Every year, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) puts out a very beautiful calendar on bridges all over the world. However there has never been any bridge from Pakistan on this calendar. There is not without reason. In the last six decades, Pakistan has not built a bridge of any aesthetic or architectural value.

Most of the new major bridges are of the economic variety built for the roads out of pre-cast concrete boxes or beams, or of plate girders that any one hardly notices driving over. Also since rivers are not used for navigation like they are in industrialized countries, the bridge spans are not very large or high. Therefore there is no need of high super structures like one sees in the case of Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco or other structures like that all over the world.

Other than rail and road bridges, Pakistan also has numerous dams and barrages over major rivers. These are river blockage structures and gated spillways to control water flow and are often used for road traffic as well.

Rail traffic, however, requires heavier bridges than does the road traffic. Again unfortunately Pakistan Railway has hardly built any new rail lines since the British period. The railway system in Pakistan is almost one and half century old. The system is antiquated and so are the bridges. However at the time when some of these bridges were built, their design and construction like the Eiffel Tower in Paris was innovative enough that they were considered as engineering marvels of that time.

In the hilly areas of Kashmir, Frontier and Balochistan the bridges were and still are being built to cross valleys and the river gorges. These may be high bridges but their spans are generally short and foundations are placed either on dry land or in shallow waters of seasonal rivers and streams. Very often these are masonry arched structures with some use of steel beams and trusses, even though one occasionally comes across those single span rope bridges thrown over the river waters gushing through the narrow gorges. Pretty as they look, these rope bridges are not permanent structures and could be dangerous to vehicle crossing.

The biggest challenge in bridge building in Pakistan comes at the crossings of the five major rivers in Punjab and the Indus River in Sindh respectively. None of the governments of the past, imperial or otherwise, attempted to construct permanent bridges over these rivers as rivers were almost always used as another line of defense against invaders from the north and west. That is one reason one sees major old forts all along the south and east sides of the rivers and no permanent bridges. Invading armies waited till the end of the summer and crossed the rivers by using boat bridges constructed by tying boats side by side with ropes and then placing wooden planks to provide the smooth riding surface.

British on the other hand, after conquering the areas now constituting Pakistan in mid nineteen century moved the first line of defense all the way to the top of Hindu Kush Mountains. Thus freeing themselves to span the major rivers with permanent structures for both road and rail use. An era of large permanent bridge structures dawned in areas now constituting Pakistan.

Starting from north, the Attock Bridge on river Indus and the Jhelum Bridge over river Jhelum, both near the cities of the same names respectively, are noteworthy. Also are the rail bridges over river Chenab near Wazirabad and over river Ravi near the capital city of Lahore.

These are all truss structures made of smelted iron fabricated one unit at a time from structural steel. Although labor intensive these structures could be erected without the benefit of heavy industrial complexes or construction machinery. These are multi span bridges with masonry foundations constructed within the river beds. Even though the modern techniques of using coffer dams to construct large masonry footings in water were not available, the engineers were able to temporarily divert the rivers to the other side and thus construct the footings in dry grounds. Spanning of the five rivers allowed the colonial rulers to connect Punjab and beyond to their Imperial capital Delhi located in the Ganges valley in northern India.

The real engineering challenge for the bridge builders came with the need to link Punjab with Sindh by crossing river Sutlej and Sindh with Balochistan by crossing river Indus. Sites near the cities of Bahawalpur and Sukher were selected for the river crossings. These two bridges now in Pakistan are often referred in the history books.

William St. John Galwey, (1833-1891) an Irishman from Cork County was called upon to construct the Bridge over Sutlej. Earlier in his capacity as railway engineer he had successfully completed the construction of the Jhelum Bridge. The Sutlej Bridge also known as Adam Wahan Bridge is the only rail bridge over Sutlej River in Pakistan. Its opening ceremonies were scheduled to coincide with the coronation of Queen Victoria and hence in her honor was named as The Empress Bridge.

The Sukkur Bridge over Indus River, also known Lansdowne Bridge was inaugurated on March 25, 1889. It is the longest single span cantilever bridge of its kind.

