In Remote Pakistan Province, a Civil War Festers By CARLOTTA GALL Published: April 2, 2006 DERA BUGTI, Pakistan — Explosions at gas pipelines and railroad tracks are common in this remote desert region. Now, roadside bombs and artillery shells are, too. More than 100 civilians have been killed in recent months, along with dozens of government security forces, local residents and Pakistan's Human Rights Commission say.
This is the other front of Pakistan's widening civil unrest, not the tribal areas along the Afghan border where the United States would like the government to press a campaign against Islamic militants, but the restive province of Baluchistan, home to an intensifying insurgency.
It is here, say local leaders and opposition politicians, that Pakistan, an important ally in the United States' campaign against terrorism, has diverted troops from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban to settle old scores as it seeks to develop the region's valuable oil and gas reserves.
One visit makes it clear that, despite official denials, the government is waging a full-scale military campaign here. Rebel leaders say they have several thousand men under arms, fighting what they estimate are 23,000 Pakistani troops.
During a 24-hour trek on camel, horse and foot across the rugged, stony terrain in early March, the fighting was plain to see. Military jets and surveillance planes flew over the area, and long-range artillery lighted up the distant night sky.
This fight is altogether separate from the Taliban insurgency on Afghanistan's border or the Shiite-Sunni violence that sporadically flares in and around the provincial capital, Quetta, and it threatens to dwarf the nation's other conflicts.
It is about the ethnic rights and self-rule of the Baluch people, who are distinct among Pakistanis. They speak their own language, Baluchi, which has its roots in Persian, and are probably the oldest settlers in the region.
In particular, tensions have been aggravated by President Pervez Musharraf's determination to develop the area's oil and gas fields, the largest in the country, as well as his aim to build a pipeline across the region to carry oil from Iran and a strategic deep sea port to expand trade with China, local residents say.
They charge that General Musharraf has shown little regard for their concerns and that for years their province has received paltry royalties on its resources, while remaining one of the country's poorest regions.
The government has branded two of the rebel leaders, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, nearly 80, and Balach Marri, 40, "miscreants," outlaws who oppose economic development to retain a hold over their tribes.
In an interview under the shade of a rocky overhang, Mr. Bugti and Mr. Marri, who share the names of the tribes they lead, dismissed the charges. They are not opposed to economic development, they said, but rather to the Pakistani government's military campaign to suppress them.
"The military government has imposed military rule and this has forced the Baluch to defend their land and resources against the might of the armed forces of Pakistan assembled in our area," Mr. Bugti said, perched in a carved wooden armchair as tribesmen sat around him cradling Kalashnikov rifles.
"The dispute is about the national rights of the Baluch," he added, "and if the government accepted these rights then there would be no dispute."
Mr. Bugti and others said that the government was using its American-supplied jets and helicopter gunships against them. They said they had found bomb fragments with "Made in U.S.A." stamped on them.
Indeed, huge craters and fragments from American-designed MK-82 bombs lay beside a badly damaged school in the village of Mararar, the results of a bombing raid that the Baluch fighters said had occurred at the beginning of March.
Another bombing raid on or around March 14 hit two bulldozers building a road, the fighters said. A collection of bomb fragments gathered by tribesmen from other raids revealed a "valve solenoid" made in New York, and part of a gas generator made in Mesa, Ariz. [page one of three]
Turkey under threat of desertification due to erosion
I was looking for something else and found this. Nothing is simple. There are some startling statistics in this text.
see also: Turkey is heading towards landscapes resembling the Sahara, Saudi Arabia, the Great Indian Desert, and Patagonia climates. #msg-6702724
-Am
Tuesday, April 4, 2006
ANKARA - Turkish Daily News
Turkey loses approximately 1.5 billion tons of soil every year to soil erosion, resulting in the early economic demise of dams accompanied by a decrease in water storage capacity, the Anatolia news agency reported.
According to General Directorate of Erosion Control and Forestation data, Turkey's geographical makeup increases the possibility of erosion, with the resultant damage not limited to a loss of soil.
Heavy erosion leads to the end of the economic life of dams that Turkey is building at great expense as part of its long-term plans to meet the country's energy needs. Solid matter that accumulates leads to considerable loss in the available reservoir capacity of the dam.
The economic life of a dam is normally 100 years; however, due to excessive erosion Altınapa Dam lost its usefulness in a mere 19 years, Bayındır Dam in 28, Demirköprü Dam in 41, Hirfanlı Dam in 33, Karamanlı Dam in 13, Kemer Dam in 22, Sürgü Dam in 35 and Yalvaç Dam in 27 years.
Many currently operating dams are under the effect of erosion and are expected to reach the end of their economic lives earlier than expected. Buldan Dam will be inoperable in 72 years, Çubuk-1 Dam in 75, Çaygören Dam in 77, Kesikköprü Dam in 66 and Seyhan Dam in 70 years.
