50 Years of Vietnam’s Victory

Pablo Meriguet | 02 May 2025

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A brief recall of the history of Vietnam and how it helps us understand its triumph over the US Army. In addition, we review what happened to Vietnam after the war.

National Liberation Front of South Vietnam also known as Viet Congo, in 1968. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

In March 1975, US diplomats and other foreign nationals – along with US military collaborators – began fleeing Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. It had become clear that the advance of the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam towards the capital was unstoppable.

Images of helicopters frantically taking off from Saigon, carrying the last of the US military and their collaborators, appeared in thousands of newspapers and on television sets around the world. As communist troops entered the Presidential Palace, the South Vietnamese president said he was ready to hand over power, to which the revolutionaries replied, “You can’t hand over what you don’t have.”

The withdrawal of most US troops during the previous months had revealed that the ability of the South Vietnamese troops (still logistically supported by the US and its allies) to engage the revolutionary forces was minuscule.

The victory was possible because popular support for the troops of the Liberation Front and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the North Vietnamese Army) was massive. By April 30, 1975, Saigon was liberated and the process of reunifying Vietnam began under the leadership of the victors. This marked the end of the Vietnam War, one of the most important conflicts in the history of the 20th century and one of the most historically relevant on record.

A millenary history of anti-imperialist struggles

The world was stunned as the Vietnamese achieved what many thought an impossible dream: defeating the most powerful army in history – the US military. But the truth is that Vietnam’s own history offers the clearest explanation for its ability to resist and win.

For several centuries, the Vietnamese were dominated by the powerful Chinese dynasties, which left an indelible mark on their culture. But in the 10th century, Ngô Quyền led a series of struggles that allowed the Chinese Empire to be forced to recognize their autonomy for almost nine centuries. The Battle of Bach Dang River is recognized to this day as a key milestone in Vietnam’s history.

Similarly, during the Mongol conquest campaigns of the 13th century, the Vietnamese dynasties managed to defend themselves with astonishing success. After a brief reconquest by the Chinese, Vietnam regained its independence following the rise of the Lê dynasty. The Chinese dynasties, always hungry for the fertile Indochinese lands, promoted several civil conflicts (one of them lasted almost a century).

The European colonial expansion of the 19th century, which was vilely agreed upon by the European powers of that time, made France, at first, support one of the Vietnamese sides in the dispute, to later invade the then-named Indochina. Thus, almost nine centuries of almost uninterrupted independence ended. The French imposed a political, economic, and cultural system thanks to the brutality of European weapons. The long list of atrocities committed by the French in Vietnam, based on racist and imperialist criteria, would not fit in this article.

But the Vietnamese had not forgotten their history of foreign insubordination. Several nationalist and anti-imperialist movements emerged strongly during the 20th century. Pan Boi Chau, Phan Chu Trinh, and Ho Chi Minh were some of the leaders who, from different ideological perspectives, fought against French colonialism and against the Empire of Japan, which during World War II conquered Indochina and plundered its resources.

After the Japanese occupation, the communist Ho Chi Minh became the leader of Vietnamese independence. During nine years of bloody war, the Vietnamese fought against the French troops, who were crushed in the famous battle of Dien Bien Phu. However, the Western powers, fearful of the advance of communism in the region, decided to split the country in two (the usual strategy of imperialism, as happened in Korea).

Thus, South Vietnam was born, a country governed by puppets servile to the Western powers, and North Vietnam, governed by the Communist Party of Vietnam and supported by the USSR and China. North Vietnam requested a referendum for the Vietnamese people to decide on their possible reunification. When the US and France realized that the people would massively support reunification under Ho Chi Minh’s leadership, they canceled that possibility in 1956.

The War of Resistance against the United States

Thus, the United States gradually began to send soldiers disguised as “military advisors” to reinforce the former imperialist positions and stop an imminent reunification. The famous “Pentagon Papers” would prove years later that the United States had been involved in Vietnam since 1945.

In 1957, South Vietnamese communist guerrillas and North Vietnamese troops took up arms to reunify the country. They strengthened supply routes, the most famous of which was the Ho Chi Minh Road through Laos. By 1963, reunification seemed imminent. So, the United States staged a false flag operation in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 to justify sending massive troop deployments to Vietnam in 1965.

In this way, almost 600,000 US soldiers were sent to Vietnam throughout the conflict to confront the communist guerrillas of the Liberation Front, while the US Air Force bombed Vietnam in a bloody and disproportionate manner. According to some records, the US dropped 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, far in excess of the total tons used during World War II by all sides. To this day, there is no record of such massive bombing as that carried out by the United States in Indochina. In addition, the sustained use of chemical bombs such as Agent Orange and napalm was used indiscriminately, which continues to wreak havoc on many Vietnamese to this day.

It is estimated that one million Vietnamese communists died during the conflict, compared to the 300,000 casualties of the South Vietnamese army and 58,000 deaths reported by the US army. The numbers lead to only one possible conclusion: the Vietnamese revolutionaries won despite the casualties, which shows a huge armed contingent that had only one possibility: win or die. Ho Chi Minh explained this curious phenomenon with a phrase that became famous: “You will kill ten of us, we will kill one of you; but in the end, you will tire first.”

Vietnamese guerrilla tactics developed thanks to enormous popular and international support, supply routes, tunnels, traps, lightning attacks, etc., proved to be profoundly resistant to the enormous technological power of the United States. During nine years of subjugation of the local population, the US army never found a way to bend the will of the Vietnamese people, who, in general terms, supported the communist troops and detested the foreign occupation.

The My Lai massacres, in which US troops killed more than 700 men, children, and women (who were raped before being massacred), or the painful images of children with their skin melted by bombs, were some of the most recognized examples by the local population that provoked a generalized rejection of the US presence. Thus, the Pentagon even considered bombing Indochina with nuclear warheads, a proposal that was beyond absurd because of the almost certain nuclear response from the USSR.

However, the atrocities of the US military also began to provoke rejection internationally, even within the United States. Many in the US understood less and less what the meaning of the war was. In 1971, a report by Vietnam War veterans was presented in Detroit that stated that torture and terror were not isolated methods, but part of a premeditated war strategy. Many stopped seeing the war as a fight for democracy and the rights of the Vietnamese, as announced by the official propaganda of the US government.

Hundreds of thousands marched through US cities demanding an end to the draft and the war. Outside the United States, solidarity with the Vietnamese people sparked nationalist uprisings in several countries and the development of an anti-imperialist consciousness that left a mark on the revolutionary struggles of the 1970s.

In 1973, during the Paris Peace Accords, US military leaders publicly concluded that they were incapable of military success. This is an elegant and propagandistic way of saying that they were defeated in a bloody war by historically indomitable people.

Vietnam after the war: a history of economic and social development

After the war, the country was devastated. Some historians estimate that nearly 5 million people died during the nine years of occupation, most because of US bombings. More than three million people were left sick (many with malformations, which were passed down to their children) from the chemical weapons that were unleashed on the civilian population. There are still thousands of tons of explosives that have not yet been detonated and that cause painful incidents (deaths and injuries) every year. After the war, trust had to be rebuilt between the North Vietnamese and the Vietnamese who sympathized with the South Vietnamese government.

Yet, despite the challenges of overcoming the deep scars of war, 50 years later Vietnam stands tall.

Education

The advances since independence from France and the victory over the United States are undeniable. In 1945, 95% of Vietnamese could not read and write. By 2018, the literacy rate reached 95%. Today, Vietnam ranks among the top 20 countries worldwide in PISA exams for secondary school students, a reflection of the strength of its public, tuition-free educational system.

