MR. SHAMSUL MULK, former WAPDA Chairman and a Provincial Minister in the Caretaker Government, is rated as a top ranking expert on water resources. The international organizations highly respect his views on the subject. throughout, he has been a strong supporter of the proposed Kalabagh Dam which, in his view, is not only beneficial for Pakistan but has potential of turning hundreds of thousands acres of barren lands in Dera Ismail Khan and four other adjoining districts of NWFP into prosperous agricultural farms. He has participated in several TV programmes including panel discussions on merits and demerits of the controversial mega dam project which he insists should have been built several years ago if sever irrigation water shortages are to be avoided. Though shy of publicity and TV appearances, Mr. Shamsulk Mulk is prepared to take on any expert if the KBD project were to be examined from a technical viewpoint. He does not care about the sentimental utterances of opponents of the project and dismisses these as irrelevant maintaining that those who are raising their voices against the project have not even a foggiest idea of the technicalities involved and the urgency for building big water resources.
Unfortunately, a small lobby of politicians from Charsaddah and Nowshera areas has repeatedly called Mr. Shamsul Mulk a traitor. The former WAPDA chief is not bothered or scared. He says while he is a great admirer of Bacha Khan, he feels sorry that Bacha Khan’s successors are not taking up the cause of Pathans. In fact, he insists that they are trying to serve their own vested interests. NWFP to them is separate from Pakistan. National interests do not figure anywhere in their protests. One is tempted to ask as to who really is the traitor. The one who says that without additional water, country’s survival in the coming years is at stake or those who say that there should be no Kalabagh Dam which promises continued prosperity for all the provinces and the country. To denounce an eminent and conscientious expert who talks sense is not healthy politics. We believe that all our politicians have the love of the nation in their heart of hearts. It is though unfortunate that some have a myopic view of the big water resources proposed to be constructed to avoid some 38 million acre feet of river water flowing waste into the sea year after year when the capacity of existing big dams is reducing due to gradual accumulation of silt.
President Musharraf is sparing no effort to remove from public mind the misgivings created by a group of politicians. The reservations expressed by some circles in Sindh and NWFP are based not on facts but on presumptions and ill-advised advice. A technical issue has been unnecessarily politicized. No one denies that Pakistan does need more big water reservoirs. Let the experts decide which one to come up first.

Working for a legacy

Ariel Sharon may be an increasingly ill old man, but it is fast becoming clear what he wants his political legacy to be: He wants to be the premier who sets Israel’s illegal frontiers in concrete across Palestinian land and do so while the world looks on and congratulates him for being reasonable. Every Israeli leader has protested moderation in public. Meanwhile the government machine continues with pretty much the same hard-line policies regardless of who is in power. Only one man, Yitzhak Rabin, looked as if he might have abandoned the traditional Zionist political script — and he was shot dead.
But Sharon, as befits the insubordinate general that he once was, has taken the duplicitous international face of Zionist politics and recast it in himself, as an amiable, avuncular figure, tough but fair and sadly forced to take difficult repressive decisions because of Palestinian anarchy and violence. Sharon looks at the world’s cameras and says, “If only things could have been different — if only the Palestinians had been more reasonable, more grateful.” Then a crocodile tear slides down his cheek. It is hard to believe that this is the same Sharon who pulled his men back to allow Christian militiamen to commit mass murder in the Palestinian-Lebanese refugee camps in Shatilla and Sabra. Yet Sharon’s new Kadima Party, which pundits believe is set to win the coming general elections, is being presented by the world’s media as a moderate alternative to radical Zionism. It is no such thing.
Sharon’s Gaza pullout was a military and administrative necessity, not an act of political sacrifice and generosity. Dramatic proof of this comes because the Israeli Army has now declared a wide swathe of this territory returned to the Palestinians to be a free-fire zone. Yet Sharon is given huge credit by the Americans for giving back part of what Israel had stolen in return for hanging on to other stolen land. The “road map to peace” specifically freezes settler development. Yet since Israel headed into that overlong interregnum between elections, Sharon’s caretaker government had pushed through almost a thousand new permissions for internationally illegal settlements on Palestinian land.
These new developments, the wall, the new free-fire zone in the north of the Gaza Strip, the attempted ban on Palestinian voters in East Jerusalem, serve no purpose other than to provoke. Indeed it is arguably their sole purpose. What the Zionists want are strong extremist voices in the Palestinian community. They want Hamas to triumph in the upcoming elections because they know that they will never be forced by Washington to talk to Hamas. If on the other hand moderate opinion were to win through, then however much their American Zionist supporters might object, the international community would compel the Israelis to sit down and talk honestly to the Palestinians. This is the moment that every Israeli leader, except perhaps Rabin, has always dreaded. Sharon could crown his career by destroying moderate Palestinian opinion, and handing at least the next decade to radicals.

—Arab News