Qabza groups rule OK
April 28, 2001
What is all this high-sounding nonsense that we write about, and read about, every day? What is this "rule of law", "criminal justice system", "right and wrong", "the writ of the state", "contempt of court", "majesty of law" crap that we go on about? Who gives a single solitary damn about any of this in the Land of the Pure? If there were not a few good men - I am sorry if this sounds very much like the horrible American movie, but it is an apt description - no one would. You can run from office to office, from law court to law court; you can worry yourself sick, you can cry your heart out. No one cares; no one gives one single hoot, if you don't have what it takes - moolah, as our Yank friends call it. But if you have money (read lots of money), you can do exactly as you please. Pakistan is heaven on earth for those who do wrong with impunity, provided they have the cash to spread around.
I have written many pieces on Qabza Groups, and many are the times that I have asked this government to please do something about them, for they cause much pain and hurt. They prey on the weak and the defenceless: the old, widows, orphans, and most of all, the poor. They are well-defined entities, these Qabza Groups - they operate out of construction parks that contain tractors, trolleys, dumper trucks, electricity generators (for they are mostly nocturnal animals - kind word - beasts, actually, occupying other people's property in the dead of night, these horrors who make up the Qabza Groups), cement, sand, aggregate, steel, the lot. One would think I am writing about a construction company; which is what they are, only that they build on other people's land, against the owner's wishes. They also have the worst specimens of humanity, thugs of every description, on their pay rolls. And weapons, lots of weapons - let alone the Kalashnikov, one notorious Qabza Group in Attock City, said to be once allied to the Sharif Mafia (now allied to the Like-Minded Mafia, I suppose) has a 7.62 MM heavy machine-gun or two! I know, because this Group took over my 70-year-old uncle's land two years ago (which is even now in its possession, mark), and the police would not go anywhere near them because of it.
Well, I have myself had a recent problem with land-grabbers bang opposite my home in Wah. About two years ago, a mechanical excavator - this thing on tracks which has an articulated bucket at one end of a long articulated boom - arrived and began to gouge out rubble and stones from the Dhamra River's bed, piling them on the far bank. I asked what was going on, and was told by the fellow supervising the work that they were raising their part of the riverbank, so that any construction that they might put up would be saved from the floods. Because one has always been taught to live and let live, I thought nothing of it - they were merely making the river a little deeper so that it would flow within its banks during the time that it floods violently. Or so I thought. What I did not notice was that they had also piled rubble under the Wah bridge, virtually under which I live on the GT Road, effectively cutting off the flow of the polluted (as you know because of my open letter to Omar Asghar Khan, which I might as well not have written for all the good it has done) water, through three spans and restricting it to just one span - thereby affecting just one pier of the bridge, the one nearest to my house. What I did not notice at the time was that the river which used to have a width of between 90 and 100 feet had, due to this gradual and completely illegal activity over the last two years during one of which I was not in Wah, been narrowed down to just 25 feet!
The long and the short of it is that when I finally understood the whole diabolical scheme I went to court for a stay order which was granted four days later!; moved an application with the District Administration; and also snitched, something we were taught at school never to do, on the builder to the National Highway Authority through the Minister for Communications, General Javed Ashraf Qazi. Well, the long and the short of that was that I found the minister most positive - he is probably the best minister in this government considering how he has turned the Railways around - who sent me to the Chairman of the NHA, another clear-thinking General.
The long and the short of it all was that the Assistant Commissioner, Taxila, a personable young man, a former soldier turned civil servant, came into play: he sent a revenue official who saw the problem for what it was, and who recommended the river course be opened up to save the people living along it from sure destruction at the next floods. Whilst the court's stay order had no effect on him at all, thanks to the Tehsil Administration the builder is finally but slowly (too slowly actually, doing nothing about the closed spans of the bridge) dismantling one part of the wall he had unauthorisedly built in the river. We live in hope.
But, what the devil is Omar Asghar Khan going on about? In an article announcing the National Environment Action Plan, in this paper of April 27, 2001 under the title 'Emerging ecological challenges' (surely "Emerged", Minister?), he tells us, in the very first paragraph that, "It is a fact that land, water and forests make up our life support systems"(!!). But don't we all know that to be a long-standing fact? He goes on to tell us that the "particular matter" contained in the air of the cities of Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad was 3.8 times higher than the Japanese standard, and 6.5 times higher than WHO guidelines. Living in the filth of what we have made of our country, don't we know this to be a fact, too? He goes on, quoting from a survey by Dr SL Hora which was conducted in 1919, and which said that there were 42 species of fish in the river Ravi: "but unplanned growth of the city of Lahore and poor environmental management have combined to contaminate this vital source of aquatic life." Well, so what? I too quoted from Skene Dhu's book dating back to 1923, and which dealt in particular to my little river! What did Minister Omar Asghar Khan do about that? Not only are the marble factories grinding away to glory and releasing marble sludge into the river; not only are the automobile service stations merrily going about polluting it with used motor oils and grease; not only are the industries up-river continuing to dump dangerous effluent (my last effort at laboratory analysis has come a cropper, with the lab suggesting the sample be sent abroad for detailed testing - they simply can't handle it!) into it; builders are actually seeking to block the River altogether.
But back to the Minister's article. The final straw is that penalties on industries, municipal authorities and government departments that are causing environmental damage is going to be last on NEAP's priority list!! Last? Shouldn't it be First, dash it all? I do think we have all had enough of politically correct nonsense, ie, NGO-friendly buzzwords: "capacity building"; stake-holders"; "cross-cutting themes"; "sustainable and equitable" and such rot. What this country is faced with are the carpet-bagging Qabza Groups, and the polluters of today. What we need is immediate action. Not high-sounding platitudes designed for a distant tomorrow.
The author is a retired army officer and a freelance columnist