Sand Mining Turns Thaddo Nadi into a dead river

If we turn the pages of history, from the past centuries, Thaddo Nadi falls in the Malir River. There are two trails originating from the mountains of Kirthar and giving birth to Thaddo Nadi. Freshwater of waterfalls joined to form a river. Eventually, the river falls into the Konker Nadi.

Therefore, the Konker seasonal river has two passages, one of them crossing Gajjan Goth, Faqeer Sohrab Jhukio Goth, and besides the Chanesar Goth.

Another passage flows across Dumba Goth, then the backside of Memon Goth, eventually meeting with the Malir River near Shafi Baloch village near Quaidabad. Then the Malir River terminated into the sea.

For generations, indigenous communities cultivated their lands with its freshwater. But now, the farmland vanished away, and social conditions have become worse than ever.

During a recent visit to Gadap, I struggled to locate the old Lahooti picnic spot. The riverbed had been gutted, its sand extracted by powerful mining groups. “Every year people used to come from Karachi for picnics,” recalled a local villager. “Now, only the pit remains.”

Now, residents rely on the alternative ways to generate water by using pumping machines.

To understand the scale of damage, I met local environment activists Hafeez Baloch, Akhtar Baloch, and Shahid Baloch at the Konker Stop. Shahid, a high school teacher who condemned the authorities and staunchly said, “The precious sand was only found in the region of Karachi’s Kohistan, Jamshoro, and Dadu. The authorities must stop the mining before it’s too late.”

According to locals, the sand mining has been extracting in the vicinity of Thaddo Nadi for more than the past sixteen years. Loaded dumpers move day and night, their routes passing through Bahria Town—where each truck is reportedly taxed—before heading to construction markets near Safoora Goth and beyond.

The reason behind the mining is to earn a huge amount of money. Local Sardars and capitalists were involved; they totally neglected that mining caused significant environmental damage, worsening the situation for locals.

An environmental expert warns that, with the amount of sand extraction, the recovery of damage is irreversible. The provincial government always supported the Mafia and limited their laws to the files, which were never ever implemented in the region.

Over time, the Mafia has been extracting the sand. Currently, the region is facing a climate crisis, and the free-flowing river is on the verge of dying.

In short, the interest of the feudal and capitalist classes in Sindh has been jeopardizing the massive corporate attack on forests, free-flowing rivers, Thado wildlife sanctuary and indigenous communities. They have been dismantling their ancestral lands, cultural heritage, and stone-carved graveyard dilapidated by the land mafia in Karachi, Sindh.