Saving birds in the shadowhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif of the Taliban's menace

Published On Mon Nov 28 2011

Tom Hussain Special to the Star

For conservationist Ehsan-ullah Wazir, it’s been a 12-year “mission.”

Now, the amateur ornithologist, along with a group Pakistani tribesmen, plans to finally conduct a wildlife survey in South Waziristan — a territory on the Afghan border known more for its Taliban safe havens than nature conservation.

“We will cover the whole region, filling in questionnaires, and travel to the most remote settlements to gather data on birds, animals and their habitats,” said Wazir, founder of the Waziristan Nature Conservation Organization.

The survey is the outcome of Wazir’s 12-year campaign — or “mission,” as he calls it — to discourage tribesmen from hunting and trapping migrating flocks of birds that stop over at the confluence of the Gomal and Zhob rivers.

It’s been more than a century since such a survey has been conducted.

And it would have been unthinkable just two years ago, when an estimated 15,000 Pakistani Taliban insurgents occupied much of South Waziristan.

Wazir became interested in conservation by chance. In 1999, his nephew brought him a dead, sparrow-like bird — called shangharai in Pashto — with a plastic ring on its leg.

The ring bore the address of a bird observatory in the Swedish town Annsjon.

Intrigued, Wazir asked hunters in his village of Dabkot to bring him any rings they found.

Then, in March 2001, he summoned his courage and posted a letter to Annsjon, along with a ring.

He was shocked to receive a reply from Dr. Thomas Holmberg, head of the Swedish bird centre.

Wazir had inadvertently solved the mystery of where the Scandinavian bluethroat spent its winters — something that had befuddled ornithologists for decades.

“The recovery of the bluethroat from Pakistan is the most memorable event for Swedish bird-ringing this year,” wrote Holmberg.

He sent Wazir a book about the birds of the Indian subcontinent and advice on how to record migratory data.

Painstakingly, Wazir set about gathering data on the bluethroat, chakor partridge, demosielle crane, sandgrouse and houbara bustard.

But it came to a halt in 2002, when Al Qaeda and Taliban militants fleeing NATO forces swamped South Waziristan, prompting nine years of brutal warfare with the security forces.

It wasn’t until June that the Pakistani government was able to declare a victory of sorts — and Wazir was able to resume his work.

He and his colleagues at the conservation organization took advantage of the recent Eid Al-Adha — the Muslim festival of animal sacrifice — to launch a public awareness campaign. The festival is in early November, when the birds return from Eurasia.

They urged residents to stop hunting birds, and to breed captive animals at home rather than trapping them. “For the sake of Allah, spare these birds so they might multiply.”

The conservationists said they were greeted with a mix of interest and incredulity.

“Many people said: human life isn’t worth a damn here. Birds? You’re joking, right?” laughed Ali Mohammed, a director of the NGO.

But Wazir is serious. And he has no illusions about the challenge ahead.

“Hunters have trapped more than 7,000 cranes, the most in living memory,” he said. “Every year, the flocks are diminishing. If the hunting goes unchecked, we’re worried they might disappear altogether.”

Tom Hussain is a freelance writer living in Islamabad.