Since the technique of diverting river waters could not be applied to the mighty Indus and constructing piers in water by using cofferdams was not developed yet, the engineers had no choice but to support the structure by cantilevering from the shores. Two identical impressive structures, one on each side of the river, with multiple vertical and cross trusses were anchored into massive footings on the shores and then tied to the “dead man” back anchors.

Finally sections of the bridge deck, extended one third of the way at each shore and reaching out to the other side, were placed. The middle piece, which consisted of simple trusses also used in other bridges in Punjab, was finally placed to connect the two cantilevered sides. This last central piece of the bridge not only connected the two sides of the river, it also connected Baluchistan with the down country. The mastery of the Briton over South Asia was complete.

Pervaiz Munir Alvi is a Ravian and trained as a Civil and Geo-technical Engineer.

Also see: Lansdowne Bridge, Sukkur.
Originally published at ATP on December 26, 2006.

Fred Bremner was not born or raised in Pakistan. In fact during his life time there was no country on the map by the name of Pakistan. Yet, for thirty five years he lived and worked among, owned studios and properties at, and traveled through out the areas that would later become Pakistan.

He was a commercial photographer who like thousands of other enterprising Britons earned his living by working his trade. But he was one of the pioneers of his art working in Karachi, Quetta, Rawalpindi and Lahore, the four important and major cities of Pakistan today.

He was not a diplomat, historian or a journalist, yet his photographs and publications have become an important source of historic records of the cities, events, places and people in Pakistan. By helping record the history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century he, however unintentional it may, has rendered important services to what would later become Pakistan.

Yet, in Pakistan there is no mention of his name in history books; no acknowledgement of his work in museums; no art gallery dedicated to him; not even a plaque of his name at his former studios some of which are still in operation. No stamp has ever been issued in his name; no articles are written on him; no seminar has been offered to discuss his work and his contributions in the art of photography in Pakistan. In fact, Pakistan is totally oblivious of him.

It is time that Pakistan acknowledges his art and services and claims him as one of her own and gives him his rightful place in heritage of Pakistan.

Fred Bremner was born in 1863 in a small village of Scotland named Aberchinder, also known as ‘Foggylone’. In 1876 at the age of thirteen he left school and start working with his father who was a professional photographer and owned a studio in the town of Banff, Scotland. In 1882 after having worked for his father for six years he accepted a contract from his brother-in-law, G.W. Lawrie who by that time had owned a studio in Lacknow. So with twenty pounds in his pocket borrowed from his father and passage provided by Lawrie he set sails on a ship named Sutlej to the British Indian Empire. After landing at Bombay he traveled for two days and two nights to reach Lacknow. For the next two years he would work on several assignments at various locations in northern India.

After the first two years, for his next assignment he was sent 1500 miles away to work in Karachi where he arrived via Lahore in summer of 1885. British had captured Karachi in 1839 when it had a population of only ten thousand. However at the time of his arrival Karachi had become an important sea port for overseas commerce for Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab provinces and its population had increased to hundred fifty thousand.

Even though prior to his arrival he did not know a soul in Karachi, he was soon able to meet a Barrack Master Richardson who belonged to the Scottish Lodge of Freemasons, the organization Bremner had joined earlier. Richardson took him as a paying guest and also introduced him to a chemist friend who allowed the young photographer to set up his studio tent in his yard. Bremner worked in this set up for next five months. During this time he also hired two local assistants who helped him with retouching, printing, finishing and hand coloring. At the end of his assignment he left Karachi in 1886 and did not return to the city for the next two years. In April 1888 his contract with Lawrie had ended, his sister had died and he wanted to go home. So he returned to Karachi to take a ship for the British Isles.

In 1889 Bremner returned to Karachi to set up his own business. Through his savings he had bought some equipment from Glasgow and paid for the fair for himself and his one assistant whom he also had brought to Karachi with him. However after paying for all that, he had very little money left to sustain. Luckily a new market had just been inaugurated in Karachi and there were enough townsmen to be photographed to mark the occasion.

