We write as concerned citizens on a matter that deserves the Prime Minister's direct, personal attention: the slow collapse of the watershed that supplies drinking water to Rawalpindi and Islamabad — the Rawal, Simly and Khanpur catchments, fed by the forests stretching from Murree to Patriata.

This appeal carries new urgency because India has already suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, placing the future reliability of the western rivers themselves in doubt. At a moment when the security of our shared river system is under direct challenge from across the border, it would be a grave failure of foresight to simultaneously allow our own local watersheds — the ones entirely within our control, costing nothing to protect — to collapse through neglect. We cannot control what India does with the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum under a suspended treaty. We can control whether Rawal, Simly and Khanpur survive.

The British administration that once governed this region treated watershed protection as a matter of military necessity, not aesthetics. Sir John Simon's 1872 report on the cholera epidemic in Rawalpindi documented, in stark detail, how contaminated water sickened a garrison cantonment that depended on it. Later, another report by Charles Moore Jessop, M.E.C.P., Brigade Surgeon, H.M.'s British Forces, London, in 1883, reinforced the lesson the colonial administration took seriously enough to place the forested springs feeding Murree, Rawalpindi and the cantonment under formal protection. The conviction behind that policy was simple: an army cannot be sustained on contaminated water. We ask the government to revive that same conviction today, for the soldiers and families of GHQ Rawalpindi, PAF Chaklala, and all other citizens of the Twin Cities who depend on this same watershed.

The Prime Minister's Office issues frequent statements affirming its support for, and pride in, the Pakistan military. We take that sentiment at face value — but sentiment alone does not........

© The Friday Times