Healthcare

In terms of healthcare, Vietnam was a country that had few hospitals. By 2025, 95% of its population will have free quality coverage. In 1975, life expectancy was 58 years; by 2025, on average, Vietnamese people are expected to live 76.04 years. Health development seems to continue in leaps and bounds: in 2010, Vietnam reported that it had about 101,573 hospital beds; By 2020, that number rose to 142,229.

Infrastructure

Likewise, the Communist Party of Vietnam has been very interested in the development of roads, airports, and digital infrastructure as a key condition for developing the country’s economy, which has profoundly changed people’s daily lives, although challenges remain, especially in rural areas. According to some reports, investment in infrastructure increased by 40% in recent years to face the decrease in exports to the US.

Economic growth

The United States decided to maintain a trade embargo to suffocate the Vietnamese economy. However, by 1993, Bill Clinton decided to lift the embargo due to the economic potential that Western businessmen saw in the Asian country. Indeed, Vietnam took off economically after a painful economic recovery, going from being a purely agricultural economy without technological development to one oriented towards the export of manufacturing and highly technological agricultural exports. Large companies such as The North Face, Adidas, and Salomon have huge industrial parks in Vietnam, making this country one of the territories with the greatest foreign investment on the planet. Today, Vietnam competes with China in the export of rice, which says a lot about its agro-export capacity.

This and other things explain why Vietnam has had significant and sustained economic growth, reaching 5.4% GDP growth every twelve months. The per capita income was USD 100 in 1980; for 2023, it stood at USD 4,300. Furthermore, the number of people unemployed is very low, approximately 4.5%. Historical inflation is quite low, standing at 3.2% on average over the last 10 years.

Vietnam is one of the most desired tourist destinations in Southeast Asia, which is reflected in the number of visitors: in 2000, 1.8 million people visited the Asian country; By 2025, that number will reach 18 million, surpassing, for example, countries that are very attractive to tourists like Singapore.

From victory to progress

The most important question is how a country devastated by foreign invasions (Japanese, French, and US) and their consequent wars had such significant economic development? The most accepted answer is that the centralized administration of the Communist Party of Vietnam, together with the economic reform in the eighties – something like the Chinese reforms with relevant variations – caused an economic takeoff and an accelerated development of living conditions in 50 years (something unprecedented in the history of the country and most countries).

Furthermore, the state has overseen health, education, and security, which has significantly improved the living conditions of the vast majority of the population. Foreign investment, in addition, is controlled by the state, which allows it to direct its economy and plan it according to the changing needs of the country. These data are not minor in terms of the history of insubordination and rebellion of the Vietnamese people, who in their independence have demonstrated an authentic capacity for innovation and progress that has not yet reached a limit.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

A gentler world

Madeeha Ansari 

Published May 1, 2025 

DAWN

The writer is CEO of Cities for Children, an organisation that works to protect childhood.

APRIL 30 was the International Day to End Corporal Punishment — one that could slip into obscurity unless pulled into the light with the urgency required to end cyclical, intergenerational violence.

In workshops with teachers in Islamabad Capital Territory, a question of interest has been whether they themselves experienced classroom-based corporal punishment in childhood. In government schools, over 70 per cent said yes; for community schools, the response was nearly 100pc. Years later, the memory of individually experienced violent or humiliating punishment was both vivid and fresh. ‘Math teacher, Grade 6 — twisted my little finger right around, and I ran from her class and never felt I could do math.’ ‘Class assembly — teacher hit me because I mispronounced Urdu words, and then I lost the confidence to speak.’

Nearly every time, the transgression was minor and, sometimes, an involuntary mistake, but the punishment left a lasting imprint. For some teachers, the impression was that corporal punishment pushed them to do better, and fear of the stick helped them become the people they were. Whether that or individual motivation drove success, what we do have evidence for is that the experience of corporal punishment in childhood makes it more likely for adults to become perpetrators in turn.

If children experience violent discipline, they internalise it as a legitimate way of asserting authority. This can enter their interactions with other children, so that they resolve conflict or assert dominance through violence in the playground and at home. It can also affect their relationships in the long term and is linked with a higher incidence of domestic violence in adulthood. There’s also a higher risk of aggression and violence at the societal level. That is why, to this day, violent discipline is the norm in schools in Pakistan.


It’s time to reconstruct the idea of school as a sanctuary.

This is not to say that the practice is always rooted in malice; many teachers actually see it as a tool for instruction. Often, they can be asked to use it by parents who want their children to learn better. In reality, a meta-analysis of studies over 50 years by End Corporal Punishment showed there is no evidence that such punishment leads to better educational outcomes. Instead, it contributes to poorer cognitive development, lower socioemotional development and worse educational outcomes overall, as it is linked with a higher risk of dropout. In a Pakistan-based study, 93pc of 1,700 respondents cited corporal punishment as a major cause of dropout. For children who are already at risk of being out of school, being beaten at school can actually tip the scales — why would they attend?

In a country facing an education and learning crisis, and with alarming numbers of out-of-school children, there is an urgent need to address this. Motivation to attend and stay in school can be built by ensuring positive perceptions of the classroom experience, with teachers as role models and attachment figures. A love for learning cannot be built on the foundation of fear.

A gentler world, then, can start with a compassionate classroom. This is more important than ever in an increasingly fractured world, where violence and polarisation are on the rise. Now is the time to reconstruct the idea of school as a sanctuary, where children are protected and given the space and support to learn, explore their best selves and express ideas with confidence.

To move towards this, there are already some trailblazers in terms of legislation. In Islamabad and Sindh, corporal punishment is prohibited in learning spaces, including schools, madressahs and daycare facilities, while in Gilgit-Baltistan, the prohibition exte­nds to home sett­ings. There is a need for similar legislative steps across the country, as this lays the foundation for change.

However, in order to start shifting deeply entrenched practices, legislation must be accompanied by real communication with teachers and caregivers. The experience of delivering ‘Maar Nahi Pyaar’ workshops with teachers showed that against the backdrop of the new laws, sharing knowledge of alternatives to corporal punishment, such as positive discipline and classroom management, can actually change behaviour. If policy-level reforms can translate into safeguarding systems at the school level, with the management on board and mechanisms to report and address complaints, it can help drive accountability and ensure that legislation means something on the ground.

Changing underlying attitudes and beliefs is a far more difficult task. However, if teachers can re-examine the experience of the violent or humiliating punishment seared in their memories, look at it through a different lens, and then question their own approach, perhaps the cycle can end with them.


Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2025

RETHINKING STATE STRATEGY IN BALOCHISTAN 

The issue of how to deal with the insurgency and dissent in Balochistan continues to divide people and often elicits the most entrenched, if not predictable, responses.

Ejaz Haider 

April 27, 2025

DAWN/EOS

“Nurse Duckett plucked Yossarian’s arm and whispered to him furtively to meet her in the broom closet outside in the corridor… She had urgent news about Dunbar.

‘They’re going to disappear him,’ she said.

Yossarian squinted at her uncomprehendingly.

‘They’re what?’ he asked in surprise, and laughed uneasily.

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know. I heard them talking behind a door.’…

‘Why are they going to disappear him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t even good grammar.

