National Public Radio(NPR), an American radio network, is doing a series on a massive wave of urbanization sweeping the world's emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India and Pakistan. It has chosen to start with Karachi, which it describes as Pakistan's "economic lifeline" and financial and industrial "powerhouse" that produces 25% of Pakistan's GDP, and calls it "one of the largest and most crowded cities of the world". It has a segment on Shehri, the activist group fighting big-money developers.
It highlights several other facts about Karachi such as:
1. Karachi is built along a natural harbor facing the Arabian Sea, and this central location between the Middle East and India has made Karachi an important trading port for hundreds of years.
2. Karachi encompasses both its old seafront district and a sprawling web of commercial and residential development that covers almost 1,400 square miles. Its contemporary landscape spans skyscrapers, posh golf resorts, congested roadways and sprawling squatter colonies.
3. The Port of Karachi handles 60 percent of Pakistan's cargo, and the Karachi Stock Exchange is one of Asia's most active trading markets. The city's main industries include shipping, trade, finance, banking, information technology, manufacturing, real estate, media and education.
4. Like any big city, it has its share of problems. Pollution, crime, corruption and political volatility are just some of the issues confronting the 12 million to 18 million "Karachiites" who call this overcrowded city home. Karachi is 60 times larger than it was when Pakistan was created in 1947. And with the population growing at an annual rate of 6 percent, one of the biggest challenges for city officials is managing the tensions and violence that often flare along ethnic and religious lines.
5. Karachi is growing so fast that estimates of its population range from 12 million to 18 million. The country's financial capital is also a city where about half the population lives in illegal houses.
To learn more about this NPR series, please visit NPR Morning Edition.
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Here's a Newsline story of how inter-ethnic love affair created ethnic tensions in Karachi in Dec, 2009:
It was not just a simple boy-meets-girl love story with a tragic ending. It had a twist. The two lovers were already married – just not to each other. The very fact that they belonged to different ethnic backgrounds and lived in a Karachi neighbourhood where ethnic and political tensions ran high, made their love saga even more complicated. Muhammad Amir, who was in his early 30s and a father of two children, belonged to an Urdu-speaking family, while Zainab was a Baloch whose husband worked in Dubai.
Despite repeated warnings from family and some of Zainab’s neighbours, the two continued their taboo relationship. On January 4, Amir was kidnapped. Two days later, his beheaded body was found in Lyari’s Kalakot area and several hours later the head located in Chakiwara, another part of Lyari.
Amir was an activist of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). This association added another grim twist to the tale. A case of an otherwise routine, but controversial, ‘honour’ killing, exploded into a spree of tit-for-tat targeted murders between militants of rival ethnic groups. Stopping this violence proved beyond the powers of the police as these militants were supporters of the two major parties of the ruling coalition – the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the MQM. Police say that at least 24 people were killed in four days of violence. Tensions ran high not just in parts of Karachi’s District South, but also in some areas of its adjacent District West – highlighting again not just the deep political and ethnic divides in Pakistan’s business and industrial capital, but also underlining the muscle power of the armed groups and the sordid relation between crime and politics.
“Criminalisation of politics and politicisation of crime is the biggest problem in Karachi,” says a former IG police, requesting anonymity, who served in Sindh in various important positions for several years. “All the major political parties have criminals in their ranks and they are protected and patronised by politicians.”
The Amir-Zainab love saga indeed sparked the violence, but any other issue could have pit rival bands of militants against each other. The innate germs of political and ethnic rivalry and the clash of economic interests, coupled with rampant poverty and crime, provide the basis for such a showdown.
As the police try to trace the killers of Amir and locate Zainab, their story remains nothing more than a minor footnote in the brewing conflict among different political players and crime syndicates operating in Karachi.
“Crime and politics are so interwoven and the relationship among various stakeholders is so complex that breaking away from the present scheme of things appears impossible for any government,” says the former IG. “Many of those in power have a tainted past and a history of supporting and cultivating criminals and their gangs.”
For many security experts, Karachi, with all its ethnic, political and sectarian problems and crime mafias, is like a bubbling volcano all set to explode. The glimpses of the seething lava were seen as recently as December 28, 2009, when angry bands of youngsters went on a rampage, burning and looting more than 6,000 shops following the bombing of the Muharram procession. Top police officials say it was a “natural reaction” by participants of the mourning procession. (For details see CCPO Karachi’s interview in the box).
In the past, too, Karachi has suffered from widespread violence and terrorism scores of times in which politics, ethnicity, sectarianism and crime played a major role.
Here's an excerpt on Pakistan from a recent piece by Indian journalist Akar Patel:
Why is Pakistan such a mess? Some would blame Islam, but they’d be wrong. The problem isn’t religion at all. The problem is lack of caste balance. There aren’t enough traders to press for restraint and there are too many peasants. Too many people concerned about national honour, and not enough people concerned about national economy. Put simply: Pakistan has too many Punjabis and not enough Gujaratis. The majority of Pakistanis live in Punjab, but well over 50% of government revenue comes from just one city in Sindh: Karachi. Why? That is where the Gujarati is.
