Decline and fall of Karez

QUETTA: “In English, it was called tunnel-well. Arabs called it Falaj. Iranians called it Qanat. North Africans named it Khetara but in Balochistan and Central Asia it was called Karez.

“Unfortunately, the system which was used across the world for irrigation for centuries is now taking its last breaths,” Sharif Kakar, a resident of northern Loralai district of Balochistan, said wistfully.

Kakar, who is also a legal practitioner, an avid reader and a political worker, believed that Karez was not only a traditional system for water supply and irrigation of agricultural lands but was “also part of our culture, with a history dating back to ancient civilizations.”

Explaining the system, Zubair Siddiqui – another agriculturalist from Pishin district – said Karez is a gently sloping underground tunnel that conveys groundwater from one place to another while minimizing the water evaporation especially in arid regions like Balochistan.

photos: zubair siddiqui

“For construction of Karez, a mother-well was dug at ground level and a series of vertical shafts were connected to the mother-well to draw water,” he added.

According to Kakar, agriculture in Loralai started centuries ago. At that time there were no tube-wells or any other irrigation system so most areas of Balochistan were totally dependent upon Karez.

“However, now there are hardly a few Karezes left in Balochistan thanks to the advent of tube-wells which are slowing resulting in the depletion of our underground water reservoirs,” he added. He said the tube-well has dried up the water reservoir for the coming generations. “Due to installation of tube-wells, the land water has fully dried up and because of this, the agricultural economy of Balochistan has been badly affected.”

He said the Karez system was a beneficial and reliable irrigation system with no bad impact on the environment.

“This system did not require a huge amount of money. It was a system for all and it was not confined to a specific person. Also the flowing water added to the fertility of land,” he said.

Photos: zubair siddiqui

A research paper – written by Zainuddin Kakar, Asmat Khan, Munawar Shah and Abdul Khaliq – noted that due to installation of a large number of tube-wells, most of the Karezes, springs and wells have dried up in the area that the researchers studied.

The research –published by University of Balochistan – sought to study the impact of the decline in Karez irrigation system on the agricultural sector of rural Balochistan.

It said with electrification and provision of subsidy on electricity, the demand for water for agriculture and domestic purposes increased enormously because of installation of new and heavy tube-wells. “Due to indiscriminate installation of tube-wells, groundwater tables depleted at an alarming rate, which dried many wells and Karezes in the study area.”

The research paper said the government has a policy of not authorizing new tube-wells in a locality and making it mandatory for farmers to maintain at least a distance of at least 1,500 feet between two tube-wells or Karezes.

“But this policy is not applied in a true sense. During the survey, it was observed that tube-wells were installed by farmers disregarding the rules and regulations.”

During the survey, the researchers observed that a large number of tube-wells were fitted in the knack area of a Karez. However, the farmers were not concerned by the fact that the water table is diminishing. The research concluded that as a result of this reliance on tube-wells, the traditional irrigation system of Karez is declining and it is near collapse in all districts of Balochistan.