What the hell does it mean when they disappear somebody?’“ — Catch 22, Joseph Heller

OPENING WORD

My March 30 cover story in these pages, How to Counter the Insurgencies, got respectable traction. That makes me happy, as it would any writer. Unsurprisingly though, my reference to dealing with the separatist insurgency in Balochistan as primarily a political problem has elicited some responses that one might describe as negative or, more charitably, as sceptical. This article is an attempt to posit some of those responses and to try and respond to them as best as I can.

LIST OF RESPONSES

A: One sceptic asked me if a politico-democratic approach is the best way to deal with insurgencies. The argument implicit in this view is that insurgent violence cannot be countered through strategies that tie the state’s hand through laws and rules of engagement, especially when the insurgent — or terrorist, if you will — is free to resort to innovative violence that is often, as is the case in Balochistan, also directed towards non-Baloch ethnic groups and flouts the accepted rules of engagement.

According to this argument, the problem is exacerbated by the insurgents’ use of social media and disinformation and through the political activism of “soft separatists” who use the legal-constitutional compact to make the job of security forces and intelligence agencies even more difficult.

Corollary: unfortunate though it is, the state has to suspend the normal operations of law to deal with the insurgency — ie let’s ignore voices calling for a political process until the insurgency (or its terror component) is dealt with.


The issue of how to deal with the insurgency and dissent in Balochistan continues to divide people and often elicits the most entrenched, if not predictable, responses. Ejaz Haider attempts to answer the most common critiques of the contention that they should be dealt with primarily as a political problem…

B: Who should the state talk to? The insurgents are bent on perpetrating violence while the Baloch leaders have no real roadmap to offer to the state. This argument has many moving parts that, unlike a machine’s, are not synchronic.

B-1: Sardars [tribal chieftains] are not relevant anymore so there’s no point talking to them.

B-2: The insurgency now involves educated, middle-class professionals who do not want to talk to the state.

B-3: The political opposition in Balochistan basically comprises “soft separatists” who do not condemn violence and are in cahoots with the insurgents/terrorists.

B-4: The army has tried multiple times, through various initiatives, to incentivise the Baloch to accept the federal structure. They don’t bite.

B-5: Multiple development schemes and monies associated with them have not worked. The Baloch just don’t want to talk.

Corollary: the only way to go about this problem is to improve and sustain counterinsurgency (COIN) operations and to bring the violence down to manageable levels. Once again, as with A, the bottomline is: we have to suspend some rights to deal with the situation.

Let’s try and unpack this, beginning with A.

COUNTER-ARGUMENTS

The argument encapsulated in A above, and all it entails, is not a novel view, nor is it peculiar to Pakistan. Debates over how to tackle insurgencies and/or internal low-intensity conflicts have raged in several states confronted with the problem.

States have employed various strategies in combatting internal threats and those strategies almost invariably have had a coercive component that operates outside the law — exceptions, if you will, to the normal operation of law and functioning of the courts.

In more extreme cases, states have resorted to collective punishment of insurgent populations, extra-judicial killings through death squads (Latin America has been notable in this regard, though it’s not an exception), complete suspension of constitutional rights for the duration of such operations, introduction of draconian laws (India is a case in point) and even forced population displacements and relocations (you will be surprised how often this unethical stratagem has been used by states as a counterinsurgency tool).

The question then is: if states have been doing this, why can’t Pakistan do it?

There are three reasons why Pakistan should avoid using such measures: they are morally reprehensible (we are still living with the scars of East Pakistan); they do not work in the long run, even when there might be some initial successes (this runs through COIN literature like a motif); and using such ignoble means against one’s own ethnically distinct population groups sends a clear internal and external signal that the insurgents’ cause against the state was justified ab initio.

But before I proceed further, a word about “exception”. Exception creates a legal fiction but it’s been around. The Romans called it iustitium [literally, standstill or suspension of law]. But it should be evident that exception denotes exactly that — exception. It cannot be the norm. Also, measures taken in an emergency remain contentious even within that framework. Outside of that framework, they are generally considered illegal, unconstitutional, violative of rights and due process and, in many cases, downright criminal.

The ironic fact is that most modern states have come into being through secession. As American political scientist Bridget Coggins has noted, “Secessionism does not herald the emergence of every state, but it underlies most twentieth-century births.” America fought a war of independence to secede from the British crown. The northern states then fought a civil war to prevent the southern states from seceding. The first was about segregation; the second about integration, even if enforced.

Before World War I, states, especially strategically located ones (Central and Eastern Europe is an example), often died through conquests and were resurrected in some shape and form through armed insurgencies. Other parts of the planet that were colonised were considered terra nullius [literally, no man’s land]. Those lands were for the taking, as French author and politician Victor Hugo famously exhorted his fellow Europeans to go forth and colonise Africa: “God gives land to men. God offers Africa to Europe. Take it!”

Since World War II and the evolution of state sovereignty and state practice against occupation and annexation that dates back to the 19th century, states have generally stopped dying in the sense of being vanquished, occupied and annexed. Many, however, are riven by civil wars, insurgencies, and general lawlessness, what economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson would call “the Absent Leviathan.” Equally, in most such cases, the Leviathan became absent because it was despotic, forcing peoples to rise up, which then invited external predation.

Most analysts that use the state as a unit of analysis either shy away from the moral argument or dismiss it, arguing that moral considerations do not fit in with the realist framework or realpolitik. The argument is bogus: at best it betrays a lack of understanding of the realist framework; at worst it is a pernicious employment of terms in the service of policies that are dangerous.

If Realism had no room for a moral argument, German-American jurist and political scientist Hans Morgenthau would not have emerged as the foremost critic of America’s Vietnam misadventure. Deeply ironically, proponents of American intervention in Vietnam couched the savagery not in realist but “legal” and “moral” terms — opposing aggression, fighting for freedom. This approach was blasted by George Kennan, the doyen of the American strategist community, who “called for a return to policy-making which more clearly defined national interests.”

A Pakistani paramilitary ranger frisks a motorcyclist at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Quetta on August 27, 2024: the situation in Balochistan has become a microcosm of what is happening within the broader problem of power relations in Pakistan

As for the use of realpolitik interchangeably with “realism”, “realist” or raison d’ etat [reasons of state], it is best for interested readers to look for Professor John Bew’s brilliant history of the term and how “the true meaning of realpolitik remains occluded by the partisan way the word has been used in Anglo-American political discourse.”

The issue is neither mere semantics nor just academic. Policies have real-life consequences and, in situations requiring tools of violence, the price is human blood. But before we proceed further, let’s look at the direction of causality — ie what is the cause of an effect.

Take the arguments in B, basically A but with some specific questions. The problem is exacerbated when our views — I wouldn’t call them analysis — become incoherent. For instance, during one of the conversations regarding my previous article, a former senior establishment officer — after telling me that Sardar Akhtar Mengal (as also other sardars) are irrelevant to the current situation — went on to somewhat vehemently defend the absurd decision by the Balochistan government to not allow Mr Mengal and his party to express their opposition to the ongoing situation by marching on Quetta.

When I pointed out to him that if the argument that Mr Mengal is merely looking for brownie points is correct — and it might well be — then how does he explain the government’s response to Mr Mengal’s political protest? Surely, the government would do well to earn its own brownie points by letting Mr Mengal let off some steam, given his supposed irrelevance?


States have employed various strategies in combatting internal threats and those strategies almost invariably have had a coercive component that operates outside the law. The question then is: if states have been doing this, why can’t Pakistan do it? There are three reasons why Pakistan should avoid using such measures: they are morally reprehensible (we are still living with the scars of East Pakistan); they do not work in the long run, even when there might be some initial successes; and using such ignoble means against one’s own ethnically distinct population groups sends a clear internal and external signal that the insurgents’ cause against the state was justified ab initio.

