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Dera Ghazi Khan: profile
Dera Ghazi Khan is located in the fertile south of Punjab in Pakistan along the banks of the Indus River, and is home to a wide mix of ethnicities and faiths. Established as an independent home by Balochi chieftains in the fifteenth century, the region was annexed by the British in 1849, following the Sikh wars. Over the years it has come to become home to a number of different ethnicities, including Punjabis, Sindhis, Balochis and Pashtuns, as well as a number of different faiths. However, the main languge spoken here is Saraiki. The district is framed to the West by mountain ranges, and to the East by the Indus. It is home to a wide variety of climates, with rich, fertile land near the banks of the Indus giving way to arid semi-desert towards the west. The Northern boundary of the region also traces the historical divide between the ranges of the Balochi and Saraiki tribes which inhabit the region. The rich heritage of the region is reflected in the many tombs and mosques, which dot the landscape. Some of the most famous of these include the tomb of Ghazi Khan, built in the fifteenth century, the shrine of Pir Adil, located in the heart of the old city, the Shah Bagh Mosque, the Jamia Masjid, the largest mosque in the city, and Fort Munro, a fort built in the Sulaiman mountains which is also a tourist destination. According to the 1998 census, the population of the district was around 1.6 million, of which around 76 per cent lived in rural areas, tilling the soil to produce mainly wheat as well as cash corps such as cotton, rice, sugar cane and tobacco. Dera Ghazi Khan first made international headlines as Aimal Kansi, a Quetta-born Pakistani, who carried out a shooting attack on January 25, 1993, near the entrance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Langley, Virginia, was captured from the region. Kansi's arrest was reportedly facilitated by Mr Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari, a Pakistani politician and former friend of Aimal Kansi. Among other political groups, religious parties also enjoy considerable clout in the region. In 1977, the then Jamiatul Ulema-i-Islam chief Maulana Mufti Mahmood won the elections from Dera Ghazi Khan. However, Fazlur Rahman, his son, largely contests from their home town of Dera Ismail Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan’s twin city. Abject poverty is another characteristic that is common as far as the twin cities of Dera Ghazi Khan and Dera Ismail Khan are concerned. Given the relatively high level of agricultural volatility throughout the country, the region has remained under-developed, with farmers being especially hard-hit by economic fluctuations. According to an Asian Development Bank report, Dera Ghazi Khan is the least-developed division of Pakistan with more than 50 per cent of its population living below the poverty line. Of the four districts in the division, the Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur districts have the highest incidence of poverty - over 70 per cent - which fall among the highest in the country, the report further says. Rajanpur not only lacks 'critical social and economic infrastructure' even at the village level; a shortage of water for irrigation and household use also exists, along with poor health services, dilapidated roads, and power crisis as major problems. While these issues need to be addressed by adequate development initiatives responding to the needs of the community, little seems to have been done in this regard. What is also common among the twin cities is the continually fomenting sectarian environment. Despite suspicion falling on banned outfits such as the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) and the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) for attacks on Shia worshippers, SSP's leader Khalifa Abdul Qayyum, from Dera Ismail Khan, is currently an elected member of the NWFP Assembly. The region is also a hotbed of the Baloch nationalist movement. Being home to various Baloch tribes (such as the Legharis, the Mazaris, Buzdars, Sakhanis, Qaiseranis, Lasharis, Miranis), Dera Ghazi Khan's physical proximity with Balochistan makes it a convenient target of attacks from Baloch fighting against the government. On several occasions, there have been attempts at disrupting rail and road communications between the provinces of Punjab and Balochistan. According to a journalist working in the region there also have been several bomb blasts in Dera Ghazi Khan which have been claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA). Separately, reports indicate that the presence of paramilitary forces in and around the region also increased during the past few years in order to counter Baloch fighters as well as protect other interests in the area. The rapidly growing population coupled with a lack of opportunities have made for fundamental components for an explosive situation. Militants from the northwest have reportedly made some headway in the region, and sectarian tensions have become especially strained, after a string of attacks on places of worship, including an attack on a Shia mosque which left 30 people dead. Investigations into the Feb 5, 2009 attack have led to the arrests of three Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan men. The three were reportedly in direct contact with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud and were local. However, a journalist based in the region dismisses 'the hype that's being created' about a possible Taliban presence in the region. 'The people of Dera Ghazi Khan are quite religious, increasingly so since the 70s, but it's nothing like what the media is currently saying, Dera Ghazi Khan does not have a Taliban presence.' 'Many of us believe that this recent racket is fundamentally about the nuclear production at a site in Dera Ghazi Khan', journalist Tariq Ismaeel said. 'Several foreign journalists also have tried to approach the site in recent days', he said. These facilities are less easy to assess and uncertainties abound regarding the production activities being carried out at this site, a Washington base think tank, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) claimed in its recent report.
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