Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Visit to Attabad in Hunza

From Skardu the fact-finding team travelled to Gilgit. After an overnight stay there it proceeded to Gojal valley in Hunza-Nagar district where a massive landslide in January 2010 at Attabad village had killed 20 people. The landslide annihilated three villages, Attabad, Sarat and Ayinabad. It also blocked the Hunza River and created a huge lake which submerged three other villages- Shishkat, Gulmit, Ghulkin- and created nearly 3,000 internally displaced persons. The water body had come to be called the Attabadlake .

The affected villages had a combined population of over 7,400 people. Around 3,000 IDPs continued to live in three temporary camps established for them since January 2010. The water level had decreased somewhat after a spillway was built, allowing discharge of water but it appeared that the lake was there to stay, at least in the near future.

Floating over submerged villages

The rising water had also submerged the KKH and nearly three and a half years after the landslide the road link had not been restored when the fact-finding team went there. The mission members saw work to rebuild the destroyed section of the KKH by burrowing tunnels through the mountain to protect the road from landslides in the future. The team also saw huge amounts of sand that the receding emerald green lake water had deposited on agriculture land.

Part of the displaced population had been housed in a camp in Aliabad in Hunza. The villagers that had stayed behind could only be accessed through boats across the 24-kilometer-long lake.

Proceeding from Attabad, the edge of the lake seemed like a tiny primitive harbour and boats of all sizes ferried people, vehicles and other machinery. The team met members of a body of affected citizens. In a reflection of their priorities, the first concern that the affected people expressed was that they had become unable to pay their children’s tuition fees and education expenses on account of the Attabad disaster. They were part of the Ismaili community with a lot of focus on education, so children went to school and college and some studied as far away as Karachi. Some of the main observations of the affected community were:

Damage from the disaster could have been minimised if the authorities had given accurate information about the extent to which the water could rise after the blockage and the villages that could be affected. More urgent efforts to clear the debris and create a spillway could also have prevented the losses in the summer when the glacial melt swelled the Hunza River.

Despite very harsh weather, arrangements for evacuation and provision of shelter for the affected communities had been unduly delayed.

In summer, people paid for the boat rides to cross the lake. The boats stopped operating before nightfall and were also suspended when it got too windy. The lake froze in the winter and helicopters were needed in case of emergency.

The landslide and the flooding of villages caused by the rising water had affected houses and agriculture land. During a visit to Gilgit-Baltistan, the prime minister had announced a compensation package of Rs 0.63 million per family as far as the houses were concerned. The compensation had been much less than the losses. No compensation had been given for some of the region’s finest apricot trees as well as eucalyptus worth billions of rupees. The flow of tourists to the villages had stopped.

Nearly 30 percent affected people had rebuilt their houses in Gulmit but they were now under debt.

The media initially covered the Attabad disaster, leading to some interest elsewhere in Pakistan but later even the local media had lost interest.

There was a 10-bed hospital building in Gulmit but it neither had machines, nor medicine and doctors.

The spillway needed to be widened at a fast pace so that the water in Attabad lake could be drained and the owners could reclaim their land, which was the source of their livelihood.

No amount from Benazir Income Support Programme had been distributed among the victims of Attabad disaster.

IDPs in Aliabad

On the way back from Gojal, the HRCP team visited a settlement of the displaced persons from Shishkat in Aliabad locality of Hunza. They did not know how much longer they would remain in the camp or what they could do to end their predicament.

Although the displaced persons were thankful for the shelter at the camp, the weather got so harsh in the summer that they could not stay indoors and it got so cold in the winter that they needed to keep a fire going all night to stay warm.

The federal government had announced around 0.6 million rupees as compensation for each family but camp residents were not sure who had got the compensation. On August 11, 2011, a few dozen displaced persons had protested on the main road in Aliabad against non-payment of compensation. The protesters were beaten and two displaced persons, a young boy and his father, were shot and killed in police firing. The killing of the two IDPs had scared the displaced persons from raising their voice and they were not sure when they would get the compensation.

Several citizens, including political activists, were subsequently arrested. Five persons from Shishkat were in jail in Gilgit because of the 2011 protest case. They had been charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act and the families did not have the money to pursue the cases.

There was no facility for medical treatment of the displaced. If they died there was no land to bury them.

They were given flour, cooking oil, salt, lentils, and some money through Watan Card.