Gujaratis are less than 1% of Pakistan’s population, but they dominate its economy because they are from trading communities. Colgate-Palmolive in Pakistan is run by the Lakhani Memons, the Dawood group is run by Memons from Bantva in Saurashtra (the great Abdus Sattar Edhi is also a Memon from Bantva). The Adamjee group, advertisers on BBC, are from Gujarat’s Jetpur village and founded Muslim Commercial Bank. The Khoja businessman Sadruddin Hashwani owns hotels including Islamabad’s bombed-out Marriott. Khojas founded Habib Bank, whose boards are familiar to Indians who watched cricket on television in the 1980s. The Habibs also manufacture Toyota cars through Indus Motors. Pakistan’s only beer is made by Murree Brewery, owned by a Parsi family, the Bhandaras. Also owned by Parsis is Karachi’s Avari Hotels.
People talk of the difference between Karachi and Lahore. I find that the rational view in Pakistani newspapers is put forward by letter-writers from Karachi. Often they have names like Gheewala, a Sunni Vohra name (same caste as Deoband’s rector from Surat, Ghulam Vastanvi), or Parekh, also a Surat name.
Today capital is fleeing Pakistan because of terrorism and poor governance. To convince investors things will get better, the Pakistani government has appointed as minister for investment a Gujarati, Saleem Mandviwalla. The Mandviwallas own Pakistan’s multiplexes, which now show Bollywood. The place where Gujaratis dominate totally, as they do also in India, is Pakistan’s capital market. Going through the list of members of the Karachi Stock Exchange (www.kse.com.pk) this becomes clear. However, few Pakistanis will understand this because as Muslims they have little knowledge of caste.
The Gujarati tries to hold up the Pakistani economy, but the peasant Punjabi (Jat) runs over his effort with his militant stupidity. Why cannot the Pakistani Punjabi also think like a trader? Simple. He’s not converted from the mercantile castes. There are some Khatris, like Najam Sethi, South Asia’s best editor, but they are frustrated because few other Pakistanis think like them. Are they an intellectual minority? Yes, but that is because they are a minority by caste. One great community of Pakistani Punjabi Khatris is called Chinioti. They are excellent at doing business but in a martial society they are the butt of jokes. I once heard Zia Mohyeddin tell a funny story about the cowardice of Chiniotis and I thought of how differently a Gujarati would look at the same story.
Here's a BBC report on "targeted killings" in Karachi:
At least 50 people have been killed over the past fortnight in targeted killings in the Pakistani city of Karachi, rights groups say.
The violence started with an attack on 12 March on the offices of a local political group allied to Pakistan's governing political party, the PPP.
Dozens of people have since been targeted on an ethnic or sectarian basis across Karachi.
Police officials say most of those killed belong to the Pashtun community.
Karachi has been the scene of growing ethnic tensions due to the arrival of thousands of Pashtuns fleeing conflict in north-western Pakistan.
'Politically motivated attacks'
Police say the number killed is lower than the estimate put forward by human rights groups.
"According to the figures we have, 109 people have died in violent incidents since 12 March," Saud Mirza, chief of Police in Karachi, told the BBC.
"Out of these only 34 people have been killed in politically motivated attacks."
But the police statistics are contested by local journalists and human rights activists, who say that the actual number of victims is much higher.
They say that the police only confirm political activists or leaders as dying in targeted killings - whereas in reality many more die in attacks carried out against people of specific ethnicities by gunmen.
While most of the dead are ordinary citizens - usually belonging to the Pashtun community - civilians from the Baloch and Urdu-speaking community have also died.
Local Pashtun activists say Karachi's largest party, the MQM, is behind most of the violence. The MQM denies this.
On Monday, a senior MQM leader blamed the violence on gangs of extortionists and land grabbers who had taken the city hostage.
Dr Farooq Sattar was speaking after President Asif Zardari said in an address to parliament that those destroying the peace in Karachi would be dealt with severely.
However police say that several arrests have been made of individuals involved in the killings.
"The situation is now being brought under control," police chief Saud Mirza said.
But human rights organisations say the situation in Karachi is increasingly dangerous and a cause for great concern.
"The continued spate of targeted political killings in Karachi is appalling, as is the inability of the political actors in the city to negotiate their differences peacefully," said Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan representative of Human Rights Watch.
"It is the job of the provincial and central governments to ensure the writ of the state is established in the metropolis.
"They must ensure that all political parties complicit in these target killings - whether part of the provincial coalition or not - should be held to account.
"It is a documented fact that all political forces in Karachi, whether it is the MQM or the state, have engaged in human rights abuses including targeted killings in the past."
