The Pakistani TikToker Shah Mehran’s videos were racking up thousands of views in April, some exceeding a million. The most popular one, with over 1.7 million views, was a history lesson on the Indus Valley civilization, punctuated with a call for protest over the water crisis in the Indus River, Pakistan’s largest river and a water lifeline for the country. “The people of Sindh have a relationship with the Sindhu river,” Mehran said in the video, referring to the Indus’ local name. The clip was overlaid with footage of a parched riverbank. “Why are we [the people of Sindh] the only ones fighting for it?”
He was referring to the Green Pakistan Initiative, the Pakistani government’s $3.3 billion plan that aims to convert desert terrain into fertile farmland and includes a project to build six canals across four provinces in the country, which will draw water from the Indus River or its barrages. The largest canal will be in the Cholistan Desert in Punjab province.
Protests against the canals have taken the province of Sindh by storm. A political coalition called the Save the Indus River Movement, made up of environmental activists, local communities, nonprofits and policymakers, has been protesting across the country since February.
Sindh is home to the lower course of the Indus, and with water supply already dire, activists say the canals will divert water further upstream and pose an existential threat to the area. They argue that no water will be left for farming activities in Sindh, and irreparable damage will be caused to the natural ecosystem of the Indus Delta. “What are we without our Sindhu?” said Maryam Gopang, an activist associated with Sindhiani Tehreek, a women-led political organization launched by rural women in Sindh in 1980. “We will simply die.”
“For us, it has now become a matter of survival,” said the activist and researcher Ibrahim Buriro, adding that “80% of water in Sindh is unfit for drinking. … There’s no water to begin with. And when they take the rest of our water away [through these canals], how will we survive?”
In April, the federal government decided to momentarily pause construction of the canals after India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty following the recent attack in Kashmir, for which it holds Pakistan responsible. The treaty governs water sharing in the Indus River system, granting Pakistan control over the Indus and two of its key tributaries, the Jhelum and Chenab.
Protesters returned to the streets in May, however, after the military actions between the two neighboring countries. In one instance, clashes ensued between protesters and the police in the city of Moro in Sindh, during which two people died and a dozen others were injured after allegedly being fired on by the police. Later, an angry mob torched the house of a minister in response.
Activists and community leaders, however, say such fragility is new neither to Sindh nor the Indus Delta. “This is an old story,” said Buriro, referring to the mega dams and barrages that were built along the Indus in the 20th century, first by the British and then by the Pakistani state after independence in 1947.
In 1923, the British started constructing the Sukkur Barrage — then called the Lloyd Barrage — which was their largest irrigation project, aimed at bringing over 6 million acres of land under cultivation. It was inaugurated “amid scenes of gorgeous splendor, attended with pomp and ceremony rarely excelled even in the presence of Kings and Princes,” according to a report in the Karachi-based Daily Gazette in 1923.
After 1947, the Pakistani government continued to build more barrages along the Indus in Sindh. The Kotri Barrage was built in 1955, followed by the Guddu Barrage in 1962. Together, these three barrages divert approximately 48 million acre-feet (MAF) of water annually to irrigate 21,500 square miles through an extensive network of 13,325 miles of canals and 42,000 watercourses.
While the agricultural benefits have been substantive — food crop production increased by 61% and cash crop production by 78% between 1981 and 2009, according to a 2016 study — their construction has also resulted in cascading environmental consequences. They have devastated fish migration patterns, for example. (While the Kotri and Guddu barrages have inadequately designed fish ladders, the Sukkur Barrage lacks any fish passage facilities at all.)
They have also led to reduced water release downstream. The average water discharge from the Kotri barrage has plummeted from about 41 MAF between 1976 and 1998 to 14 MAF between 1999 and 2023, according to claims by the Sindh government at the Council for Common Interests, which decides on water disputes in Pakistan. This has placed millions of acres of farmland at risk and quickened the pace of seawater intrusion, putting the fate of the Indus Delta at risk.
Today, the province of Sindh is at the mercy of upriver irrigation projects and upstream dams in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, which release water downstream that allow farmers to irrigate their crops. But due to water shortages — compounded by erratic monsoons and heat waves — these dams have now been running dry, threatening agriculture and driving up the risk of food insecurity.
Earlier this year, the Indus River System Authority issued a drought alert after water levels in the Tarbela and Mangla dams — located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab — approached “dead levels,” making the water inaccessible for use.
Over the years, the construction of three dams, 23 barrages, 12 interriver canals and 45 main canals has meant the Indus River’s mouth — which lies on the southern coast of Sindh, near the city of Thatta — no longer reaches the sea. It is parched and the land surrounding it barren.
A century before the construction of dams and barrages upstream, the delta — an ecological and economic lifeline for Pakistan — used to sustain marshes, 17 creeks, miles of swamps, mangrove forests and mudflats clustered in the shape of a fan that emptied into the Arabian Sea. Now, it is a shadow of its former self.
Parched, seeped in salinity and unfit for human consumption, it has shrunk by over 92% over the last two centuries, according to a 2018 study published by the U.S. Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water. It is also deprived of the rich sediments and alluvial deposits that once made the land fertile for agriculture.
Before 1923, when the Sukkur Barrage was built, nearly 150 MAF of fresh water was brought by the river into the delta. Today, it is less than 10 MAF. As the Indus River dries up, the sea has begun to eat away at the land.
Upstream dams and inadequate rainfall have meant that fresh water from the Indus no longer reaches the sea, resulting in large-scale seawater intrusion. As seawater has seeped into the mudflats and quarries of the delta, it has destroyed the soil and aquifers, making the land unfit for humans, animals and crops.