Or is it that Mr Mengal might not be as irrelevant as he is made out to be? The only obvious way to square this non sequitur, of declaring Mr Mengal irrelevant and then giving him relevance, is for the government to decide that it has the space to be cussed without the necessity of developing a coherent policy.

Another interlocutor, again a very senior former establishment officer, told me that the top army commander in Balochistan had requested to meet with Mr Mengal repeatedly but the latter had not bothered to respond to those invitations. When I asked my interlocutor if he had entertained the thought that Mr Mengal might just be signalling that the very meeting with the top army commander is the problem rather than a solution, he was somewhat flummoxed.

I had to explain: “Sir, if one of the major problems behind Baloch grievances is the governance and political structure that is dominated by the army, would it be good strategy by a protesting Baloch politician to accept such an invitation and, by doing so, signal his acceptance of something that he is protesting against?

This is where “who should the state talk to” becomes “there’s no one to talk to” and therefore the only solution is (a) to find collaborators from within the population and (b) treat the rest of the population as enemies of the state in and through policies that suspend the normal operation of law and the constitution.

This is not my interpretation. It is the very essence of the argument I am countering. If the sardars are irrelevant, the middle class supportive of the insurgency and the political opposition are “soft separatists”, then it is a war against an entire ethnolinguistic group — a war without end, unless the state can either completely subjugate that ethnic group or exterminate it. Need anyone mount an argument to establish the moral abomination of this approach?

A CHICKEN-AND-EGG PROBLEM?

What causes insurgencies? It’s easier to determine the causes where people rise up against foreign domination or colonial occupation. We are not dealing with those cases. The issue at hand is the question about why a particular group within a state takes to armed resistance.

Analysing this is important, not just in terms of determining the direction of causality in and of itself. The issue of causality must also inform the strategies the state has to employ to address the problem, especially if we can determine that a resistance group formed group identity because it failed to get the state to take cognisance of its grievances within the accepted legal-constitutional compact and through a socio-political process of aggregation of interests.

Let’s try to understand it through the problem of disarmament. How does one convince states to disarm without first creating an atmosphere of trust between them. Put another way, as Spanish diplomat and writer Salvador de Madariaga once did, do states distrust each other because they are armed or are they armed because they distrust each other?

After a while, the causality becomes bidirectional. States distrust each other so they arm themselves and because X is arming itself, Y and Z must too — until it becomes an arms race.

Does a political process lead to lessening of violence or does the state need to put down violence to make space for a political process? This obviously throws up the question of whether one can indeed look at this issue linearly and sequentially — that A would lead to B which is then supposed to lead to C.

Let’s take stock of the situation once again. At some point, a group within the state decides it wants to secede, exit being the only option after voice has failed and loyalty makes no sense. It has to mobilise. Mobilisation requires identity formation, which needs a marker, an ideology or a distinct ethno-linguistic uniformity.

Activists from the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) hold posters of Mahrang Baloch during a protest demanding her release in Karachi on March 24, 2025: the new term “soft separatist” is being bandied about to establish that even those who are without guns but protesting nonetheless have to be put down because, in the end, they are as “disloyal” to the state as the insurgent who is armed and bent on violence

It would then launch a struggle against the state. That could be armed, unarmed or a combination of the two. It would also require to win adherents within the state and outside. Sometimes, as happened in the case of East Pakistan, it would reach out to external state actors to recognise the struggle and support the group covertly or overtly.

These phases are not necessarily sequential. They can overlap. Mobilisation is never smooth and, despite identity formation, there can be competing groups within the struggle. If we consider these phases as “choke points”, as American political scientist Peter Krause does, then the state can formulate policies to disrupt the struggle at each of these choke points.

During The Troubles, the period in Northern Ireland from roughly 1969 to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the British went through many phases in trying to put down the Irish insurgency. They created the Diplock Courts, which did away with jury trials and where a single judge would hand down sentences. Doing away with the juries was owed to cases of perverse acquittals and because members would often be intimidated. Even so, the Diplock Courts garnered much criticism.

At the operational level, the British forces relied, for the most part, if not always, on intelligence-based, discriminatory operations and avoided provoking the population. Also, their main operational thrust was on netting the IRA leaders rather than using scorched earth policies to kill foot soldiers and civilians.

But discriminatory action requires first-class intelligence and highly trained forces with the will to not be trigger-happy. In low-intensity conflicts, this is not an easy feat to achieve. But that is precisely what high-standard training is meant to achieve. It also implies rules of engagement that are supposed to give the state a high moral perch.

It should be obvious that, just like diagnosing a disease early, it is easier for the state to reach out early to the insurgent group during the mobilisation and identity formation phases — even early in the armed struggle phase. This is also the critical juncture in terms of deciding whether politics will take the lead with the kinetic as back-up or the other way round — ie using force to inform the group that they have no choice but to talk.

In the early stages of a brewing conflict, prudent states would try to rely on dealing with the problem politically. This is not to say that the state would allow the hardliners among the secessionists to run amok. But the use of force or the threat of its use would not be the focal point of the policy.

At the stage where things have already gone out of joint, we always run the risk of being tempted into hard responses. Blood spilled on both sides hardens attitudes. Anger and revenge upstage prudence and equanimity. That’s the most dangerous stage of COIN. One can assume that the state has already failed to prevent mobilisation and identity formation. Violence is now centre stage: the insurgent cannot win but, by entrenching identity and succeeding at mobilisation (recruitment), he continues for the long haul. He wins by not losing.

It should be obvious that, even at the advanced stage, the state can use the choke points of mobilisation and identity formation by reaching out to whoever it can reach out to and by addressing basic grievances. It’s not an easy task, because at this stage the insurgent will disrupt political processes and development schemes and kill those among the group he thinks are betraying the cause by working with the state.

The entire thrust of my previous article on the subject was to debunk linearity and easy solutions. I made two points: one, social policy space does not permit tame solutions because the problems are wicked. And the problems are wicked because policy must be formulated within a problem’s ecosystem, where the sub-systems and the impact of the policy on them become visible only after one begins to implement a policy. The problem is aggravated further because humans, psychologically, are prone to tailoring new data to fit the original hypothesis rather than reformulating the problematic on the basis of new data.

This is the perception problem: perceptions are quick to form but resistant to change. Intelligence analysts often try to circumvent this problem by pairing up an old hand with a new one to synergise their strengths: the old hand bringing in the longue duree [long duration] expertise and the fresh mind picking up new information and cancelling the old hand’s cognitive biases.

Without going into the complexity of the work done by Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky on fast (heuristics) and slow thinking, let it be said that we are all, to the last person, defined by such biases. Even the best have to train themselves to think slow to cancel our cognitive shortcuts and biases.

WHAT THEN?

This brings us to the problem of who governs Balochistan. No serious discussion to formulate policy can avoid this question. While it links up with the broader civil-military relations problem this country has been beset with, Balochistan stands at its extreme end. A number of factors, including historical memory, have gone into creating the problem whose latest iteration has been festering since the mid-noughties. The army’s predominance in the province and its influence on and machinations in the province’s politics stand out. It is this power equation that, inter alia, feeds the insurgency.

The security establishment is a state’s thin end of the wedge. In states with effective civilian oversight, the use of this thin end is dependent on political decision-making. The insurgent can, in theory, talk to the political principals. But how does he talk to the very force he is fighting against and which, in this case, not just represents the state but comes to the room as the state itself?

