“The authorities destroyed everything we had. Is the home we have lived in for 40 years not our own?” – An evictee of Islamabad’s most populated slum settlement
We’ve all seen it. Photos and videos on social media of bureaucrats proudly standing by and watching as bulldozers and policemen clear government owned land and save it from encroachment. The problem, however, is that there are no big, bad, real estate developers or kabza mafia being thrown to the curb. Instead, these anti encroachment drives focus either entirely on slums and shanty towns or on small shack or cart businesses that do not have proper ‘permits’.
According to the 2020 UN Habitat report, 56% of Pakistan’s entire urban population lives in slums. This means that if in 2020 , Pakistan’s recorded urban population size was 84 million then approximately 47 million Pakistanis reside in informal settlements. To illustrate the significance of this number, it would take 4 cities the size of Lahore to house 47 million people. However, not only do our state authorities not recognize the existence of these housing settlements but they also continuously label them as illegal encroachments, leading to a spree of demolitions and widespread displacement.
Perhaps one of the places where this is best illustrated is Islamabad. With no encroachment protection laws passed on a federal level, such demolitions are a free for all in the country’s capital. But why are our bureaucrats so happy to bulldoze and displace hundreds of people at a time? The answer lies in the very master plan of Islamabad and the bigotry that is built into the Capital’s bones.
Development for whom?
The central premise around Islamabad’s master plan and urban layout, as decided by Greek architect Apostolos Doxiadis, was meant to be exclusionary. The extent of this exclusivity is expressed in Doxiadis’s refusal to let the builders of the city be housed within the city. It was this refusal that led to the construction of precarious labour camps in Islamabad’s periphery– later turned into the Katchi Abadis that we know today.
It is this very legacy that underpins the reality of the anti-encroachment drives in Islamabad today. The legality of these settlements is not necessarily a question of legislation or an absence of documentation but rather a determinant of an anti-poor bias within the country’s governance. In our interview with Umar Gillani, a partner at the Law and Policy Chambers as well as a legal consultant at UNDP, he expressed that he recently filed a petition against the unlawful imprisonment of a street vendor in Islamabad. Mr. Gillani shared that this vendor, an old man, had been selling Kulfis in the same spot in front of Faisal Masjid in Islamabad for the last 30 years. However, the CDA had taken notice earlier this month and entitled his presence as an encroachment for which he was presented in front of a magistrate and punished with 5 months of imprisonment for his crime. The lawyer explained that such depictions of arbitrary governance reveal a deeper ideological power play within our state departments and their evident intentions to only safeguard and appeal to the urban elite.
In Islamabad this is shown through Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar congratulating the police forces and the CDA on its successful demolition of Katchi Abadis. In Lahore this is shown through Firdous Ashiq Awan calling the New Lahore Ravi project, which would demolish the sprawled housing to create a more “developed” community, as a dream come true for Pakistanis. And in Karachi this is shown through the Mayor of the city Waseem Akhtar explaining that the culture of Pakistan is not depicted through the textiles and spices sold in the Express Market, but rather through “modern” recreational projects like parks that were to replace the Market itself.
Therefore, this is an old pattern of bigotry that resurfaces frequently. In order to put a halt to this reinforced narrative, a proper policy defending the right to dignity and housing ideally expressed in the constitution– in addition to Article 38– would perhaps protect these “illegal” informal settlements which actually provide wage-laborer populations with the housing that the state has failed to provide from being conveniently and randomly perched just outside legality whenever the state deems necessary.
Timeline of evictions in Islamabad
The beginning of the mission to protect the country and its people from the contagious evil of the slum settlements can be traced back to a bizarre turn of events in Islamabad’s High Court almost a decade ago.
Amin Khan, a resident of the G-11 Katchi Abadi (informal settlement) filed a petition before the Islamabad High Court in 2014 against the Federation of Pakistan and the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) requesting the issuance of a computerized national identity card (CNIC). Although originally from FATA, Khan had included his G-11 address on his CNIC request which sent alarm bells ringing for senior Justice Shaukat Aziz of the Islamabad High Court who directed the case to the Ministry of Interior, demanding they explain the presence and legitimacy of Katchi Abadis in Islamabad. This was perhaps the first switch in the chain reaction that ensued.
The following year, in June 2015, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) submitted a four-phase plan for the removal of 42 illegal slums in the capital to the Islamabad High Court. In their pre-operations activities, the authority proposed the disconnection of all the allied facilities of the Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco), Sui Northern Gas Pipelines (SNGPL) as well as the issuance of FIRs against the slum dwellers for having illegal connections.
For the swift execution of this four-phase plan, the assistance of 700 CDA employees, 20 reserves of the police, one company of the Rangers amongst many other officials was also sought.
The following month, in July 2015, a single-judge bench consisting of Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqi, for whom the ringing had apparently still not stopped, heard the petitions seeking CDA allotted land to be vacated from slum dwellers. The Islamabad High Court subsequently ordered for the removal of the I-11 Katchi Abadi on the grounds that Katchi Abadi inhabitants had encroached upon green belts and around 150 developed plots that had been allotted to people by the CDA in 1985 who were still awaiting possession of their land.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) the I-11 Katchi Abadi was home to 864 families and 8,000 people in 2013. The process of this court mandated removal, therefore, witnessed dozens of residents being arrested, 1000’s having FIRs registered against them under the Anti-Terrorist Act, and over 15,000 residents being made homeless overnight.
It is integral to note that this tremendous 30 year lapse of time would have rendered this eviction process illegal in Sindh, Punjab, KPK and even Balochistan after 2017 because each of these provinces have passed a Katchi Abadi Act that protects against such arbitrary and unjust demolitions. According to these Acts, principles of longevity of stay and the size of the informal settlements are considered before ordering for their removal. This means that if an informal settlement housing a large number of residents has existed in an area for more than three decades which can be proved through any documentation of electricity bills, lease agreements, or unemployment benefit registrations, their settlement would be protected by law. However, while the Capital Territory does have a Katchi Abadi Community DataBase and efforts have been made by the CDA to now recognize these settlements, merely 11 out of an approximate 55 slum settlements have been recognized so far.