Another help came when the Sukher bridge, named after Viceroy Lord Lansdowne across the Indus river was inaugurated on March 25, 1889 by Lord Reay, Governor of the Bombay Province with which Sindh was attached at that time. Bremner had traveled to Hyderabad and then to Sukher to take remarkable photographs of this new magnificent structure. Sensing limited opportunities in Karachi, Bremner decided to explore work possibilities in Quetta which after being captured in 1876 by Lord Robert Sandeman was made capital of Balochistan and by 1889 had become a hub of significant military and political activities.

Journey to Quetta took Bremner through Jacobabad where he was able to pick up more business taking pictures of Cavalry and Infantry men stationed there. While in Quetta he was called upon to photograph the Viceroy who was on a visit there at the invitation of Governor Balochistan, Sir Robert Sandeman. The Khan of Kalat was also invited for the occasion and he too along with male members of his entourage was photographed by Bremner. In Balochistan, Bremner also photographed the Bolan Pass, traveled to border town of Chaman and took pictures of the under construction Khojak or Koh Zak Tunnel near Shelabagh.

In 1892 Bremner closed his Karachi studio and moved to Rawalpindi where he would work in the winter months. The city had become a major garrison town and there was plenty of work taking pictures of military officers and listed men alike. One of his note able subjects was Lord Roberts, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in India. Around 1895 Bremner was making an album titled ‘Types of the Indian Army’ while based in Rawalpindi. This album had sixty pictures showing men of various ethnicities, races and ranks in groups of four or five together. However in order to complete his project, he had to close his shop one more time and travel back to England.

Upon his return from England Bremner decided to settle in Quetta. In 1900 from Quetta he issued an album of 45 photographs titled ‘Balochistan Illustrated’ featuring people and landscape of that province. While in Quetta he was detected for having heart problems and was advised to return to England but he instead decided to visit Kashmir for few months. He traveled from Quetta to Rawalpindi and then left for Srinagar on a two horse Tonga, crossed river Jhelum by a rope bridge and visited the temples of Murtand on the way. His three months trip to Kashmir allowed him to capture the beauty of the mountain state where he took some of the memorable photos of her people, lakes and mountains alike. Bremner stayed in Quetta for two years and then decided to move again.

This time he moved permanently to Lahore even though he kept his place in Quetta as his summer residence. Lahore as capital of Punjab under British had grown to its Civil and Military prominence. Bremner had got married by now and set up his house and studio in a building opposite to the Roman Catholic Cathedral. From here in 1902 he traveled to Delhi to photograph the pomp and show organized by the Viceroy Lord Curzon to impress the Nawabs and Maharajas he had successfully subjugated earlier.

In 1910 Bremner sold his summer house and business in Quetta in favor of Shimla where he had the opportunity to photograph Lady Eileen Elliot, daughter of Viceroy Lord Minto as well as Viceroy Lord Reading. He had also photographed Lord Hardinge, Lord Chelmsford, Lord Kitchener and Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Governor of Punjab. In 1922 he photographed then Prince of Wales who later became King Edward the VIII. Finally in 1923 he sold his places in both Lahore and Shimla and returned to Elgin, England where he finally published his memoir in 1940. His exact date of death is not known but most likely he died in 1941 and was survived by a son.

Acknowledgement: The factual information in this essay is taken from a larger essay “Bremner’s Indian Years” by Brij Bhushan Sharma. The photographs here are linked from, and more are avilable at Harappa.com. We are thankful to Harappa.com for so elegantly preserving this heritage. Click on pictures to get details on the picture.

Since 9/11 government of Pakistan has received roughly ten billion dollars from the USA in military and civilian aid. Half of this amount was as rent reimbursement for the use of Pakistani military facilities by the USA for her Afghanistan war efforts while the rest was as direct economic aid to Pakistan.

Bush administration had no strings attached to the funds and Government of Pakistan was free to spend the money as it deemed fit. As a result of this economic aid combined with lifting of other economic sanctions by the US, Pakistan government under President Musharraf was able to retire some of its debts, revive its economy and at the same time built up its foreign reserves. But that was mostly during the years when both the White House and the American Congress were under the Republican control.

