Bajaur blockade to hurt Chitralis too

By Zar Alam Khan

ISLAMABAD: Nestled among the Hindukush mountains, the district of Chitral has so far remained unaffected by the war on terrorism. But in the coming winter the Chitralis are likely to be locked up in their rugged valley due to the blockade of the Kunar-Bajaur route which they have been using as an alternative to the over 10,000-foot-high Lowari Pass from December to May every year.
When the Lowari road connecting Chitral with other parts of the country remains closed due to hundreds of feet deep snow for about five months in winter, the people of the district take the alternative route via Afghanistan’s Kunar province and enter the Bajaur Agency via the Nawa pass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to reach other parts of the country. However, the ongoing military operation has made Bajaur a no-go area this year.
To avoid being completely cut-off from rest of the world, the residents of Chitral have demanded that the government should make special arrangements for resolving their communication-related problems before the closure of the only road linking the valley with the rest of the country via the Lowari Pass.
In this regard, they stressed the need to increase the number of PIA flights from Peshawar and Islamabad besides starting a helicopter service like one launched in 1996 between upper Dir and Drosh in Chitral by the then NWFP government.
They warned that if the PIA suspended the Islamabad-Chitral flights on the pretext of unavailability of passengers this year again, they would launch a protest movement against the government.
It may be noted that the PIA had launched its Chitral service from the federal capital in June last year on the repeated demands of the residents to lessen their communication problems besides facilitating foreign tourists visiting the area. However, the national-flag carrier suspended the operation in November 2007 citing lack of passengers. The Chitralis, however, alleged that some elements in the PIA were opposed to the initiative and had tried from the very beginning to sabotage the service by denying tickets to the intending passengers and inflicting losses on the corporation.
They said the PIA was also to be blamed for the lack of passengers on the Islamabad-Chitral flight because neither it had publicised the launch of the service nor facilitated the intending passengers in getting tickets. Besides, to discourage the passengers it kept the fare at Rs3,600 against Rs2,900 for Gilgit which is situated at a longer distance from Islamabad than Chitral. The people of Chitral pointed out that the return flights from their town always remained full to capacity while ticket seekers in the PIA’s Rawalpindi and Islamabad offices were turned away on one pretext or the other.
They called upon their public representatives to take up the issue with the government to ensure uninterrupted flights to the district till the under-construction Lowari tunnel becomes operational.
Posted by ZAK at 8:26 PM 0 comments
Upper Chitral residents to pay bills locally
PESHAWAR: On the directives of NWFP Minister for Population Weflare Saleem Khan, the consumers of Upper Chitral will have the facility of paying electricity bills at local branch of post offices. Earlier, the residents of the far-flung areas of Upper Chitral had to travel long enough to the specific branches of scheduled banks to pay the electricity bills. To pay a bill of almost Rs 50 or Rs100, the people of the far-flung areas had to spend three to four hundred rupees every month in respect of travel charges which caused great trouble for the poor masses of the area besides the wastage of time.

The people of the area have expressed pleasure and thanked the provincial minister for taking keen interest in solving their problems. On this occasion, the provincial minister in a statement issued from Peshawar said solving the basic problems of the people of Chitral was the top-most priority of the present government for which he would strive at every level. The minister appreciated the efforts of Post Master General and Managing Director SHYDO in resolving the issues of the consumers of Upper Chitral.--PPI
Posted by ZAK at 8:23 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Chitral colleges lack hostel facilities
By Zahiruddin

CHITRAL: Lack of hostel facilities in the public sector colleges has forced a good number of students to discontinue their studies, the parents complained.
Talking to this correspondent on Tuesday, they said for the population of about 500,000, there were only four colleges in the district. One of which is situated at Booni (upper Chitral) and the rest is located in the district headquarters.
The parents regretted that the government degree college Booni faced the acute shortage of teaching staff as a result of which the students thronged to the colleges in the Chitral city. The total capacity of the five hostels of the three colleges in the city is said to be about 400 while the strength of the students enrolled in the colleges is about 2,400.
The government started second shifts in two of the colleges last year to ensure the admission of more students but these students could not avail of the hostel facility, they said.
Because of absence of the hostel facility, the students from the distant villages of Chitral preferred to not take admission in the colleges.
As for the female colleges, the situation is more dismal as there is only one public sector college in the district and the total capacity of its hostel is about 50 which is too short to cater to the needs of the whole district.
Many parents from the upper Chitral said that due to the unavailability of hostel facility, they were forced to get the admission of their daughters cancelled and take them back to their villages.
The parents said that although colleges in the private sector offered hostel facilities but a very few parents could afford to bear the high expenses.
According to them, the private colleges’ hostels are overburdened and the boarders are forced to live in congested atmosphere. A boarder of a college hostel said the capacity of his room is four but six students live there as the college administration has to oblige more number of students to save their futures.
Meanwhile, sources in the higher education department said that for the last fifteen years, not a single hostel had been added to the colleges while the number of students had increased manifold.
Posted by ZAK at 9:25 AM 0 comments
Over 75,000 children to be administered polio drops
In a meeting held here on Tuesday with Chitral DCO Mutasim Billah Shah in the chair, recommended steps to make the upcoming polio campaign successful by administering vaccine to 75,682 children in the district.
The health department officials told the meeting that 231 mobile teams had been constituted to cover the whole district while transit centers would be established at the city airport and two border areas of Ashrait and Shandur. The campaign will commence from October 13 and continue for three days.
The Chitral DCO emphasised the need of reaching maximum number of people to make them realise the importance of the national immunisation days to ensure their active participation. He assured all-out support from the district government to make the campaign a success.
Posted by ZAK at 9:23 AM 0 comments
Monday, October 6, 2008
Trade corridor: paradigm shift we’ve been waiting for?
An official of the World Bank in Islamabad says the Bank is ready to lend Pakistan $2.25 billion for a trade and energy corridor focusing mostly on Gwadar Port and its land link with China: “the trade and energy corridor that would serve as a gateway for commerce and transport between South Asia, Central Asia, China and the Gulf countries”. In this proposed scheme of things, Pakistan will set up a big oil terminal and refineries at Gwadar with Chinese help because most of the oil will be transported to China from there.

