Roundup of regional news

Bangladesh Artists Visit Pakistan

SOON AFTER A contingent of retired Indian army officers and their wives returned after a goodwill visit of Pakistan, it was time for cultural visitors from Bangladesh.

Five artists arrived in Pakistan in mid-May with their artwork in tow. The newly-opened Kunj Art Gallery in Karachi displayed the work of Jamal Ahmed, Mahbubul Amin, Aminul Islam and Masuda Rashid Chowdhury.

Aminul Islam, a painter of vibrant abstract compositions, is one of Bangaldesh´s most celebrated artists. He was well known in Pakistan in the 1960s. Mahbubul Amin, who had the largest repertoire of paintings, depicts local life and people with a strong ethnic flavour, which found favour with many of those present. Jamal Ahmed is one of Bangaldesh´s most dynamic younger artists, and his creations included landscapes and figurative paintings. Masuda Chowdhury—a painter, print-maker and art critic—brought her ethereal watercolours to Karachi. When not painting, she is involved in the promotion of women´s art in Bangladesh and abroad.

Kunj was not the only Karachi gallery with a Bangla exhibition. Across town, the well-established Chawkandi Art Gallery was showing Rokeya Sultana, from the Dhaka Insitute of Fine Arts.

The visit by Bangladeshi artists was welcomed by art circles in Pakistan as a healthy development in South Asian cultural exchange. At a time when Karachi´s art galleries are looking to overseas artists for new perspectives and fresh visual ideas, the choice of a neighbouring country was both unique as well as obvious.

Many senior artists of Bangladesh are familiar with Pakistan and have many admirers of their work. Besides Aminul Islam, they include artists like Zainul Abedin, Murtaza Bashir, Hamidur Rahman, Mobinul Azim and Noorul Islam, who were very much part of the West Pakistan art scene as well before 1971. The visit of the Bangladeshi artists revitalises this earlier link between the Bengali artists and their Pakistani connossieurs.

– Moeen Faruqi

Bangla and Pakistani Art Visit Kathmandu

BOX: SUDDENLY, painters and paintings are travelling between South Asian countries. Just when we were getting tired of inter-regional diplomatic palavers and seminars, the galleries have discovered artists of neighbouring countries. We cannot but be thankful.

June in Kathmandu, like Karachi .saw openings by several Pakistani and Bangladeshi artists. On 5 June, as part of a Festival of Bangladeshi Art and Culture, 51 recent works by 33 well-known artists will be presented, encompassing "all the phases of modern art in Bangladesh." On 13 June, the Siddhartha Art Gallery unveils an exhibition of mixed-media artwork from Pakistan by artists Riffat Alvi, Summaya Durrani and Meher Afroz.

Treeless in Kashmir

VAST TRACTS OF forests in South Kashmir have fallen to militants and what remains is being devastated by the Indian Army´s "eco-vandalism", reports writer Max Martin of the CSE-Down To Earth Feature Service.

Areas like Anantnag, Shopian, Sharif, Chrar and Tral have been denuded by the Kalashnikov-bearing militants and the income used to fund their activities. Along the Srinagar-Leh highway near Kangan, pine logs are hurled down the mountain to land with a resounding splash on a canal which carries them to a sawmill downstream. Pine wood sold at INR 80 per cubic ft here can fetch more than three times that amount in Srinagar.

1. Khan, assistant to a timber smuggler thought to have links with the now well-entrenched Hizbul Mujahideen explains casually: "We have wiped off entire patches including walnut groves in this area. Nothing much is left." M. A. Mufti, the state´s principal chief conservator of forests, says he has no statistics because his people cannot go to the field, but that "roughly the extent of degradation is about 35 percent of the total forest area."

In Khiram, a stronghold of the Hizbul Mujahideen, some villagers on condition of anonymity admit that Hizbul protects those who cut forests. However, Hizbul´s local commander, Zuhur Ahmed, puts the blame on the security forces, "whose men do it in civil dress. Then they blame it on us".

The Srinagar-based Feature and News Agency claims that the Army has 92,000 hectares of forest area, and that extensive destruction has been carried out near the border areas. "Nonsense," replies Squadron Leader S. Hariharan, Public Relations Officer for the Army, according to whom the Northern Command actually has a "mega-scaled" afforestation plan for the region.

Yamdrok Tso, Tibet´s Aral Sea?

