������Ƶ

KHARO CHAN, Sindh: Salt crusts crackle underfoot as Habibullah Khatti walks to his mother’s grave to say a final goodbye before he abandons his parched island village on Pakistan’s Indus delta.

Seawater intrusion into the delta, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea in the south of the country, has triggered the collapse of farming and fishing communities.

“The saline water has surrounded us from all four sides,” Khatti told AFP from Abdullah Mirbahar village in the town of Kharo Chan, around 15 kilometers (9 miles) from where the river empties into the sea.

As fish stocks fell, the 54-year-old turned to tailoring until that too became impossible with only four of the 150 households remaining.

“In the evening, an eerie silence takes over the area,” he said, as stray dogs wandered through the deserted wooden and bamboo houses.

Kharo Chan once comprised around 40 villages, but most have disappeared under rising seawater.

The town’s population fell from 26,000 in 1981 to 11,000 in 2023, according to census data.

Khatti is preparing to move his family to nearby Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, and one swelling with economic migrants, including from the Indus delta.

The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, which advocates for fishing communities, estimates that tens of thousands of people have been displaced from the delta’s coastal districts.

However, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced from the overall Indus delta region in the last two decades, according to a study published in March by the Jinnah Institute, a think tank led by a former climate change minister.

The downstream flow of water into the delta has decreased by 80 percent since the 1950s as a result of irrigation canals, hydropower dams and the impacts of climate change on glacial and snow melt, according to a 2018 study by the US-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water.

That has led to devastating seawater intrusion.

The salinity of the water has risen by around 70 percent since 1990, making it impossible to grow crops and severely affecting the shrimp and crab populations.

“The delta is both sinking and shrinking,” said Muhammad Ali Anjum, a local WWF conservationist.

Beginning in Tibet, the Indus River flows through disputed Kashmir before traversing the entire length of Pakistan.

The river and its tributaries irrigate about 80 percent of the country’s farmland, supporting millions of livelihoods.

The delta, formed by rich sediment deposited by the river as it meets the sea, was once ideal for farming, fishing, mangroves and wildlife.

But more than 16 percent of fertile land has become unproductive due to encroaching seawater, a government water agency study in 2019 found.

In the town of Keti Bandar, which spreads inland from the water’s edge, a white layer of salt crystals covers the ground.

Boats carry in drinkable water from miles away and villagers cart it home via donkeys.

“Who leaves their homeland willingly?” said Hajji Karam Jat, whose house was swallowed by the rising water level.

He rebuilt farther inland, anticipating more families would join him.

“A person only leaves their motherland when they have no other choice,” he told AFP.

British colonial rulers were the first to alter the course of the Indus River with canals and dams, followed more recently by dozens of hydropower projects.

Earlier this year, several military-led canal projects on the Indus River were halted when farmers in the low-lying riverine areas of Sindh province protested.

To combat the degradation of the Indus River Basin, the government and the United Nations launched the ‘Living Indus Initiative’ in 2021.

One intervention focuses on restoring the delta by addressing soil salinity and protecting local agriculture and ecosystems.

The Sindh government is currently running its own mangrove restoration project, aiming to revive forests that serve as a natural barrier against saltwater intrusion.

Even as mangroves are restored in some parts of the coastline, land grabbing and residential development projects drive clearing in other areas.

Neighboring India meanwhile poses a looming threat to the river and its delta, after revoking a 1960 water treaty with Pakistan which divides control over the Indus basin rivers.

It has threatened to never reinstate the treaty and build dams upstream, squeezing the flow of water to Pakistan, which has called it “an act of war.”

Alongside their homes, the communities have lost a way of life tightly bound up in the delta, said climate activist Fatima Majeed, who works with the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum.

Women, in particular, who for generations have stitched nets and packed the day’s catches, struggle to find work when they migrate to cities, said Majeed, whose grandfather relocated the family from Kharo Chan to the outskirts of Karachi.

“We haven’t just lost our land, we’ve lost our culture.”

LAHORE: Police arrested 120 activists of Pakistan’s main opposition party in raids overnight, security officials said, ahead of protests planned for Tuesday, the second anniversary of the jailing of their leader, Imran Khan.

Most of the detentions, made on Monday night and early on Tuesday, were in the eastern city of Lahore, two police officers told Reuters, where Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party vowed its biggest demonstration, as well as protests elsewhere.

At least 200 activists had been arrested from Lahore, said party spokesperson Zulfikar Bukhari, adding that the protest would go ahead.

Lahore is the capital of the eastern province of Punjab, the country’s most politically important region and home to half its population.

The Punjab government and the provincial police did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

In a statement on Monday, police said large contingents of police were providing security in all the province’s major cities.

Khan’s party had always created “chaos,” Uzma Bukhari, a spokesperson of the provincial government, told a press conference on Monday.

“No political party can be barred from politics in Pakistan, but a terrorist organization disguised as a political party is not allowed to disrupt Pakistan’s peace,” Bukhari added.

In a message attributed to Khan on his party’s X account on Monday, he urged supporters to “come out and hold peaceful protests until a true democracy is restored in the country.”

The former cricket star was elected prime minister in 2018 but, once in office, fell out with Pakistan’s powerful military and was ousted in 2022 through a vote in parliament.

His arrest in May 2023 sparked protests against the military nationwide, leading to a crackdown on the party.

Khan, who denies any wrongdoing, dismisses as politically motivated the dozens of cases against him, ranging from “terrorism” to disclosure of official secrets.

He was convicted in January in a corruption case, while being acquitted of other charges or receiving suspended sentences.

Ahead of the protest call, hundreds of Khan’s party members, including several parliamentarians were convicted late last month on charges related to the 2023 protests against his arrest.

Khan’s party emerged as the single biggest in the 2024 election, and it says that rigging robbed it of more seats.

Other parties clubbed together to form a government under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, which denies coming to power through electoral fraud.