Although important both for the region and the country, the Keban, Karakaya and Atatürk dams in the Southeast lack proper forestation in their immediate vicinities, leading to speculation that these dams will become useless earlier than anticipated.
The loss of soil is important, too, because it is the basic element in food production. Its creation takes an extremely long time, and it is also a natural resource that cannot be imported.
Turkey loses 1.4 billion tons of soil a year to erosion, equal to what could be carried by 70 million 20-ton capacity trucks, 500 million tons of it from agricultural areas alone.
Erosion steals not only soil but also water. Due to loss of soil, the ability to store water is reduced, amounting to 50 billion cubic meters less water every year in Turkey.
Together with the loss of soil, a large amount of mineral and organic deposits are also being carried away. Through erosion, the solid rock under the soil comes closer to the surface and the land starts to lose its ability to yield beneficial and fruitful soil, eventually leading to desertification. According to research conducted by NASA, if erosion continues at this accelerated rate, a major part of Turkey will have become desert by 2040. Other findings emphasizing the problem of erosion for Turkey:
1. The soil loses its ability to store water, giving rise to floods, which can result in considerable economic hardship and loss of life.
2. The amount of soil carried by rivers in Turkey is seven times higher than that carried by rivers in the United States, 17 times more than rivers in Europe and 22 times more than those in Africa.
3. Ninety percent of Turkey's land surface is exposed to erosion at varying levels.
4. Every year, 90 million tons of plants and nutrients are lost with soil erosion.
The birthplace of both agriculture and civilisation, Syria's Euphrates River is again facing turmoil and change - environmental as well as political. Fiona MacDonald travels to the ancient waterway.
Sheep along the Euphrates River in Syria. Credit: Fiona MacDonald
THE SUN HAD ALMOST dipped below the horizon as a shepherd brought his sheep to the banks of the great Euphrates River for a drink.
"Get your shoulders under the water," some of my companions called from the shore. Terrified of causing offence in my bikini, I dropped on my stomach and fought to stay submerged, kicking my legs and clinging to reeds on the river's rocky bottom to prevent being swept downstream by the deceptively strong current.
Some of my group bantered in Arabic with the shepherd as sheep faeces rushed past me, floating down towards the Iraqi border.
Once the last sheep had relieved itself and flicked its tail patronisingly towards me, I waded from the river, sat on the mat that would act as my bed and was quickly dried by Syria's hot, sandy air. I was camping in northeastern Syria, beside the river my archaeological guide Martin Makinson called the "lifeline of the Middle East".
Described in the Bible as one of the waters that flowed into the Garden of Eden, the Euphrates was agriculture's birthplace and one of the borders of Mesopotamia - long considered the cradle of civilisation. In Syria, the river is wide and shallow, but it changes drastically from its narrow, deep origins in the mountains of Turkey to its slow-flowing mouth in Iraq at the Persian Gulf.
Today it sustains flocks of shepherds who daily come to the river, but over millennia the Euphrates has supported many cultures. From the 1st century BC to the 6th century AD, the frontier of the great Roman and Byzantine Empires was just a few kilometres from where I now sat baking in the hot dry sun.
The river's once-verdant surroundings have been fought over by Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan's grandson and ruled by Babylonians, Assyrians, Persian Zoroastrians, Christians, and Muslims. In fact, many cultures have a history - through trade or conquest - that's intertwined with this region.
But now the land, and the river itself, is slowly transforming; damaged by changing climate, increasing human dominance of its resources, population growth and a long agricultural history. I came here to try to understand what had happened to the birthplace of civilisation and what the future might hold for this restless region.
The Euphrates' long history has littered its shores with an assortment of ruins, many of which show telltale signs of conquest and rebirth by various civilisations. From around 9000 BC until 700 AD, the shifting patch of land bordered on the north by the Tigris River and the south by the Euphrates - encompassing parts of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran - was known as Sumer, Akkad and Assyria to the locals and Mesopotamia to the Greeks.
It's widely accepted as the birthplace of both agriculture and urban culture, where writing, administration, city-states and empires began. While the Euphrates has sustained countless armies and civilisations, it has always been more than just a water source. "The Euphrates was actually the lifeline of Mesopotamian civilisation, throughout which urban culture, writing, language and city life spread into Syria and Anatolia from its homeland in current southern Iraq, around 3500 BC" says Makinson, an archaeologist from the University of Geneva who has worked on many Middle Eastern sites.
But long before the rise of cities, the Euphrates played its most important role. Around 9000 BC, it provided the stable flow of water that allowed humans to stop hunting and gathering, and begin domesticating plants and animals. Some of the first evidence of domestic plants has been found at now-flooded Syrian sites Jerf el Ahmar and Tell Mureybet, upstream from our campsite, where the Euphrates is wide and allows for easy irrigation. Over the next few millennia, agriculture spread along the river to Turkey and Iraq. Villages sprang up as large groups of humans found they could bunker down in the same spot without exhausting food supplies.
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