Lack of fresh water has also led to a decline in one of the world’s largest mangrove forests. Since the 1960s, mangrove coverage in the delta has declined by 86%, which has had devastating impacts on local fisheries. Catches have dropped by nearly 80% in the last three decades alone.
As a result, for the majority of delta residents, fishing or migration are the only two options left. News reports indicate that at least 1.2 million people have migrated out of the delta region in recent years, with the majority heading toward Karachi.
Nearly two centuries ago, the delta was different. It was low and swampy. The soil — fed by the banks of the Indus River — was rich and alluvial, and the towns around it were thriving municipalities. We find glimpses of life in the delta in the first coastal surveys carried out by the Indian navy during British rule in the 19th century.
In 1875, when Commander A.D. Taylor, a surveying officer in the Indian navy, was carrying out the first coastal survey of British India, he and his officers stumbled upon Keti, which later became known as Keti Bandar (“bandar” meaning “port” in Persian).
With a population of 2,000 in 1896, Keti was a thriving municipality, second only to Karachi, the principal port of Sindh. It was a hub for both river and sea trade and exported goods to Bombay and Madras (present-day Mumbai and Chennai in India). In 1904, the total value of Keti Bandar’s seaborne trade was approximately 680,000 rupees at the time, equivalent to almost $8 million today.
Taylor described Keti as a depot for merchandise, where firewood was transported from flat-bottomed river boats to seagoing craft. It had natural fortifications against river floods — low mud walls, or “bunds,” surrounded the town. Between Keti and the coast were several small villages, stockaded and surrounded by mud walls to keep high tides away from the shore. Although the Indus Delta country was low and swampy, locals kept and bred horses, cattle and sheep. The delta was thriving.
By contrast, when I visited Keti Bandar in 2021 — and again in 2023 — I saw only the remains of what could have been. Where once the river was so potent that it carved a channel in the seabed, it was now choked by the sea before it left the country. The ground was dry and the air salty. There were no rice paddies left and no mud walls keeping the tides of the sea at bay.
A makeshift pier had been set up by local fishers using a bright blue inflated jetty bobbing in the water. Men hauled nets full of jellyfish into ice-filled containers in the jetty, which were then driven to Karachi, to be exported to China and Hong Kong. That is the only purpose of this town now, said a local fisher. By sundown, the pier had been dismantled, with no trace left of the activity hours earlier.
Migrants who left the delta recently measure life using comparisons between then and now.
Naseema once lived in a delta hamlet called Kharo Chan with all her family — her aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins. Now, after migrating to Karachi in 1999, they are scattered across Sindh; some moved to villages further inside the Sindh province, others are still in Karachi. Naseema lives in Ibrahim Hyderi, a fishing village located in the backwaters of the city’s largest industrial area, Korangi.
Jameel, Naseema’s 55-year-old neighbor — a portly man with a henna-dyed mustache, bright orange flecked with brown — remembers his father growing rice, bananas and mangoes near Keti Bandar. His tales of the past are stories of “khush hali” (prosperity) and “abadi” (abundance). But his village feels deserted now, and haunted, he said. From about a hundred, only 15 homes remain.
Standing with me under the beating sun in Ibrahim Hyderi — with not a tree in sight — he said he struggles to put food on the table for his family. “I never thought I would see this day like this,” he said. “But I chose this life in the city, and I will not replace it with starvation in the delta.”
When 70-year-old Majeed Motani, vice president of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum and a formidable figure in Karachi’s fishing community, and I sailed out nearly 60 miles off the coast of Karachi, toward the city’s last remaining mangrove forests at Miani Hor, a swampy lagoon on the coast of Balochistan province, he too recalled stories of his youth in the late 1950s.
He said villagers in the delta kept cattle by the thousands. The water was sweet and there was daily exchange of produce with Keti Bandar. At the port, villagers bartered with city merchants, exchanging coconuts, rice and ghee for kerosene, sugar and cotton. But now, he says the land is dry and infertile. Hordes of cattle have died due to prolonged starvation.
Over a million have migrated from the delta toward the city in search of a livelihood, including Naseema, Jameel and their families. They say there is nothing left for them in the delta. “No water to drink, salt everywhere,” Naseema said. “Here, at least we are able to fill jerricans with water from the city. Here, the sea is still at bay.”
When I met Naseema in May 2023, she fanned me with her “dupatta” (a shawl-like scarf) under the beating sun. We spoke about the weather and how it had changed since she first arrived in Ibrahim Hyderi over two decades ago. The mass of concrete and dust was once wilderness and trees, and her children played hide-and-seek in the swampy mangrove forests along the coastal road that runs along Ibrahim Hyderi’s border with the Korangi Creek. The evenings were cool and pleasant.
“There are so many people here now,” she said, referring to the large chunk of the district’s population that comprises climate migrants from the delta. “The weather has become worse and so has the number of mouths we must feed. I tell my daughters, ‘You must stop having children.’”
Karachi has been grappling with increasingly intense heat waves year after year, with temperatures rising to over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Last year, at least 425 people died in the summer.
Yet as twilight fell over Ibrahim Hyderi and I caught silhouettes of fishing boats returning from the Arabian Sea, I was reminded that, for the people of Sindh, the struggle for the Indus wasn’t just about water; it was about survival, ecological preservation and the right to remain on ancestral lands.
The reporting for this story was supported by a grant from One World Media.
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