(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Ashrak Khan wore a defeated expression as he surveyed the brownish-grey shanty homes of his neighbourhood on the outskirts of Islamabad, his house marking the border between those still standing and others now reduced to rubble.
The 45-year-old fruit vendor and his family have lived in the slum since moving from the Swabi district of northwest Pakistan in the mid-1980s, but they are now among more than 15,000 people facing summary eviction.
"I have no idea what to do, where to go," he said, surrounded by his four tall teenage sons. "We are Pakistanis here but we have no rights," he added, pulling out his ID card to drive the point home.
With no water supply, electricity or sewage, the 2,000 homes that formed the "Afghan Basti" slum in Islamabad have long stood in stark contrast to the rest of Pakistan's green and largely pristine capital. Situated on the edge of the city, the neighbourhood is now at the heart of a battle over housing rights for the poor versus a drive by city authorities to get rid of "illegal" settlements.
Activists say authorities have launched an ethnic-based smear campaign against residents to try to force them out, and dozens have been arrested for resisting the bulldozers - some of them charged under anti-terror laws.
"The Islamabad High Court has given us directions to remove all the illegal slums and we are carrying out operations across the city," Ramzan Sajid, a spokesman for the Capital Development Authority, said at the site, over the rumbling of cranes, bulldozers and tractors.
To Islamabad's bureaucrats and their many supporters among the city's middle and upper classes, this slum and others like it are a haven for criminal gangs and supposed "Afghan" militants.
But planning experts say they point to a wider crisis facing the country's poor as land prices in Pakistani cities have sky-rocketed, with family homes in parts of the capital now costing as much as in some cities of Western Europe.
Arif Hasan, widely considered Pakistan's foremost urban planner, blamed much of the rise on speculation by developers, while urbanisation, infrastructure expansion and a recent economic revival have also helped push up prices.
"Land is the new gold," said Hasan, adding that at least 30 percent of Pakistan's urban population can only afford to live in areas considered "slums" or "katchi abadis".
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