ANTI-DAM ACTIVISTS of South Asia are an insular lot, not very interested in other people´s problems. Thus, Narmadaor Tehri, Tarbela or Kaptai, there is little communication among those who are battling government, technocracy and the "dominant development paradigm". In fact, some of the opponents of the now-dead Arun-III project felt it appropriate to bring Cree Indians from the Jones Bay Project area in northern Canada to the Arun Valley in Nepal, but did not think of inviting environmental activist Suderlal Bahuguna.

While Mr Bahuguna once again submits to a fast by the banks of the Bhagirathi to draw attention to disaster that Tehri Dam will invite, few think—even know—about the Yamdrok Tso. This is a holy lake 120 km southwest of Lhasa, the third-largest in Tibet and the biggest fresh-water lake on the high plateau.

The authorities in Tibet plan to drain the lake in order to provide electricity. They say that they will pump back water from the Yarlung River (Tsangpo, later the Brahmaputra) to replenish the lake during off-peak hours, but Western activists who are concerned about Yamdrok believe that this is a tall claim, and that the region faces an Aral Sea-type disaster. "At best, replenishing the lake means that the snow-fed lake water will be replaced with muddy river flow, with unknown effects on the ecological balance of the lake. At worst, the lake could drain away within 50 years," says Lome Stockman, coordinator of the London-based Yamdrok Tso Campaign.

According Ms Stockman, the Austrian firm EL1N and the Austrian branch of the German firm JM VOITH AG are supplying turbines and other operating systems for the project through contracts worth about USD 40 million. "Both firms have a history of constructing controversial dams and they have been involved in the Pak-Mun dam in Thailand where 20,000 people were forcibly moved, the Cirata dam in Indonesia where 60,000 people were dispossessed, and the Mosul Dam in the Kurdish region of Iraq which was completely cleared of all forms of human life by the military."

Now that is not good company.

ITBP in Tibet

THE VERY FACT that an Indo-Tibetan Border Police team was climbing Everest from the North (Tibetan) side is noteworthy. The ITBP was raised by the Indian government soon after the 1962 Indo-Chinese war. While it has now been deployed in different tasks which range from guarding VIPs to providing a para-military presence in Assam and elsewhere, the primary task of the force is to guard the Himalayan frontier against Chinese encroachment. Does the fact that an ITBP team can climb Everest from the north and not raise anyone´s eyebrows mean that the Indo-Chinese thaw has achieved melting point?

Solar Toilets

FOR GENERATIONS, households in Nepal´s Khumbu region on the trekking trail to Mt Everest Base Camp have known what to do with human waste. Traditionally, waste is composted with leaves or pine needles and later removed from the toilets to the adjoining fields. But when income generated from tourism displaces agriculture as the region´s chief source of earning, the waste becomes a nuisance rather than a resource.

Each year more than 10,000 tourists and a larger number of guides and porters trudge up and down the mountains and valleys of the Khumbu. While the local economy is certainly benefitting a great deal, tackling the problem of excreta at high altitude has been equally great.

The demand for extra water makes flush toilets impractical, and even pit latrines pose problems of their own due to low soil depth and the cold temperatures. A lodge-owner at Gokyo (4750 metres) reported that toilets could be emptied only at certain seasons because the ground remains frozen. "If the toilet fills up, there is nothing we can do."

The problems are the same at the Everest Base Camp. Every year more than a dozen national and international mountaineering groups set up camp but none have come up with a sustainable waste management policy. Expedition members do dig pit latrines on the moraines but porters, overnight campers and day-hikers find it more expedient to go behind a boulder, creating hundreds of toilet sites.

Many innovative attempts have been made to manage waste but, because of various reasons, have not succeeded. The "solar toilet" is one such innovation and there is hope that it will eventually gain acceptance from the local residents.

Solar toilets use the passive energy from the sun to treat human waste. Energy from the sun enters the chamber where the waste is stored. A clear barrier allows the sun´s heat to enter but not escape, similar in operation to a greenhouse. The waste is zapped by solar rays, dehydrated, its volume reduced and, in the absence of water, it becomes a sterile powder.

The first of solar toilets was successfully tested in 1994 with yak dung in which the collection chamber recorded a temperature of 70°C. Two such toilets have already been installed, one in a hospital and the other in a school, with satisfactory results. But scepticism about their efficacy still persists. The only encouraging factor is that Sherpas have been known to be very receptive to new ideas. Whether they will be equally amenable to changing their toilet habits—and those of visitors—remains to be seen.

– Paul Lachapelle

What Happened on the Mountain?

ONE OF THE tragedies that Mount Everest saw in the spring climbing season was the death of three members of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. But even as controversy over whether a Japanese team could have saved the three who perished continues, it now seems that the trio did not even reach the top at all. The expedition has claimed that they did.

