Urban Bystander
Babloo the pigeon was first to notice the pegs.
They appeared one morning in the Margalla foothills, bright orange and self-assured, hammered into soil that had hosted monks, saints, shepherds, leopards, and officials determined to improve things.
He flew to the old banyan near Shah Allah Ditta. “How serious is it?” he asked.
The banyan, older than most ministries, sighed through its leaves.
“They have brought maps,” it said. “Last time they brought maps, a stream became parking.”
In Islamabad, survey pegs often arrive before permission and remain long after shame.
What Babloo had not seen: seventeen meetings. Between January and April 2026, an Implementation Committee met seventeen times. Fire prevention requires infrastructure. Infrastructure requires access. Access enables development. Development prevents fires.
The logic was a circle. The forest, unfortunately, was standing in it.
By March, recommendations were final. The proposed fire-prevention landscape replaced combustible vegetation with fire-resistant development: hotels as firebreaks, the cricket stadium as defensible space, tourist roads as emergency corridors. On April 21, the Interior Ministry announced the 1,000-kanal complex.
Three days later, WWF-Pakistan warned of irreversible ecological damage. Three kilometres away, another calendar kept similar time.
October through May: Noorpur Shahan. CDA records show 17,640 houses removed. April 15: violent clash, cases against more than 350 residents. April 16: court directive. CDA announcement: 1,000 acres reclaimed. The demolished settlement: 1,000 acres. The announced park: 1,000 kanals.
Same ministry. Same month. Different vocabulary.
This is Islamabad’s special genius: it can arrive late to an ancient landscape and call it vacant. Places with names and memory become blank surfaces awaiting official imagination. A nullah becomes spare land. A hillside becomes a concept note. The renderings, one assumes, had passed through the Ministry of Illusions, where all weather is mild and no one steps in mud.
We preserve by replacing.
We remember by demolishing carefully.
Mr Mumtaz Filevi, Deputy Director for Conceptual Land Utilisation, said the east had become Retrieved State Asset while the west became Ecological Recreation Infrastructure. “Separate files,” he explained. “Separate purposes.” Asked if separate purposes produced similar outcomes, he smiled.
“That,” he said, “would be a philosophical question.”
The city no longer expands by plan. It expands by temptation. Once land becomes revenue, every open space begins to look unemployed.
Barkat Contractor welcomed the diagnosis. “Unemployed land,” he said, adjusting his sunglasses, “is a tragedy best cured by premium frontage.”
The Islamabad High Court noted in 2022 that the authority moved swiftly against the common man while elite encroachments survived. Not even grass should be cut in the protected area, the court said. In 2024, the Supreme Court ordered commercial operators to vacate. The cricket stadium seemed to have learned impatience from the bulldozers.
Between the two sites, the distance was short. The vocabulary was vast. To the east: rubble, a few walls, children’s shoes, a schoolbag on a half-broken wall. Dust settled where a table had been that morning. To the west: marked trees, contractor tape, the promise of jogging paths and tasteful lamps. The leopards, pushed into shrinking corridors, only knew the room was closing. Monkeys descended near the survey pegs. One held an empty water bottle like evidence. Even the animals were filing objections.
At Shah Allah Ditta, springs that once served pilgrims now trickle past kiosks. Above Bari Imam, the saint’s retreat was once reached by a rough path whose difficulty was part of the journey. Concrete steps arrived. The donkeys stopped coming. So did most pilgrims. Preserving, it turns out, is not demolishing.
But in the files, both look like progress.
By evening, Babloo returned to the banyan.
“What happens now?” he asked. The tree rustled wearily. “They will name paths that villagers already used,” it said. “They will inaugurate shade after cutting it. They will unveil what was already visible.”
“And then?” “Then,” said the banyan, “when summer becomes unbearable, they will announce a tree plantation drive.” Below them, the city glittered with recent confidence.
Above it, the hills kept older records.
The pegs were new. The warning was ancient.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