The other issue is how and when do you talk to the group which, in a manner of speaking, is a combo of Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army? In a recent manifestation of this problem, a judge in Quetta asked Baloch Yakjehti Committee’s incarcerated leader Dr Mahrang Baloch to sign an affidavit of loyalty to the state, a demand that had nothing to do with the case before him. By making this demand, instead of asking the prosecution for evidence against Dr Baloch, the judge, wittingly or unwittingly, created the very binary that agitates the Baloch.

This is where we come to the issue of “soft separatist.” This new term is being bandied about to establish that even those who are without guns but protesting nonetheless have to be put down because, in the end, they are as “disloyal” to the state as the insurgent who is armed and bent on violence. This is the basis of the question about who the state should talk to. One doesn’t need a vexing exercise in reflection to figure out what this means: if you don’t accept what exists, warts and all, and declare loyalty to the state, the state will sort you out — like it does the one with the gun.

If this approach denotes a political process then, to quote Dorothy Parker, the Statue of Liberty is located in Lake Ontario.

Those who are agitating (so far) within the legal-constitutional framework of this state are not enemies. They are precisely the people who the state must reach out to if it is indeed serious about a political process. But these are also people who walk not just a tightrope but a razor-edged one.

They have to deal with the insurgent, their unarmed support base and the state at a time when their relevance within the support base is grounded in the unarmed component of the movement. To ask them to file affidavits of loyalty and subjugate themselves to the state before the state would talk to them is egregious folly couched as informed policy.

They are useful because they still represent people who haven’t picked up the gun. To turn them into collaborators means killing their very usefulness in any political process. It is no surprise that these grotesqueries are primarily being mouthed by those politicians in Balochistan who are already state collaborators and represent no one. Far from being useful, they are instrumental in fanning the flames.

FINAL WORDS

Where the situation stands, there are no easy solutions. But there are solutions that can improve the environment and, by so doing, change the ecosystem incrementally. Did I say ecosystem? Yes, I did. And that implies situating what is happening within the broader problem of power relations in this country, of which Balochistan has become the microcosm.

I am not a betting person but roughly constituted as I am and from where I stand, even I am prepared to wager money on the unfortunate fact that the state, configured as it is, would not do the right thing. It’s not that there’s any dearth of good-intentioned people. There is none. But the system has evolved in a way and has enough collaborators to take on its own life and perpetuate itself.

As someone said, a bad system will beat a good person every time.

The writer is a journalist interested in security and foreign policies. X: @ejazhaider

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 27th, 2025

A sea under siege: For Gwadar’s fishermen, the nets are full of hope but never fish

The sea that once sustained generations is now stripped by deep-sea trawlers, leaving Gwadar’s fishermen adrift and uncertain.

Hazaran Rahim Dad 

Published April 28, 2025
PRISM/DAWN


In Gwadar’s Padi Zer, where the towering silhouette of Koh-i-Batil meets the endless shores of the Arabian Sea, the fishermen push their boats into the surf as the evening tide rolls in. The sun casts golden shadows over the water as others offload their modest haul from ice boxes.

A small crowd gathers, murmuring with hope, asking for fish to take home. But the replies come tinged with disappointment, echoing in Balochi: “Mahee ady jend nest” (there’s no fish today). Still, a few kaashuk-loojar (sardines) are handed out, small offerings from a sea that gives only just enough. The process takes over an hour, as the sparse catch is finally carted off in qingqi rickshaws to fish trading companies.

As the sun sinks lower, one of the sailors returns to Padi Zer, now seated across Waado Aani Jah — the boat makers’ point — alongside other fishermen sipping their chai ordered from a nearby teashop. The salt still clings to his skin, his clothes still carrying the scent of the sea. You wonder aloud how he’s found the time to return, barely bathed, barely rested. He offers a knowing smile and says:

“I return to remind myself — and my conscience — that we don’t turn to the sea just for a living, we belong to it. No matter the odds and challenges.”

Yet, beyond these shores, new boundaries appear. The same people who have always lived by the sea now find themselves edged out of places they once moved through freely.

Where Koh-i-Batil meets the Arabian Sea.


Koh-i-Batil — the heart of Gwadar’s landscape — spans vast across the landscape. From its peak, the entire city stretches out in a breathtaking panorama: sunlit waters, winding roads, the pulse of a city shaped by sea and stone. But today, this landmark is a restricted area. Visitors have to wait, present their IDs, and are often denied access altogether. Even those allowed through are confined to a single section of the mountain.

One can’t help but think: Did the indigenous people of Gwadar ever imagine that “development” would fence them out of their own heritage? Can progress truly uplift a community if it erases their access to the very spaces that gave them meaning?
Enter: CPEC

Gwadar, a dusty city along the arid coastline of the Arabian Sea, has been in the headlines for over a decade as a key player in China’s economic ambitions. Situated in Pakistan’s volatile Balochistan province near the Iranian border, it has been thrust into the spotlight as a key node in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — a large-scale infrastructure and economic development project initiated by China in 2013. Amid barren deserts and jagged mountains, this remote city is being fantasised as the next big commercial hub, a gateway for Chinese trade and investment into the region.

Home to an indigenous Baloch fishing community, the city is home to approximately 100,000 residents whose lives are still defined by hardship. Electricity is sourced from across the border in Iran, but it’s erratic at best. And while CPEC’s vision has yet to bring tangible change to Gwadar, the city’s struggles don’t end there. More than the economic exclusion, the sea itself, seems to be slipping away. Clean water is scarce and the once-abundant sea now yields little more than scraps, picked over by industrial deep-sea trawlers before reaching local shores.

It’s no secret that Gwadar is reeling from the impact of deep-sea trawling. As fish disappear from its waters, indigenous fisherfolk are left struggling to sustain their way of life.

The 750km coastline of Balochistan — including towns and cities such as Gwadar, Pasni, Ormara, Ganz, Pishukan, Jewani, Surbandan, along with surrounding fishing villages — has long supported communities that lived in harmony with the sea. However, illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) deep-sea trawling has crippled local fish production and inflicted lasting damage on the marine ecosystem.

Saki Baksh, a fisherman from Gwadar, explained the scale of the crisis: “Even 10 days of our hard work at sea can’t match what a single trawler catches in one day.”

A deep-sea trawler in Gwadar.


Fishing practices: Local fishermen vs deep-sea trawlers

Local fishermen have traditionally followed sustainable fishing practices, aligning their methods with seasonal availability. They adapt their nets based on the type of catch — for example, during the king fish season (September to November), they target only king fish, avoiding other species. The same approach applies to lobsters, shrimps, and other seafood. They mostly use eco-friendly nets with large holes and minimal plastic, allowing vulnerable marine species to escape, thereby preserving the marine ecosystem.

In recent years, however, some local fishermen have begun using harmful gear such as fine plastic mesh nets, small-holed nets, encircling nets, and wire nets — locally known as gujja. These practices pose a serious threat to marine biodiversity and contribute to the depletion of fish production. Hence, such nets are prohibited under the Balochistan Fisheries Ordinance, 1971.

Nako Chakar, an 80-year-old former fisherman, no longer goes to sea but still walks the Gwadar shoreline, listening to the fishermen as they unload their catch. Their conversations tell a different story now — of vanishing fish, changing nets, and a sea no longer as generous.

“When your livelihood depends on something, you treat it with care,” he reflected. “For us, the sea was sacred. I remember waiting for my father’s return with the day’s catch. My sons once waited for me the same way. Now I watch them return frustrated, cursing the trawlers that swept away the fish from their nets.”