Pasang Kami Sherpa was with the group of the Japanese mountaineers who were the last to see the 1TBP team alive. He says: "We saw a traditional Lama flag, some crampons and an empty oxygen cylinder belonging to Indian team much below the summit. These things are meant to be placed or pitched on the summit." Jon Gandgal, leader of the Norwegian team, also climbing from the Tibetan side, doubts that the Indians ever made it to the summit. There are other summiteers who share the views of Mr Pasang Kami and Mr Gandgal.

The ITBP threesome—Inspector T. Samnala and Constables Tsewang Paljor and Dorje Morup—reportedly began climbing towards the summit at 7:30 am and were said to have reached the top at around 6:30 in the evening. But climbers who had seen the ITBP mountaineers claim they were "too far behind" to have made it to the summit by that time. Normally, climbers head for the summit between 1 and 2 am and top the mountain around midday, leaving enough time for descent to camp. An experienced Sherpa climber with the Japanese team who does not want to be named says the climbers could not have reached beyond 8,600m on the 8848m mountain.

There had apparently been an understanding among four of the teams attempting Everest from the north side (Norwegian, Taiwanese, Japanese, and the Indians) that all would strike for the summit together on 11 May. The others were surprised, therefore, when the ITBP unannounced decided to make its bid a day earlier. Unfortunately, bad weather chose to strike on that very day, the same storm which also took many lives on the other (Nepal) side of the mountain.

The Secretary of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF), Capt K.S. Kohli, believes that the three climbers made it to the summit. But Capt Kohli raised a Himalayan controversy when he went public with the accusation that the climbers could have been saved if only the Japanese expedition members who came by had tried to rescue them. He practically blamed the deaths on the Japanese, who,  could hardly have been expected to take kindly to this suggestion.

Upon his arrival in Kathmandu on his way back home, Koji Yada, the leader of the Japanese expedition said Capt. Kohli´s allegation was "baseless and false". While Mr Yada´s reaction seemed rather tame in light of the accusation, other mountaineers more than made up for it. Mr Gandgal is on record as saying that the Indian team was poorly organised and that the charges against the Japanese are nothing but a cover-up attempt. There were other climbers on the mountain at the time who have said that the Indian expedition was not led well by team-leader Mohinder Singh, who preferred to direct affairs from base camp.

A Sherpa mountaineer who was climbing with the Japanese says it is very difficult when you are above 8000m to use the same standards as you would in lower altitudes. "There is so much pressure on the climber that you do not go around making courtesy calls. Unless someone is showing obvious distress or there is an obvious call for help, you go your own way. Someone sitting down could either have frozen to death or could just be taking a breather." The Sherpa says that in the case of the ITBP members, they were about 12 metres from the track that the Japanese were taking up the mountain, and there was no call for help.

An old mountaineering hand in Kathmandu, acknowledges that it is difficult to pin blame in matters such as this, as Capt. Kohli has done with such alacrity. He adds, "Having said that, the Japanese are not great mountaineers when it comes to fair play. You cannot expect most Japanese climbers to do what the Russian Anatoli Bourkreev did on the south side when he rescued fellow climbers."

– Akhilesh Upadhyay

An Eventful Spring on Everest

• The 1996 spring season was the best ever on Mount Everest in terms of successful ascents. A total of 87 climbers stood on the top of the world leaving the previous record of 58 in the spring of 1992 far behind.
• The season also saw the highest number of deaths ever on the mountain. A total of 11 people died in a particularly bad spell of weather in mid-May.
• Commercial climbing on Everest, or paying money to be guided to the top, received a severe jolt as, for the first time, two of the USD 65,000-paying clients lost their lives. Should amateurs be taken up the mountain simply because they have the ability to pay?
• The New Zealander guide Rob Hall could have saved himself but he felt his duty lay in staying back with a disabled client just below the summit. Both perished. The Russian Anatoli Bourkreev showed uncommon valour when he went about rescuing fellow climbers above the South Col (7,955m). Lt Col Madan K.C. of the Royal Nepal Army made what is said to be the highest-ever helicopter rescue at 20,000 feet.
• While the deaths were widely reported in the international media, it was hardly noticed that no Sherpa figured among the dead despite the fact Sherpas were present in droves on both the northern and the southern slopes of Everest as support staff and climbers. Among the Sherpas was the "Snow Leopard", Ang Rita, from the nearby village of Thame, nonchalantly making his tenth ascent. Another Sherpa, Lobsang Jangbu, found time for some publicity-seeking bufoonery on the mountain by making the summit clad in a shitorio karate dress. (He had done earlier climbs in a Sherpa bakkhu and the Nepali national dress, the labeda surwal.) Lobsang Jangbu also carried two large framed photographs of Nepal´s royal couple and proudly posed with them on the summit.
• Another Himalayan climber very much in the news was Jamling Tenzing Norgay, following the footsteps of his father, Tenzing Norgay, the most famous of them all.
• To prove that Sherpas are not the only ones that can reach the top again and again with a minimum of fuss, cinematographer David Breashers made his third ascent. This time he was filming the ascent of Everest in the Imax format, the largest picture format of them all, which had him shooting with a 35-pound camera all the way to the summit.

