'No Doubt' India and U.S. are Behind Pakistan Flood Disaster
Could it be that India - with
American backing and Afghan connivance - has engineered the worst flooding in
Pakistan's history? And to what end? Call it a conspiracy theory or call it an
analysis, but columnist Ahmed Quraishi of Pakistan's Pak Tribune
outlines how India, by opening up dams it controls up-river from Pakistan,
is the cause of flooding that has affected up to 20 million Pakistanis and
covered almost a fifth of the country.
Map of dams included in the Indus Waters Treaty, a water-sharing agreement between India and Pakistan, brokered by the World Bank. Signed in 1960, the treaty was a result of Pakistani fear that since the source rivers of the Indus basin were in India, it could potentially create droughts and famines in Pakistan, especially at times of war.
There is a very sinister
aspect to the flooding in Pakistan that no one in the media is discussing.
While there were rains and flooding in some rivers of the country, the size,
scale and gush of water suddenly pumped into these rivers defies logic. This is
especially true considering that rains have slowed down since the breakout of
the floods on July 29.
It has been two weeks since
the rains stopped but the Indus and Chenab rivers continue to rise. Further,
there was no flooding in India or in Afghanistan. Never before have rivers in
all the provinces of Pakistan flooded at the same time without a similar act affecting
sources upstream. While some parts of the country, including areas of Khyber Pakhtun Khwa,
saw flooding in 1929, the simultaneous flooding of all of the rivers flowing in
from Afghanistan and Indian-occupied Kashmir is something truly unprecedented.
The speed and quantity of the
gushing water, and the short span of time in which it picked up momentum,
precludes the possibility that melting glaciers are solely responsible for the
floods. There is no evidence to suggest that the glaciers decided to melt at a
faster speed just in time for the heavy monsoon rains.
There is no doubt
that for the first time, what we are seeing today is that the Indians and
U.S.-backed regime in Kabul are using water as a weapon to deluge Pakistan.
From an initial look at the
data, it seems that a natural spill of heavy rain was exploited by releasing
water reservoirs in Indian-occupied Kashmir and on the Kabul river. Let’s
remember that the Meteorological Office
in Pakistan had already forecast heavy rains almost ten days before the first
downpour. Different people received this news in different ways. Pakistani
politicians, inept and incompetent as usual, slept through it. The
anti-Pakistan terrorists, based on Afghan soil and supported by several
countries, used this information to exacerbate terror against Pakistani
citizens in the southwestern province of
Baluchistan, knowing that the state machinery would be distracted.
Interestingly, even when it
comes to water, it is Indians who are sitting to the left and right of
Pakistan’s borders and controlling its flow. The dam on the Kabul river is handled
by Indian personnel, while tens of dams choke Pakistan from Indian-occupied
Kashmir.
RIVER KABUL
In February, the Obama
Administration organized a meeting for senior government officials in Kabul and
Islamabad who handle agricultural issues. Strangely, at U.S. request, the
meeting was held in Doha, Qatar. The agenda was to force Pakistanis to grant
agricultural concessions to the U.S.-propped government in Kabul, without
Pakistan getting anything in return.
But in the meeting, Mr. Zahoor
Malik, a senior bureaucrat leading the Pakistan delegation, raised the issue of
an Indian company with close links to the Indian government building a dam on
the Kabul river near the border with Pakistan. It isn't clear what the
Americans and Karzai’s officials had to say about this. There is a track
record, however, of the incumbent pro-U.S. government in Islamabad sweeping
such issues under the rug so as not to jeopardize Washington’s support for the
Zardari government.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
All
major rivers flowing into Pakistan, including the Indus, are blocked by
Indian-built dams.
U.S. and British officials
often defend India and dismiss Pakistani concerns as "conspiracy
theories." Some Pakistani analysts accuse elements within U.S. government
and intelligence of using Afghan soil against Pakistan.
But imagine this: India, a
country that faces a debilitating conflict over Kashmir with Pakistan, builds
tens of small- and medium-sized dams on every river flowing into Pakistan, and
everything is supposed to work out smoothly? Not possible, even theoretically.
But revealingly, Indian actions on the ground more than strengthen Pakistani
concerns.
After the first wave of
floods, most rivers were flowing normally and no extraordinary rains followed.
But suddenly, the Chenab and Indus Rivers overflowed and the flow picked up
speed, turning into a flood. India’s Baghliar Dam in occupied Kashmir opened
its flood gates to cause a tragedy on the plains of Pakistan [Sindh and
Punjab]. The Sarobi Dam - the Indian-maintained dam near Kabul - controls the
flow of the Kabul River entering Pakistan. The same thing happened there.
Monsoons didn't lash Afghanistan and there was no flooding there of any
magnitude. But again, strangely, water flowing from the Kabul River into
Pakistan dramatically picked up speed as water levels increased, turning into a
flood. The speed with which this transformation occurred could only have
happened due to one of two reasons: massive rains in Afghanistan or the release
over a sustained period by the Sarobi Dam of large amounts of water.
PAKISTANI POLITICIANS
The Awami National Party
[ANP], an organization allied to the U.S. with strong ties to Kabul and New Delhi
which rules Pakistan's North-West
Frontier Province, has always opposed the construction of the Kalabagh Dam, which would
have saved thousands of lives and property had it been there. The ANP has
argued that building the dam would drown the city of Nowshehra. Ironically,
ANP’s lie was exposed when not only Nowshehra but also Charsadda drowned
without the Kalabagh Dam being there, thanks to the artificial floods created
along the Kabul River by ANP’s Indian and Afghan patrons.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
(Earlier this year,
Washington and New Delhi came to the ANP’s defense on the Kalabagh Dam project
by lobbying the World Bank to refuse Islamabad’s request for funding the dam.
The Bank obliged and said it can’t fund the project due to Indian objections.)
OUR RESPONSE
How Pakistan responds to this
latest Indian water war and aggression is something that remains to be seen.
What is certain is that the incumbent pro-U.S. government in Islamabad is
useless when it comes to defending Pakistani interests. To be fair to this
government, this unusual situation in Islamabad started under former President
Musharraf and continues with the current "elected" government with
amazing continuity. This water aggression has proved more lethal than the Tehrik-i-Taliban
Pakistan [the so-called Pakistani Taliban] and the Baluchistan
Liberation Army [BLA] insurgencies, both of which were spring boarded from
Afghanistan to punish Pakistan.
Pakistan has taken another
serious hit, more from its corrupt rulers than external enemies. These Indian
Dams now need to be destroyed. India has declared war on us by exploiting and
orchestrating these floods.
