KARACHI CHRONICLE: Who planned Zulfiqarabad?

Zulfiqarabad is a mega city project for Sindh, planned as a future rival to Karachi, that is, if it ever gets off from the blueprint stage. The "if" in this case is a very big IF. Experts of development economics, environmentalists, fisherfolk, camel breeders and a handful of farmers would like to see the project scrapped or relocated elsewhere in the province.
There is a blueprint of sorts, roughly indicating where on the map Zulfiqarabad will be located. It will be East of Karachi somewhere on the coastal strip of the Indus delta including part of the inland area, in Thatta District.
The province certainly needs several new cities. The existing cities are old, overpopulated, chaotic in townplan which makes development of them into efficient modern cities impossible. But Zulfiqarabad is ill-conceived, atleast in the choice of location. Since nothing more has been done to flesh out the plan it seems Zulfiqarabad is nothing more than a pompous, self-important piece of wishful thinking of the leaders of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). The leaders seem to be saying: What do these arrogant Karachiwalas think; we will build a city better than theirs. There seems to be no other reason why they selected the site of the proposed city.
It will be a city by the sea, but the place is unsuitable because the coastal strip of the Indus delta has seventeen major and innumerable minor creeks, criss-crossing the mudflats. Almost 160,000 hectares are covered by mangrove forests, making it the largest arid zone mangrove forest in the world. This ecoregion was environmentally healthy fifty years ago as it received sufficient flow of fresh water. Dams barrages and canals built upstream on the Indus River has turned the area into a desert, unable to support coastal marine life or human habitation of the magnitude of a mega city. Once capable of having pasturage and cultivable land, the area is now too dry even for camel breeding. Most breeders have already switched to fishing. The fisherfolk are not faring much better either, since the mangroves are dying, their thick forests have been chopped down by timber mafia, the shortage of fresh water to sustain growth of mangroves and coastal marine life is virtually nil. So what will be the life support system of Zulfiqarabad? Or is it to be a city of the dead, a necropolis? Thatta certainly does not need another; it already has one on the Makli Hills.
The proposed urban development at this location was probably because of the availability of land and the potential of reclaimable land. But the argument cannot be justified because a major portion is a protected mangrove, while the remaining land is under some form of communal or private ownership. So, in fact, the land is not available morally or ethically.
Perhaps this did not phase those who planned Zulfiqarabad. Who are the planners? Are they the land mafia? Are they builders who plan to do exactly what they have done to the coastal area of Karachi? They drained the creeks, they reclaimed land to set up posh residential schemes. At Zulfiqarabad it will mean destroying mangroves, pushing out the fisherfolk, denying them the right to set up jetties. All that will happen should Zulfiqarabad become a development project at last. The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) is already protesting, but they are unimportant people. They are highly organised but lack clout to fight land grabbers. Ditto the environmentalists, even if they are linked to the toothless guardian of the Indus delta: called Indus Delta Ecoregion or IDER.
There is also geological and metrological hazards to consider. Building Zulfiqarabar at the selected location would expose future inhabitants to earthquakes. It will be closer to the heart of the seismic disturbances that originate in the Kuchchh region of India. Karachi is 300 km north-west of this danger zone but Zulfiqarabad location proximates the epicenter of various past earthquakes.
Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations in his farewell message said: We know human communities will always have to face natural hazards, whether floods, droughts, storms or earthquakes. But today's disasters owe as much to human activities as to the forces of nature. Indeed the term "natural" is increasingly misleading.
Zulfiqarabad is an unsound project that will force people to live in harms way, on flood plains on the delta and an earthquake-prone area. I, for one, am glad the project has not gone beyond grandiloquence of PPP leadership.