No Economy of Scale on Kali Gandaki

A LESS THAN A year after the World Bank pulled out of the proposed Arun III hydroelectric project after a lengthy tussle with non-governmental organisations, another power project in Nepal is stuck in controversy.

Kali Gandaki-A is a medium-sized 144 megawatt hydro electricity project planned in central Nepal on the river of the same name. A memorandum of understanding has already been signed between the Nepali government and the Asian Development Bank (adb) to finance the project. The Japanese government is also providing assistance.

At the Hotel Himalaya in downtown Patan in late May, the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) called a "public hearing", which was packed mostly with its own staff, vociferous pro-dam representatives bussed in from the dam site, and a few journalists and ´alternative development´ activists.

Those who questioned Kali Gandaki´s high costs were promptly dubbed "anti-Kali Gandaki" by government officials still smarting under the unprecendented defeat over Arun-III, a much larger project at USD 1 billion project cost, which would have seen many a career through to retirement.

Gopal Siwakoti Chintan, one among a breed of activists which specialises in putting a spanner into the government´s and donor agencies´ carefully laid out plans, says, "We are not against Kali Gandaki per se, even though we are constantly being labelled anti-dam. We understand the need for power generation. All we want to know is why the estimated cost of the project has gone so high."

Chintan and others have challenged the NEA as to why the economies of scale did not seem to apply to Kali Gandaki-A. Says Girish Kharel, a micro-hydropower expert, referring to several other smaller projects which are presently in the pipeline, "Energy from the 6 megawatt Puwa Khola is expected to cost 2.9 cents/unit, from the 14 MW Modi Khola it will be 3.5 cents/unit, and from the 20 MW Chilime Khola 2.3 cents/unit. So how is it that the many times larger Kali Gandaki will cost Nepal a whopping 4.9 cents/unit?"

At the public hearing, nea officials were unable to provide convincing answers as to the high costs, while the activists for their part are convinced that it is the old story of commissions, kickbacks and "tied aid"—in which donor countries provide grants and soft loans with strings attached. While they acknowledged nea´s transparency exercise, the activists did not get answers to the most important questions. On the other hand, Rameshananda Vaidya of the National Planning Commission thought the hearing had succeeded at a consensus-building, and that "the level of discussion was very high."

"What seems saddest is that the lessons provided by the toppling of Arun-III seems to have been wasted on our planners," says Ajaya Dixit, a water engineer. "Arun-III was opposed because it was too expensive, did not help build Nepali capability, and was not the appropriate project for the economy. Not all these criticisms will apply to Kali Gandaki-A, but certainly the government has to listen to those who question the high costs."

It did not seem, however, that the government was doing any learning from the Arun-III debacle, other than to regard all activists as enemies of the state. Leading the chorus was Water Resources Minister Pashupati Shumshere Rana, who charged activists with being "anti-development". Meanwhile, there were press reports that Mr Rana´s ministry was doling out hydropower development without the transparency which everyone seems to be talking about these days.

KKH, the Karakoram Link

THE PAKISTAN Government has decided to upgrade and rehabilitate the Karakoram Highway (KKH) at a cost of PKR 3.1 billion over the next three-year period. The plan is for the widened roadway to pick up the expected increase in traffic from Central Asia via China, headed for Karachi port. The continuing fighting within Afghanistan having wrecked plans to develop the Khyber-Salang Tunnel route to Central Asia, Islamabad seems to have settled on spending money on the slightly roundabout Karakoram Highway.

Protocols have already been signed by China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan on using the KKH to link with the highway system of Xinjiangprov-ince of China and the roadway network of the two eastern Central Asians which are very keen on a reliable access to the Arabian Sea. The KKH, 700 km long from Rawalpindi to the border with China at a place called Sust, is notorious for its rockfalls, landslides and mudslips. It is easy to see why it will cost three billion to rehabilitate.