HUNZA LAKE - THE PAKISTANI TIMEBOMB?

This is an intro to a news story, about a similar natural dam burst on the Indus River, from 170 years ago, to what is now about to unfold in Pakistan - when the Hunza natural dam bursts. It is from the "far away" and idyllic days of 1840 - when Pakistan didn't exist and the British had not yet fully established their Indian Empire, but were in the final stages of doing so. But things may not be as idyllic in the present situation, as Pakistan's major hydroelectric dam - the Tarbela Dam - is just a few hundred miles downriver; it is Pakistan's electricity generating and irrigation mainstay. There is every likelihood it will be severely damaged, if not washed away - with consequences not only severely affecting those two infrastructural requirements, but also causing cataclysmic flooding. At 40 miles long, Tarbela Dam is the world's largest earth-filled dam, and was built for Pakistan by the an international consortium that included the Tennessee Valley Authority. Pakistan's most populous and grain producing areas, as well as industrial estates, line the banks of the Indus River, in what is known as the Indus Valley. Not only this, but some of Pakistan's key civilian-use nuclear power reactors such as the Chashma I and II are positioned on the banks of this river, and these are suspect by international observers as being of "dual use". So the situation is definitely different from that of 1840, when a Sikh army camped by the riverside was washed away...

I have decided to give the link, as well as include the story in full here:


[Hunza lake: history may repeat itself

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=240939
Monday, May 24, 2010

Bureau report

PESHAWAR: The risk of flood in Hunza, Gilgit and the downcountry as a result of the lake formed at Attaabad due to a landslide isn’t the first time that a natural disaster of such a big magnitude is posing threat to life and property in the area.

In 1840, a similar situation arose at Boonji in Gilgit area and caused a devastating flood. History buff Ali Jan has sent excerpts from Edward W Knight’s book, Where Three Empires: A Narrative of Recent Travel in Kashmir, Western Tibet, Gilgit and the Adjoining Countries, in which he writes about the 1840 flood. The book was published by Longmans, Green & Co., 1905.

The author Edward Knight wrote that the flood started in Gilgit after a landslide as a huge chunk of mountain fell into the River Indus, blocked the flow of water and formed a long and deep lake that burst and caused devastation. The flood not only damaged land and habitation downstream but it also swept away the Sikh army camping by the riverside in faraway Attock.

Ali Jan has also posed a question: Is history repeating itself? One hopes it doesn’t happen this time. Below is the relevant excerpt from that book: “Boonji signifies fifty in the language of these parts, and the name as it is said was given to this district because there were once fifty villages and considerable cultivation in the now desert vale of the Indus between the mouths of the Astor and Gilgit streams. An extraordinary flood in 1840, which is striking example of the huge scale of the convulsions of Nature in this region of gigantic mountains, was no doubt the primary cause of the present desolation. Near Hattu Pir, a whole mountain suddenly fell into the Indus, forming a great dam across the river, and preventing all outlets. The waters rose behind this dam for six months, flooding all the plain of Boonji and the valley of the Gilgit River, till a lake was formed 35 miles in length, and of great depth. At last, the rising lake reached the top of the dam, overflowed it, forced a breach, and then, with irresistible power, the immense mass of water opened a broad, deep channel through the opposing mountain. The liberated Indus once more rushed down its gorges and the last lake was drained in one day. Hundreds of miles away, the great wave of the flood overwhelmed a Sikh army that was encamped near Attock, and the loss of life and property all down the valley of Indus was beyond computation.”]

N.B: The Indus Valley is a huge area, 1700 miles long - and straddles the whole length of Pakistan right through the center, from top to bottom (Kamilov).

Below is a letter to the editor of the same newspaper - by a former princeling from one of Pakistan's defunct royal families, who has also served as provincial governor. He is from the Taliban-infested district of Swat, which was till 1969 an independent principality. He goes by one name, Aurangzeb. He has this to say about the dam now poised above the head of Pakistan:

[Never in a hurry

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=240831

Sunday, May 23, 2010

We are never in a hurry. It is five years since the earthquake destroyed the Margalla apartment building. Today it is as it was then and nothing has been done. The Shaheed-e-Millat building was burnt and it took CDA ten years to repair. I can go on giving examples of our inability, but right now the government is ignoring the catastrophe that is about to happen in Hunza. The huge lake formed by a landslide on the Hunza river is about to burst, the water destroying everything in its way, perhaps Tarbela dam also.

To add insult to injury, the newly appointed governor of Gilgit-Baltistan has said that the dam created by the landslide 'will not burst'. Despite what this lady says, I want to warn the government of the coming catastrophe for which no one will take responsibility -- neither she nor the minister for water and power.

Aurangzeb

Swat]


Finally, let me round this off by quoting the inevitable local two-bit conspiracy theorists who also have a say in all such things. There are rumours that the Pakistani government deliberately allowed the dam to form, so as to help "confound" US policy in the region...while I can't even for a minute stop to sense who will actually be confounded, and how laughably stupid Pakistani rumour mongers are - the idea also crossed my mind, but in a different way: that in allowing this to happen, it will help "wash away" a lot of the dirt that Pakistan's ruling classes having generated, have beset themselves with; they will be hoping with typical naïvete that this catastrophe washes away the attention from them, and gives them a breather to cling onto power anew - so as to repeat their sordid old story; but I can assure them that they needn't be so simplistic now - for this will be the catastrophe NEEDED to wash THEM away in their entirety - a biblical cleansing flood; this is actually the time-bomb that will herald THEIR demise...

