The Killing Fields

NOVEMBER 2003 - This is not the first time that a controversy about the wanton killing of the Houbara Bustard has broken out in Pakistani print media. It is also not the last. The Wildlife Department which makes the rules has once again found it convenient to break these very rules and allow visiting VIPs from the Gulf to hunt at will, this wretched bird whose only fault is that it insists on visiting Pakistan every year. All this drama is now unfolding from Dera Ghazi Khan where the birds enter Pakistan right into Cholistan where they will be hunted in the thousands. The same story next year. Although this is of no relevance, the Houbara already a threatened species will soon become an endangered one and eventually an extinct species. Bully for us.

There are many important players who make up this annual grisly drama. There is the foreign office, which exerts considerable influence over all departments to ensure that the VIPs from the Gulf are provided every conceivable facility in their pursuit of pleasure. The government of Pakistan bends over backwards – at best a risky maneuver, to provide all logistical support and services to their royal brethren, who have freely built palaces, roads and airports to suit their convenience. The Punjab Government represented by its various departments scrapes and bows and please the droves of VIPs. They pass, rescind and alter any legislation as long as it suits the hunting parties of the hordes of princes, assorted royals and key influencers. Into all this web of intrigue and double standards, add in the Houbara Foundation. Ostensibly set up to save the Houbara from certain extinction, it has instead played the opposite role and is reportedly guilty on many counts. From time to time, scandals about the Houbara hunting have surfaced, but so powerful are the people under whose benign patronship our environment is being raped and so indebted are we to the Gulf for the many alms that they throw at our destitute and impoverished leaders, that such reports vanish like drops of water in the great Cholistan desert. Life goes on. In this case it means the killing goes on. While the VIPs kill for pleasure and sexual power-gain, our Pakistani brothers make a killing in lucrative payments, gifts, contracts, jobs and influence peddling – the last, a great sport in Pakistan played to perfection by the many courtiers that slither about in the national jungle.

What is it all about? The Houbara is a migratory bird that flies in from Central Asia into Pakistan every October. Since the Arab royals love falconry, many regarding it as a family tradition, they started to descend into friendly Pakistan years ago, met by obliging government heads and gifted entrepreneurs like the late Mr. Abedi, then a local level banker who made all the ‘necessary’ arrangements. Such was his efficiency that the foreign guests took to him and he rose, as we all know, to great heights. Many people went bankrupt and lost their life savings in his banks, but that’s another matter. The Houbara is not a natural enemy of the Falcon family, so apart from hunting them down in hundreds by guns, netting and falcons, the VIPs also started using these birds to train their falcons, both here in specific areas and at home. Thus began a chain reaction of smuggling the Houbara, Falcons, Peregrines and Sakers. Cholistan, which had an abundance of these wonderful birds, is now bankrupt. The trade with the Gulf is a highly lucrative one. There are reports that annually anywhere up to 5,000 and more Houbara are netted, snared and illegally transported to the Gulf where they are used as cannon fodder for the falcons to learn the fine art of killing. The Arabs also eat the Houbara for its reputed aphrodisiac powers and gift other royals with the meat of these birds so that everyone can have a good time. In all this, middlemen on both sides, highly influential people, have become billionaires. Yet the government is conveniently asleep. Big money and big contacts prevail. We also cannot annoy the Gulf VIPs. So much for our much-trumpeted sovereignty.

As for the royals, such is their passion that they literally fly with the Houbara. In summer, when these birds are breeding in Central Asia, they hunt them there, in lands, which were once out of bounds for them – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc. As the birds reach Pakistan, the royals arrive here and hunt them down. Not surprisingly, India, which has more ventures and interests in the Gulf than we do, has not allowed any royals from plundering their natural wealth. By mid-February, the royals are exhausted at the end of the hunting season. As the birds fly back to Central Asia, they follow suit, hunting them wherever they can, till the whole cycle begins again. This and their indiscriminate activities in Pakistan has led to a precarious decline in the Houbara population all through the 70s. In the last five years, this decline has taken an alarming nosedive. That the Houbara will die out is a foregone conclusion. To facilitate their sport, the rulers of the Gulf have ‘invested’ in Pakistan – in palaces and infrastructure to suit their many needs. The roads in Cholistan with Arab signs are not meant to improve the lot of its impoverished people but to speed the VIPs’ movement. The water supply pipelines carry water for specially planted mustard fields to attract the Houbara, not to provide water to the thirty people of the desert. Other ‘humanitarian’ gestures are not without attached and visible strings provided you wish to look. Other than the unfortunate Houbara, thousands of Chinkara Antelopes, Desert Foxes and Wolves, Falcons, Great Eagles and many more have died in the process. Desert Foxes were eliminated on the bogus grounds that they killed the Houbara. No one thought it fit to recall that in nature, the existence of one species is complimentary for the other, royal decree notwithstanding.

The Houbara Foundation set up a few years ago to conserve the threatened species. There is strong evidence that hand in glove with those with vested interests, it has allowed its personal interests and those of its benefactors, whose money it is said finances their operations, to take steps that are destroying much of Cholistan’s wildlife. Its much-touted breeding and research center in Nag Valley is reportedly empty and in the last 5 years no Houbara chicks have emerged out of this facility. It has actively recommended, planned and executed the large-scale killing of Desert Foxes, irretrievably damaging the fragile ecological balance. Its staffers map, patrol and survey the areas the Houbara visit only to facilitate their convenient hunting by the VIPs. Planting of transmitters on the birds are merely to monitor their flights so that the hunters are well in place to start the killing.

Our wildlife is dying. Our legislation has more holes than a broken pisspot. If the Houbara Bustard is a protected species, it is a protected species. Period. But rules are expedient and altered to suit the needs of VIPs. Pakistan is a signatory to two international conventions. CITES and CMS. Both place enormous responsibility on us to prohibit international trading of endangered species, flora and fauna as well as conservation of migratory species. The custodians of these conventions such as the noble Houbara Foundation are its biggest flouters. Under ‘sustainable’ hunting, birds are trapped, hunted and killed by hundreds of VIPs – this is not sustainable. Trophy Hunting under controlled and clean conditions is a way out, but there is too much big money involved and too many VIPs to please. If India has withstood the VIPs, what’s our problem? I won’t shame you with the answer.