In year 2006 midterm elections the political fortunes of President Bush and the Republican party declined. The Democratic Party which historically has been less sympathetic to Pakistan sought to change the terms and nature of American aid to Pakistan. Vice President Joe Biden, then Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in cooperation with Republican Senator Richard Lugar introduced a bipartisan bill called ‘Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2008.’ After the 2008 elections, when Biden left the Senate, the mantle was picked up by the incoming new Chairman, Senator John Kerry, another stalwart of the Democratic party. The bill, numbered S. 3263 offers Pakistan one and half billion dollars annually for the next five years in economic aid. Only this time with strong strings attached.

The bill, in bureaucratic jargon referred as ‘non-security assistance to Pakistan’, contains two very important clauses. One that:

“Funds would be used for projects that promote democratic governance and private sector growth, and for education, construction of physical infrastructures, and other programs intended to benefit the people of Pakistan”.

In other words, the funds could only be used for the ‘projects’ that government of the United States of America considers will directly benefit civil life of the common man and in the process hopefully will lure him or her away from the current feelings of anti-Americanism and religious extremism. It is another component of American ‘war on terror’ designed to win the hearts and minds of Pakistani masses. As an extra measure the American administration will be required to prepare annual reports that such ‘projects’ are being implemented as intended. The total amount of 7.5 billion dollars even though appropriated in equal annual installments over the five year period between 2009 and 2013 will be outlaid on a graduated scale stretched over ten years ending in year 2018.

The second important clause, which may not set very well with Pakistan military, has even tighter strings on Pakistan government. It reads that American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must:

“certify that the Pakistani Security Forces are not materially interfering in their country’s judicial or political processes and, they are making concerted efforts to prevent terrorists from operating in Pakistan or using it as a sanctuary”.

This puts a burden on Pakistan military that it not only stays out of the politics but it must also perform to the satisfaction of the USA even though it itself has no direct gains from the aid package. How far Pakistan military brass will go along with this condition has yet to be seen.




The clause also states that:

“If the Secretary of State does not certify that the Security Forces of Pakistan have met certain security standards by year 2012, then the bill would prohibit the necessary licenses and programs for American private entities to export major defense equipment to Pakistan”.

According to the American Defense Security Cooperation Agency and defense industry experts, the value of American major defense equipment exported to Pakistan varies from few hundred millions to billions of dollars per year. Any such military equipment embargo would not only seriously hamper Pakistan’s defense readiness it could also cost millions in profit to the American defense contractors. For example if the embargo was placed in year 2008 the loss of profit to American private defense sector for that year would have been 136 million dollars. Under American laws in case of such embargo on Pakistan the USA government would be legally bound to reimburse that loss to the American firms. But what about the set back that Pakistan and its armed forces could suffer because of yet another American embargo against Pakistan. Who will reimburse that loss?

In the cold war era United States and Pakistan used to have a strategic alliance in the form of SEATO and CENTO. After the 1965 Pakistan-India war the realities of these now defunct treaties were exposed but the ‘strategic’ relations between the two countries continued, be at much lower level. For America there was still that ‘big bad bear’ in the north that must be confronted and Pakistan was a strategically located ally in that effort. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan allowed USA and Pakistan to enter yet into another ‘client-service’ relationship. Even though both parties knew upfront the temporary nature of the relationship, Pakistanis acted with surprise when US switched sides after the demise of the Soviet Union and set up a new strategic alliance with India.

In the post-Soviet era America had very little usefulness of its old ally, Pakistan. But the 9/11 events changed the South-Central Asian equation one more time. The old American State Department and Pentagon Pakistan manuals were dusted off one more time. In 2001 Pakistanis entered with the USA into another ‘client-service’ relationship one more time. Only that the latest package of ‘Enhanced Relationship’ comes with much more tighter enhanced strings, the consequences of which must be fully understood.

Before accepting these funds Pakistan must revisit the history of its bilateral relationship with the USA. But the sad irony is that Pakistani ruling elites will take the money regardless, one more time.