“We used to catch fish with ease, each season bringing its own bounty,” he reflected. I would ride a camel to nearby towns to sell our catch. But when the trawlers arrived, we didn’t realise what was coming. We just saw big boats — never imagining they’d end up destroying our coast.“

Local fishermen operate in small, single-engine boats that allow them to navigate carefully without disrupting others or risking collisions. In contrast, deep-sea trawlers — large vessels with around 40 crew members — move at high speeds, often crashing into these smaller boats and causing significant damage.

While local fishermen work 12-hour shifts, trawlers operate around the clock. Equipped with three engines, generators, diesel fuel, and ice storage, they tow massive nets that sweep both surface and deep-sea fish. Their fine-mesh plastic nets, also known as gillnets, trap even the smallest fish, pushing certain species toward extinction.

Left: Local fishermen use this net to catch sardines and Indian mackerel. Right: Two types of nets used by deep-sea trawlers.

Unsurprisingly, the actions of deep-sea trawlers have become rather brazen today; they frequently detain, attack, and intimidate local fishermen. On May 28, 2024, an incident in Gwadar saw a trawler crew murder a local fisherman and abduct another. In response, fishing communities and local activists launched protests, blocking major highways. Outraged by the unchecked violence and looting, they decried that deep-sea trawlers operate with impunity under the protection of powerful authorities and remain above the law.

According to one fisherman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, encounters with trawler crews can be dangerous. “They are often armed. If a local boat crosses their path, they don’t hesitate to fire warning shots,” he said.

Aziz Peer Baksh, CEO of Atlantic Seafood Company, a locally owned enterprise in Pasni, also pointed to the destructive practices of large trawlers operating in the region. He said that the trawlers transport their catch to Karachi, where it is processed for export. “They often capture massive bycatches — including turtles, dolphins, sharks, whales, and squid — which they sell to seafood companies at low prices,” he claimed.

According to Baksh, the production of key species such as sardines, Indian mackerel, green mussels, pomfret, mud crabs, sole fish, shrimp, and prawns has plummeted. “This sharp decline has pushed our incomes to the brink of collapse and endangered marine life,” he added. “Local fishermen and sailors who once supplied fish across Balochistan and Karachi are now struggling. The reason is clear: they are bringing in fewer fish than ever before.”
Where does the rest of the world stand?

International legal instruments such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 1982, United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions (61/105, 64/72, 66/68, 71/123), and international guidelines on fishing by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) call for urgent action to conserve and manage vulnerable marine ecosystems (VMEs) in the high seas.

Moreover, Goal 14 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls for the sustainable management and protection of marine ecosystems. As a result, several countries, including the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, have either banned or regulated commercial fishing by deep-sea trawlers in vulnerable areas.

Ellie Hooper, an oceans campaigner at the Greenpeace Aotearoa — one of New Zealand’s largest environmental organisations — explained in an article that bottom trawlers use various types of nets indiscriminately, regardless of the fish’s seasonal availability. This approach threatens marine life, as species are caught regardless of their breeding seasons. Trawlers drag large and heavy nets across the sea floor, plowing through biologically rich and diverse ecosystems, crushing corals, sponges, various aquatic species and their habitats as they go.

For this reason, bottom trawling has a large bycatch impact, with many non-target species being fished in the process. The article further stated that “dragging heavy nets across the seabed disturbs marine sediments, which is the world’s largest carbon sink”, highlighting the practice’s significant contribution to climate change.

In 2021, a groundbreaking study published in Nature, an international journal, revealed that fishing boats using heavy nets to trawl the seafloor — often at great depths — release as much carbon dioxide as the entire aviation industry.

Moreover, according to the Second World Ocean Assessment (WOA II), “fishing, especially bottom trawling, constitutes the greatest current threat to seamount ecosystems”.

A fisherman strolls the Gwadar coast, surrounded by rugged cliffs and anchored boats.

The official stance

As per the Balochistan Sea Fisheries Ordinance of 1971, the Secretary of Fisheries and Coastal Development has imposed a ban on all types of fishing in Balochistan’s territorial waters from June 1 to July 31 each year, to protect marine life during the breeding season.

Ahmad Nadeem, an official from the Marine Fisheries Department in Balochistan, explained that fishing is strictly prohibited during this period to allow fish populations to breed and replenish. “However, even during this period, many fishermen continue to sneak into the waters, and one month is simply not enough for the sea to recover,” he added.

Overfishing has led to a sharp decline in fish populations, with many fish being caught before reaching maturity. “Like all living creatures, fish need time to grow, but they’re often caught at the larval stage,” he explained.

He noted that fishing practices have drastically changed over time. In the past, small-scale fishermen would spend only three to four hours at sea, while larger boats stayed out for seven to 10 days. Today, smaller boats are staying out for as long as eight hours, with some even making multiple trips within a 24-hour window.

“The pressure to earn quick profits has placed an immense burden on the sea,” he added.

According to him, fishing techniques have also changed significantly, with modern nets featuring smaller mesh sizes and stretching over much longer distances — ranging from five to 30 kilometres (km) — compared to the larger, shorter nets used in the past. He added that previously, fishermen targeted specific species based on season and demand. Today, they catch whatever they can find, driven by market needs. “Every size and type of fish is now bought, further worsening overfishing,” Nadeem said.

“Deep-sea trawlers are to be blamed for the use of fine mesh nets, rampant overfishing, increasing number of boats, destructive fishing techniques, and the disregard for seasonal restrictions. These practices have caused irreversible damage,” the official acknowledged.

Though legal frameworks such as the Sindh Fisheries Ordinance of 1980 and the Balochistan Sea Fisheries Ordinance of 1971 are in place to protect vulnerable marine species — including various types of sharks — their enforcement remains largely ineffective. For instance, the Marine and Fisheries Department in Gwadar confirmed that the Karinj (Mobula) is now extinct, with only 17 recorded sightings between 2021 and 2022. The sawfish has disappeared entirely.

Fishermen tend to their nets on a boat.


The impact on Gwadar’s fisheries and fisherfolk

Shamsi, a resident of Gwadar, sat cross-legged with a small pile of sardines in her lap. Her trembling, wrinkled hands moved slowly as she cleaned the catch of the day. “Sardines have lost their shape,” she muttered. “They were always tiny, full of thin, nearly invisible bones — but they had taste. Now, they’re even smaller, and when we fry them, there’s no flavour.”

Her 19-year-old son, Sameer, is a fisherman — one of the many who brave the unpredictable sea each day. “He risks his life out there,” she says, “and comes back with nothing but disappointment and a few measly fish.

Like countless other families along the coast, Shamsi’s household relies on the sea for survival. But as fish stocks shrink, the entire community is at the brink of poverty and hunger. “The fishermen return with empty nets and fading hopes,” she lamented. “Indian mackerel and Hilsa fish — locally known as Palwar — were once plentiful. Now, most of our favourite fish have disappeared. The real culprit is the deep-sea trawlers that are ruthlessly stripping our waters bare.”

Her story mirrors that of Nako Shambay, a fellow coastal dweller grappling with a similar struggle. For over 45 years, he has navigated the waters off Gwadar’s coast. As a seasoned sailor, he’s faced fierce winds and the unforgiving pull of the sea. “There were days I thought I wouldn’t make it back,” he reflected. “The reality of this life is that it’s harsh, unyielding, but the only source of income we’ve known.”

