For ten days in April 2025, Pakistan almost came to a standstill. No freight was moving from its only port city, Karachi, towards the population centres in the north. The cause was the government’s announcement of a project to build six canals to irrigate the Cholistan Desert in the east of the country.
Protesters in the southern Sindh province, fearing diminished water supplies, demanded the immediate cancellation of the project and blocked all highways running northwards. The government soon relented, with prime minister Shehbaz Sharif announcing the project’s suspension in early May.