But the World Bank official has made other observations too: “Any land-based trade between the Gulf region and the South Asian states can best take place through Pakistan. The country would work as a link between the Gulf region, Iran, Afghanistan, China and Central Asia and that would make regional states natural trading partners. Pakistan is the ideal approach for the shipment of Indian goods to Afghanistan and the Central Asian markets”. Hopefully we can add the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline to the above project(s) after the complex tripartite negotiations on it are successfully concluded.

But a much more important thing happened during President Asif Ali Zardari’s meeting with the Indian prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, in New York. The report says: “The two met on sidelines of the 63rd United Nations General Assembly session and announced a mutual agreement on a number of vital business-related issues. On top of everything else came Pakistan’s agreement to allow Indians an overland access to Afghanistan.”

The trade corridor was first spoken of by General Musharraf in one of his enlightened moments. He was thinking in paradigmatic terms, about converting Pakistan into a trading hub for the regions lying around it. Since he had begun to build the Gwadar Port — not first conceived by him, let us admit — the network of roads and railway tracks branching from the port seemed to leave India out. But later he began to speak in more general terms and was once privately in favour of conceding the Indian request that a corridor be given it for trading with Central Asia.

But the idea of the Indian corridor got stuck because Gen Musharraf deferred to the “defence” angle and abstained from delinking it from Kashmir, despite having established the precedent of delinking the IPI from Kashmir. As a general, he probably realised that he might be standing on the edge of an identity-change of the state of Pakistan. But equally as a general, perhaps he realised the limits of how far he could go in changing the country from a warrior state to a trading nation.

There are two ways of looking at “geopolitical importance”, or two ways of deriving benefit from it. One is the “civilian” approach which means the geographically important state has to develop its roadways and railways, and other infrastructure such as hotels, to facilitate those who wish to pass through. Once the geographically “connective” state has become an effective corridor of passage, its “strategic” importance no doubt increases. And the dividend of this importance comes in economic terms and through an absence of war.

The other way is the “military” approach which relies on geography as “hindrance” rather than “connection”. The military mind says: we are in the middle and we will not let you pass unless you agree to our terms. (To India, we say let’s resolve Kashmir before we talk free trade.) In Pakistan’s case, this approach is often cited also as a raison d’etre for being a military dominated national security state. This is a warrior’s approach and signalises his preference for selective militarism as opposed to generalised economic betterment. In the case of Pakistan, it is the military view of geopolitical importance that has held sway.

Pakistan as a nuclear power is eminently suited to becoming a trade corridor with capacity to lay down the terms compatible with its economic interest. The Central Asian market may be small at this moment and it may be tough for India to compete with China there, but in the coming years the region of SAARC will take what is its due in Central Asia on the basis of shared history and civilisation. Afghanistan has already decided where it wants to stand by joining SAARC. The free trade project of the SAARC “common market” will finally integrate it to South Asia. The Central Asians will follow.

The smuggling that takes place between Pakistan and Afghanistan now supplies markets in Central Asia. The flour Pakistan loses to the region northwest of it will no longer be smuggled because the support price of wheat is now linked to the international price. The next stage is Pakistan organising the Central Asian food supply on the strength of its trade corridor and making the middleman’s money out of it.--Daily Times
Posted by ZAK at 9:59 PM 0 comments
Lowari tunnel will be opened this winter
By Zahiruddin

CHITRAL: The first phase of the Lowari tunnel project will be completed in the first week of December, which is likely to be opened for traffic after closure of the Lowari Pass in winter.
Talking to journalists at an Eid Milan party here on Monday, District Nazim Maghfirat Shah said completion of the project’s phase-I would be an historical day for Chitral, which would be celebrated as ‘thanksgiving day’.
He said the day would be declared a public holiday in the district and programmes would be arranged in Drosh, Chitral city and Booni. He said preparations had been started by the district government to celebrate the day in a befitting manner.
The nazim said the second phase of the project would commence soon. He said that in the previous years, the people of Chitral used to travel through the Kunar province of Afghanistan and the Mohmand Agency in winter due to closure of the Lowari Pass, but it would not be possible now due to the volatile situation both in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan.
He said the National Highway Authority high-ups had agreed to facilitate passengers through the under-construction tunnel after completion of its first phase. He said NHA buses would offer shuttle service to transport passengers through the tunnel, which would be available twice a day.