Shambay recalled his childhood, casting nets beside his father who steered the boat. “Back then, Hilsa fish were so plentiful that even children could catch them with bare hands. As the years have passed, I have gone from being a fisherman to a boat nahuda (sailor) but there’s no trace of Palwar anymore.”

He claimed that the growing number of deep-sea trawlers over time has pushed several marine species to the brink of extinction. Among those that have disappeared are the Pishik (a small shark), Soli (sole fish), Gallow (sea catfish), Soro (king soldier bream), and various shark species.

“I remember when sharks were always around,” the sailor added. “Sometimes they tore through our fishing gear. But we never hunted them — our elders taught us to respect and protect certain sea creatures. Now, even those are gone. What we see instead are massive trawlers, wrecking our boats and emptying the sea.”

Another fisherman Chakar reminisced about a simpler time when fishing was more than just an industry. “We fished according to the time of the day. We would leave at shab rech (night) and return in the morning, relaxed and content. Life was tough, but the sea was alive. We fished to feed our families, not for profit. Now, the sea feels empty.”

“Today, Palwar, Garme pagas, Kail, Guthol, Warok, Gorchok, and Kalgon are rarely seen. It’s been over 15 years since I last saw a Soleeg. Even Kir is so scarce now that catching one is considered a stroke of luck,” he added.

Deep-sea trawlers from Karachi and other parts of Sindh routinely encroach upon the Makran coast, despite not being local to the region. Their activities are not only unwelcome but also illegal. By law, they are prohibited from operating within 12 nautical miles of a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and larger vessels must remain at least 35 miles from the shoreline. Yet, these regulations are routinely flouted.

“There is an entire chain of officials who take bribes from the trawler mafia, turning a blind eye to these violations,” said KB Firaq, a Baloch educator and social activist from Gwadar. “Anyone standing on the shore can see trawlers openly fishing in Gwadar’s waters.”

A local fish trader Rasheed from Pasni echoed this concern, alleging that the Fisheries Department receives substantial bribes from deep-sea trawler operators, which is why they are able to operate freely without any restrictions.

Nadeem, director of the said department, acknowledged that while the department is large and it’s possible that some individuals may be involved in corrupt practices, there is no confirmed evidence to support such claims.

He further elaborated on the difficulties in enforcing fishing regulations, particularly when it comes to monitoring vast stretches of the sea. “The sea is huge — it can’t be monitored like a road. By the time we receive information and reach the spot, the deep-sea trawlers have usually fled. In today’s social media age, fishermen often post videos online instead of informing local fisheries coordinators, which delays our response. These posts sometimes alert the trawler operators as well, giving them time to escape. If we’re properly informed and fail to act, we can be held accountable,” he stated.

His words, however, hold little solace for Nahuda Khuda Dost Wajo, a sailor and president of the Mahigeer Ittehad — which fights for the fisherfolk’s rights. “The trawlers have already destroyed other seas, and now they are doing the same to ours. At this rate, we’ll have no catch left in two years.”

The impact of overfishing has also changed the economics of the industry. The value of fish — once determined by size, weight, and shine — has diminished. “Fish don’t get a chance to grow or mature anymore. Their size has shrunk, their luster has faded,” Wajo lamented.

A local fisherman stands in shallow waters at dawn.


Local grievances unheard

According to Wajo, the issue of deep-sea trawling is not new — it is a longstanding problem that continues to threaten Balochistan’s coastal communities and marine ecosystem. “In the past, international deep-sea trawlers respected the boundary,” he stated.

Hafeez Kiazai, General Secretary of Haq Do Tehreek (HDT), noted a turning point when both the Sindh and Balochistan governments began issuing licenses to Pakistani trawlers from Sindh. These vessels started encroaching into Balochistan’s territorial waters, violating the ordinance and exacerbating tensions with local fishing communities.

“When the government realised the lucrative potential of trawling, they prioritised revenue over regulation,” Kiazai alleged. “They began accepting money from trawler owners and expanded their access to the sea.”

As frustration mounted, local communities began to resist. Between 2005 and 2006, a grassroot movement called Trawler Bhagao, Choola Jalao (remove trawlers, light your stoves) emerged in protest but failed to halt illegal trawling, which has continued unchecked till date, added Khuda Dost.

The latest wave of protests began in Gwadar and has since spread to Lasbela district, underscoring the growing anger and desperation among coastal residents.

Kiazai blamed the inefficiency of the Balochistan Fisheries Department for the ongoing crisis. “The department has never taken effective action against trawlers. When a vessel is seized, its catch is sold off, but the trawler is often returned to its owners after legal action. There’s no deterrence — trawling just continues,” he explained. “Why, then, should the government even issue licenses for these larger boats to exploit the province’s waters?”

Khuda Dost voiced a deeper concern: “The law forbids trawlers from entering the 12 nautical mile zone, but our demand goes beyond that. We oppose all forms of trawling. If there is nothing left in the sea, there is nothing for the people living near it.”

Header Image: Fishermen at work off Gwadar’s coast, surrounded by seagulls. — image provided by the author.


The writer is a Balochistan-based journalist and researcher with a background in English Literature. Her work focuses on the lived experiences of the Baloch people and their socio-political struggles in Pakistan.

Kashmir: In Kupwara, Native Fish Disappear With Changing Climate

Khursheed Ahmad Shah | 25 Apr 2025

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As Nallah-e-Mawer dwindles into a threadbare stream, the lives of those dependent on fishing in these waters are being upended.

Nallah-e-Mawar no longer sustains traditional fishing livelihoods

 (Photo - Adnan Rasheed)

Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir: Atop the snow-capped Kazinag Peak at an elevation of 15,007 ft is the Kazinag Spring and Satkhol Nag, which feeds Nallah-e-Mawer that winds through Kupwara district. Once a vibrant water body, Nallah-e-Mawer now resembles a threadbare stream.

“The water level is so low that one can barely pass through with shoes on. How can we expect to find fish in such shallow water? I am fed up with this job. It is a waste of effort and time,” fretted Showkat Rasool Wani (29) from Handwara, a town in Kupwara district.

“For the last three years, I have been catching only 1.5 kg of fish per day. Five years ago, this was more than five kg in just a few hours,” he added.

“I cannot bear to see this low water level. My childhood and dreams are intertwined with it… Even a decade ago, it was a good time as Nallah-e-Mawer had ample water. I used to catch more than five kg of fish in a day," said Mohammad Raja Akbar (40), a former fisherman from Mawer in Kupwara. “Due to high shortage and low yield, I started a shop in my locality where I sell everyday items and some agricultural products.”   

(Left) Raja Akbar, former fisherman from Mawer talking about low yield and (right) Dr Chalkoo explains the ideal environment for Kashir gaad (Photo - Sourced by Khursheed Ahmad Shah, 101Reporters) 

Locally known as Kashir gaad, Schizothorax (snow trout) genus of fish comprises species such as Schizothorax niger (ael gaad), Schizothorax esocinus (chirru), Schizothorax labiatus (chush), Schizothorax curvifrons (satter gad) and Schizothorax plagiostomus (khont). “They are no longer found in the upper reaches of Nallah-e-Mawer due to low water levels. They survive only in the lower belts where some water remains,” Dr Salman Rauoof Chalkoo, Assistant Director of Fisheries, Kupwara, told 101Reporters.

The primary fish species now found in Nallah-e-Mawer are rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and brown trout (Salmo trutta). Rainbow trout inhabit the lower-lying areas of the stream. As a sport fish, it tends to move against the current, always striving to reach higher elevations.

