation at all. The helicopter makes a steep turn over the Pyandzh River and comes gently to rest on the cracked tarmac of the Khorog airport.

“Welcome to Khorog.” A man with a nametag around his neck and several gold teeth whisks away our passports and permissions with a grin. Just four hours later, our small mission in this remote city smothered in poplar trees finished, we lift off again, crossing the flowing border between the two countries in the air, and follow the river back toward home. Some journeys really are about the trip, rather than the destination.