LAHORE: Rising levels of air pollution in Pakistan’s second largest city could cause “serious” medical complications for people suffering from COVID-19, doctors say, as Lahore ranked first on Swiss firm IQAir’s list of the world’s most polluted cities on Thursday.
Pakistan has so far reported over 349,000 infections and more than 7,000 deaths. On November 11, Pakistan recorded 34 deaths, its highest single-day coronavirus death toll in four months, according to government data.
Recent international studies have offered links between long-term exposure to pollution and COVID-19 death rates, saying coronavirus patients in areas with high levels of air pollution are more likely to die from the infection than patients in cleaner cities.
On Thursday, Swiss firm IQAir showed Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, had an air quality index of 306, which is considered hazardous.
“Smog affects our health adversely in so many different ways, causing allergies, exacerbation of bronchitis, asthma and other chronic airway diseases; it also lowers our overall immunity and resistance to infections and impacts our respiratory system,” Dr. Mehmood Shaukat, head of the Punjab government’s COVID-19 program, told Arab News. “The coronavirus also enters our body through the mucous membrane lining our respiratory tract, thus making things worse.”
Indeed, one of the most common symptoms of severe coronavirus cases is breathing difficulty. And doctors say that if the ambient air suddenly becomes more toxic, as it does every year around this time in Pakistan’s Punjab province, then more people infected by the virus might end up on ventilators or die.
“Since coronavirus patients usually face breathing difficulties, smog and an unhealthy environment can endanger the lives of those suffering from COVID-19,” said Dr. Asad Aslam, head of the Punjab Corona Experts Advisory Group, adding that the number of coronavirus patients was increasing in Lahore and pollution could “aggravate the situation.”
Aslam said the biggest challenge at the moment was convincing people to comply with health care guidelines.
Air pollution in Lahore and other parts of Punjab province is caused by a combination of vehicle and industrial emissions, smoke from brick kilns, the burning of crop residue and general waste, and dust from construction sites. Other factors of air pollution include large scale losses of trees to the construction of new roads and buildings.
“Pakistan was ranked the second most polluted country in the world by the 2019 AirVisual report; it’s unfortunate that we have continued to witness crop burning, poorly maintained vehicles on roads and operational brick kilns even after the Provincial Disaster Management Authority’s order on smog,” WWF Pakistan’s Nazifa Butt said.
“The rising air quality index can cause significant health care issues and result in respiratory illnesses,” she added. “Smog 2020 may turn out to be quite tough for COVID-19 patients.”
On its part, the provincial administration of Punjab says it is acting against environmental regulation violations.
“The Provincial Disaster Management Authority is closely monitoring the smog situation and issuing daily reports,” the organization’s director operations, Nisar Ahmad Sani, told Arab News. “Strict action is being taken against the violators of environment laws. Factories and outlets have been sealed and police reports lodged.”
“The Punjab government has also noted with concern that smog compounds the miseries of COVID-19 patients and delays their recovery,” Sani said. “Special arrangements have therefore been made to control the menace.”
He declined to comment on what the new arrangements are.
In Pakistan’s Lahore, doctors worry as toxic air meets COVID-19
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In Pakistan’s Lahore, doctors worry as toxic air meets COVID-19
- Lahore ranked first on Swiss firm IQAir’s list of the world’s most polluted cities on Thursday
- Recent studies have offered links between long-term exposure to pollution and coronavirus death rates
Walnut tree remains ‘under arrest’ for over a century, living symbol of colonial power in Pakistan
- British officer is said to have ordered chaining of the tree in 1898, a reminder of the absolute authority and psychological control enforced under colonial rule in Khyber Pass region
- Locals and historians say the shackled tree survives as a physical memory of the Frontier Crimes Regulation era, when even nature could be punished to discipline subjects and display power
LANDI KOTAL, KHYBER: In the military cantonment of Landi Kotal, close to Pakistan’s Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan and the mouth of the historic Khyber Pass, a single walnut tree stands bound in heavy iron chains.
It has been this way for more than a century, a surreal, almost absurd monument to the power structures and punitive imagination of the British Empire’s rule in the tribal frontier.
Black shackles still brace parts of its branches, giving it the appearance of a theatrical installation. To locals, it is a wound that never fully healed, a reminder that even nature could be punished when authority wished to show dominance.
Local oral histories trace the origin of this bizarre imprisonment to 1898, when a British officer named James Squid, allegedly intoxicated, believed the tree was moving toward him and instantly ordered it arrested. Soldiers carried out the instruction and the walnut tree has never been freed since.
Muhammad Sardar, the caretaker who oversees the site today, recounted the story as it has been passed down for generations.
“This British military official at that time was drunk and thought this walnut tree was moving toward him to attack him,” he told Arab News. “The officer ordered to arrest this tree, hence the soldiers had to obey the order and arrest this tree.”
Whether the event unfolded exactly as described is impossible to verify, but historians and residents agree on what the continued chaining represented: the unquestionable authority of colonial power.
A LAW THAT COULD BIND PEOPLE — AND TREES
Landi Kotal was one of the most militarized points of the British-controlled frontier, a strategic chokepoint along the Khyber Pass, a route armies, traders and empires have used for thousands of years. To control the region, the British introduced the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), a law that denied locals the right to appeal, hire lawyers or challenge government decisions. Entire tribes could be punished for the suspected action of one member.
The chained walnut tree is often interpreted as a physical embodiment of that era: a warning made visible.
Dr. Syed Waqar Ali Shah, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Peshawar, said the symbolism was deliberate.
“It was an assertion of their [British] authority, it was a symbol of their power. Right. It’s a funny thing as well, because it’s something which was under the influence of some intoxication,” he explained.
“The officer behaved or gave orders for the imprisonment of that particular tree under the influence of some intoxicants.”
Dr. Shah continued:
“It was something which was a symbol of colonial authority, assertion of their authority, of bureaucratic diplomacy, a symbol of their bureaucratic strength and power, and maybe some cultural encounter as well.”
He added that such displays endured because “it was a cultural link between the locals and the colonial power. So it was a reflection of that. But later on, they continued with it in the presence of FCR (Frontier Crimes Regulation) and regulations like this.”
Even once the officer sobered, the chains remained.
Dr. Shah believes that was intentional: psychological messaging meant to instill conformity and fear in people living under colonial law.
“Their objective and purpose was to make it a symbol of discipline for the masses. It was an exhibition of power, a sheer exhibition of power, a symbol that if we can do this to something which was inhuman … if they can deal with a tree like this, so the general public, they should be aware that discipline is very important.”
Landi Kotal’s older residents say their fathers and grandfathers retold the story long before Pakistan existed and long before independence movements dismantled the Raj.
Usman Khan Shinwari, a 26-year-old shopkeeper, said the story continues to live in households like a family inheritance.
“My grandfather would often narrate this story of the arrested tree,” he recalled. “My grandfather would say that it shows how the then rulers were treating the locals and what our ancestors had endured.”
Over a century later, long after the end of British rule and the formal abolition of the Frontier Crimes Regulation in 2018, the walnut tree remains exactly where it was chained, part spectacle, part scar.
Tourists sometimes come to photograph it. Others stand silently before it.
But for many in Khyber, it is neither attraction nor curiosity.
It is proof that power once flowed one way only. A tree could be punished, so people learned not to resist.