“Various species of Schizothoracinae [snow barbels] also inhabited Nallah-e-Mawer once. We also had Glyptothorax sp. and Triplophysa sp., which were not commercially important. They inhabited creeks, the areas where stream water subsides and collects, as in the case of drainage channels. All these are no longer present in this river due to climatic changes,” noted Chalkoo.

Across North Kashmir, fishermen have observed a drastic reduction in their daily catch of Schizothorax, with some reporting an 80% decline — from eight to 10 kg per day to just one kg. Several factors, such as habitat destruction, water pollution and invasive species, have turned Nallah-e-Mawer, the main tributary of River Pohru, into a lifeless waterbody, but the primary drivers are climate change and anthropogenic pressures. As a result, species diversity has decreased by 60 to 70%.

While everyday consumption has shifted, cultural traditions still influence fish choices during important events. Despite low availability, there is specific demand for Kashir gaad during traditional festivals such as syundar and aqiqah.

“Over 10 years ago, (suppose) the local fish markets had around 100 kg of fish available each day suppose but now it has reduced to only 20 kg,” Farooz Ahmad Bhat, Chief Scientist and Dean, Faculty of Fisheries, Sher-e Kashmir University of Agriculture Sciences and technology of Kashmir (SKUAST-K), told 101Reporters. With the decline in Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE), the supply of locally caught fish has decreased. As a result, people now rely more on farmed and imported fish for their daily meals.

Once a lifeline for nearly 160 families, Nallah-e-Mawar no longer sustains traditional fishing livelihoods. Families have been forced to turn to agriculture, daily wage labour, small businesses and traditional handicrafts to survive. However, Chalkoo noted that this shift is not just a consequence of ecological destruction, but a reflection of the social stigma surrounding the struggling fishing trade.

The unwelcome human footprint  

One main anthropogenic factor affecting Nallah-e-Mawer is illegal sand mining from the river for two decades, which continues even now with hand tools. This activity disrupts the natural migratory path of fish that move from lower to the upper stretches of the stream. “Fish rely on biological and chemical habitats for survival, and their migration is possible only when there is an adequate water supply,” said Aatif Qayoom, a prominent environmental journalist in Kupwara.

"Fish sense their surroundings through their lateral line system, which help them navigate towards suitable feeding and breeding grounds. However, illegal mining has deepened the streambed, reducing the overall water level. This decline in water volume disrupts the breeding and feeding habitats, ultimately threatening their survival," he added.

When the government signs the e-auctioning agreement, a Letter of Intent is executed with the bidding stakeholders after consent from the line departments.

“All of these departments, including the flood control and irrigation departments, issue conditional no-objection certificates in writing that no heavy machinery will be allowed in the auctioned areas. The extraction limit is capped at one metre, a restriction that heavy machinery cannot meet. However, contractors often exceed this limit by extracting up to three metres. Similarly, the absence of adequate checks and balances allows contractors to expand the extraction area to two to three hectares,” Chalkoo said, adding that mining reduces water levels and high temperature reduces the oxygen level in water.

A social and environmental activist from Handwara, Advocate Mir Imran pointed to the widespread deforestation in the river’s catchment area, unregulated encroachments and excessive water extraction. “If these environmental challenges remain unaddressed, the region faces an impending water crisis that could alter its ecological and socio-economic landscape,” he warned.

But it’s climate change that has so far had the most insidious effect on the native fish population.

“Reduced glacier influx, rising temperatures, erratic precipitation, and altered hydrological cycles have affected Schizothoracinae fish species in Nallah-e-Mawer. Glacier retreat has led to diminished stream flow, causing lower water levels, higher temperatures and decreased oxygen availability, making the habitat unsuitable for cold-water fish. Increased siltation from unpredictable rainfall patterns, habitat degradation due to changing its dynamics, and prolonged dry spells have further disrupted the aquatic ecosystem, leading to the disappearance of these species,” Chalkoo noted.

Over the last few years, there has been very low snowfall, higher precipitation instead of snowfall, and higher temperatures in summer, triggering faster melting of glaciers and snow. This has resulted in early high-water discharge due to higher temperatures and subsequent dryness of rivers during the summer and beyond.

This isn’t just a seasonal fluctuation,” said Mukhtar Ahmad, Director of the India Meteorological Department in Srinagar. “What we’re witnessing is a long-term shift in climate. With warmer winters and declining snowfall, our water sources are under serious threat — affecting everything from farming to drinking water.”

“This phenomenon alters the phenology of the ecological niche of the watercourses — particularly in terms of water quality — and leads to changes in fish behaviour and physiology. It also alters the availability of food for the fish in these watercourses. The changing water discharge, along with deteriorated water quality and habitat, affects the occurrence, abundance and distribution of fish, ultimately reducing their numbers,” explained Chief Scientist Bhat.

Over the last few years, there has been very low snowfall, higher precipitation instead of snowfall, and higher temperatures in summer, triggering faster melting of glaciers and snow (Photo - Khursheed Ahmad Shah, 101Reporters)

Native fish can benefit from research and policy support

Every year, the Jammu and Kashmir Fisheries Development Department replenishes various water bodies with thousands of carp and trout fingerlings, ensuring the sustainability of aquatic life and supporting local fisheries in the face of dwindling native species.  

While kashir gaad and other native fish varieties have shown a decline in numbers over the last decades due to the change in water levels, water quality and food availability, exotic varieties like carps (major carps catla, rohu and mrigal, and minor carps grass carp, silver carp and common carp) have outnumbered the indigenous ones as the changing environment favours them, Bhat added.

Comparing the growth rates of carps and trout, Chalkoo said, “Common carp has a faster growth rate and is a prolific breeder, which keeps on breeding throughout the year and on very meagre natural triggers like photo period, increase in water temperature or increase in rainfall or water levels. The fecundity of the carp is around two to 2.50 lakh eggs per kg body weight, as compared to native fish with 40,00 to 45,000 eggs per kg body weight.”

However, in a significant step toward conservation, the faculty of fisheries at SKUAST-K has successfully developed technology for the seed production of Kashir gaad.  This recent breakthrough has teased the potential for promoting native species as a more sustainable and ecologically balanced alternative with the right training and investment to make it economically viable for fishers.

“Research is ongoing to extend this breakthrough to other indigenous fish species. The fish seed produced through these efforts is released into major water bodies, including Dal Lake and River Jhelum, helping restore natural fish populations and maintain ecological balance," said Farooz Ahmad Bhat, Dean, Fisheries, SKUAST-K.  

Also considering the significant losses experienced by the fishing community, the Government of India has extended support through the National Fisheries Digital Platform (NFDP) and Pradhan Mantri-Matsya Kisan Samridhi Sah-Yojana (PM-MKSSY).

Fishermen, fisherwomen, farmers, vendors, wholesalers, and helpers can register with NFDP to get an identity card and recognition. Eligible individuals will receive financial support of up to Rs 4,500, aimed at sustaining their livelihoods during challenging times. The accumulated amount of Rs 4,500 would be disbursed to enrolled beneficiaries by the respective states/UTs at the rate of Rs 1,500 per month for three months.

With an investment of over Rs 6,000 crore, PM-MKSSY is designed to provide 40 lakh micro and small fishing enterprises a formal identity, making it easier for them to access loans and credit. It also offers one-time incentives for aquaculture insurance and performance grants to boost business efficiency, improve product safety and quality, and ultimately create more jobs.

Khursheed Ahmad Shah is a freelance journalist and a member of 101Reporters, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.