THE REAL SECRET OF US GEOPOLITICS

Since its own oil production peaked and then began declining in 1970, the US gradually became aware that the world's petroleum supplies were limited and would run out eventually after peaking in output. This is called Peak Oil. Petroleum is the lifeblood of modern civilisation in every sense of the word. And that is not a sweeping exaggeration: its advanced technology and high living standards and mode of lifestyle all depend on it. After 1970 the US began to increase its imports of petroleum. Shortly after US production peaked and declined, the 1973 Arab oil embargo showed the Americans how vulnerable and disruptable its supplies of oil were. The US determined where the main global reserves existed, and began drawing up strategic plans for all these contingencies: Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Sheikdoms were the main focus, followed by Iraq and Iran and then the Soviet Union. In 1979, President Carter issued a policy statement proclaiming the right of the US to use force in the Persian Gulf region to defend its "interests" in oil, using the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as an excuse. This became known as the Carter Doctrine, and was to become the foundation for post-Cold War US policy after a short while, when the US was free of its Soviet entanglement. The US already had a firm footing in the Gulf Arab states and Saudi Arabia; Iraq was a variable, but options were being drawn up to tackle it; it was not a threat at the moment as it was involved in a war with Iran, with convenient US blessings. Thus it was being kept busy for later "treatment", while also engaging a US enemy. The US had stepped up its Cold War rivalry with the USSR using the Soviet action in Afghanistan as a convenient springboard. It hoped to bleed it dry there, and in doing so not only rid itself of its global adversary, but also eyed its vast petroleum potential - in reserves, being the second in the world after the Saudis. The USSR's clout in the world began declining for various reasons in the late 1980s - its defeat and pullout from Afghanistan, Gorbachev's reforms, and the START weapons treaty with the US in 1986. The Soviet Bloc began crumbling in the end of 1988. In that same year, the Iran Iraq war ended in a draw, and Saddam and his army's prestige was buoyed and his attention was freed, to contemplate other things. He was subtly being prodded and set up to annex Kuwait next, by the US with whispers of support -ostensibly to restore morale for his war weary army and nation and regain Kuwait's vast oil supplies, to which Iraq already had an irredentist claim. But this was a carefully contrived American gamble. Saddam Hussein was over-confident, and played into their hands. In 1990 began the Gulf War, and by 1991, it was over with America's Desert Storm having pulverised Iraq even further. The Soviet Union was in its terminal throes, and could pose no threat. The Anglo-American led "allies" set up aerial control and exclusion zones over Iraq, and Saddam and his regime was paralysed, but was allowed to remain in power - as a mere empty shell compared to its former status. It was to be reserved in this handy way, for future consideration. That same year the USSR finally gave way and "went the way of all flesh". President G.W. Bush grandly declared a New World Order of America's supreme overlordship over a "globalising world". The US had been eyeing the Soviet Caspian Sea and Russian oil reserves all along. Now with the demise of the USSR, the way to it was open. While the Russian reserves proper were on Russian territory and the Russian Federation was the USSR's successor - they would be relatively difficult to access and corporate guile would be employed to get at those. But the Caspian was a different case, as its region was now independent of Russian control, and comprised of several small states. But disappointment was to strike American planners, as a few years later it became apparent that the Caspian reserves were far less than had been presumed, and were of a far lesser quality. Still, in order to access the tremendous gas reserves in Turkmenistan, the US played its al-Qaeda and Taliban cards in Afghanistan, so as to use that shattered country as a pipeline conduit, which was to terminate in US ally, Pakistan. The US also permitted Pakistan to partner in this, and to pursue its own various jihadi policies in the region - in an auxiliary role to the main US plan for the region. After the Caspian disappointment, the US strategic planners realised that time was short, and alternate measures to secure oil had to be put in place. So now attention was quickly turned to Iraq, which was now tattered and in a state of limbo. The Taliban regime too, was proving increasingly intransigent in Afghanistan with its US-Pakistani handlers - and becoming a dangerous thorn in their sides. Many therefore say that the US "encouraged" and allowed the 9/11 attacks of 2001 to occur; they knew what the jihadis were brewing against them, but they permitted it to happen - so as to furnish them with the perfect excuse for setting the world aflame - during which melee they would gain an excuse to invade and take direct control of Afghanistan, to secure it as a future geopolitical staging post in the coming complex scenario. And 9/11 would also give them an excuse, albeit very pigheaded, to frame and then invade Iraq. The case in point being the WMD lie regarding Iraq's weapons potential. It fell through later, but it had served its triggering purpose. The 2003 Iraq war was all about oil. As detailed above, it had been on the US agenda for quite long, but when the US found that the Caspian reserves were worthless, the urgency regarding Iraq grew. In the end it will be pertinent to say that even in the case of the impossible scenario of the US appropriating the whole world's petroleum supplies, the rate at which they use - rather misuse - it, will ensure that it will all be depleted within this century. The global power of the US, and indeed its own existence, in the next few years is, therefore, in grave doubt.