Here are some excerpts from a BBC report on violence in Karachi:
According to human rights organisations, 775 people died in political and sectarian shootings and bomb attacks in Karachi in 2010. ...
And although thousands are killed every year in the north-west, the impact of the violence in Karachi is arguably no less important. The city is Pakistan's commercial hub.
Business losses
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Karachi provides 70% of the total annual tax revenue collected by the government.
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The violence has been largely fuelled by antagonism between the local chapters of three political parties: the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the mostly Pashtun Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM).
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The MQM remains Karachi's dominant political party and represents the city's majority Urdu-speaking community - the descendants of Muslim migrants to India at the time of partition in 1947.
In December 2010, Sindh Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza accused the MQM of being mainly responsible for the extortion and targeted killings prevalent across the city.
Within 48 hours, an enraged MQM withdrew its support for the PPP-led coalition in Islamabad.
The only reason the government could hold onto power was because opposition parties did not bring a no-confidence motion against the government.
The MQM has since been coaxed back into the coalition and now holds the political balance.
However, tensions remain with the ANP and the PPP.
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In Karachi, all three parties have been involved in stoking ethnic passions.
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Thousands were arrested; many were were later killed in what human rights organisations and the Pakistan media said were staged killings by security forces.
The MQM fought back - and was held responsible for a number of murders of police and security officials
The party said it was targeted by a conservative security establishment for its liberal politics and for fighting for the rights of the Urdu-speaking community.
Things changed under the government of President Pervez Musharraf and the party now enjoys excellent relations with the establishment.
"The MQM's 'new deal' with the establishment is that its control of Karachi will remain unchallenged by the security establishment," a political analyst, who wished to remain unnamed, told the BBC.
"In return, the MQM will support the establishment's policies in the centre."
MQM insiders acknowledge this deal, although they insist the party will never vote for "anything against the spirit of its ideology".
Obviously, this deal stands as long as the MQM controls Karachi.
But since 2006, the party has been increasingly feeling the pressure exerted by the growth of the Pashtun community in the city.
Activists of the Labour Party Pakistan in Karachi in march 2011 Karachi is home to a bewildering number of political parties and campaigning groups
Arriving here in their thousands, the Pashtun newcomers are in competition for land and jobs with the Urdu-speaking community.
MQM leaders say these new arrivals must not be treated as long-term inhabitants of the city - a call at odds with its identity as a party of migrants.
They say that there is a link between the growth of the Pashtun community and the "Talibanisation" of parts of the city - the Taliban is predominantly made up of Pashtun people.
The MQM say they will resist this at all costs, and this bellicosity has led to violence which has claimed dozens of lives.
Some of it has also involved separate turf battles between Karachi's Baloch community - the original inhabitants of the city - and the MQM.
"It's a complex political and ethnic problem which needs to be handled with extreme care," says a local human rights activist.
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Here are some excerpts from a Reuters report on ethnic violence in Karachi:
HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
Karachi, home to more than 18 million people, has a long history of ethnic, religious and sectarian violence.
It was a main target of al Qaeda-linked militants after the September 11 2001 attacks on the United States, when Pakistan joined the U.S.-led campaign against militancy, and foreigners were attacked in the city several times.
A recent report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 1,138 people were killed in Karachi in the first six months of 2011, of whom 490 were victims of political, ethnic and sectarian violence.
The latest surge in violence in the southern city came days after the MQM announced it was quitting the ruling coalition.
The MQM, which mostly represents the Mohajirs -- descendents of Urdu-speakers who migrated from India after the creation of Pakistan in 1947 -- and its rival, the ethnic Pashtun-based Awami National Party (ANP), are blamed for most of the violence, though both parties deny the charges.
The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad released a statement from Ambassador Cameron Munter condemning the violence.
"We call on all parties to refrain from further violence and work toward a peaceful resolution of differences," the statement read.
TROUBLING QUESTIONS
In some ways, Karachi raises more troubling questions over Pakistan's stability than the northwest border regions seen as a global hub for militants and a huge concern for the West.
As the commercial hub, any trouble could disturb industrial activity, and have serious consequences for the economy.
"If the government does not pay immediate attention to the worsening situation of Karachi, and does not stop the loss of innocent blood, we will shut down our business centers and industries," Muhammad Saeed Shafiq, president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said in a statement.
According to officials, Karachi contributes 68 percent of the government's total revenue and 25 percent of GDP.
That means a lot of money -- and power -- is at stake.
"This can be summed up in five words - a turf war between political parties," Imtiaz Gul, author of "The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan's Lawless Frontier" told Reuters.
"This is a turf war between the MQM, and ANP and the PPP, for territory -- for political space in this big city."
The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) is trying to redraw electoral districts, which would disadvantage the MQM, he said, and many local political leaders have connections to criminal gangs that run rampant in the city.
"It's definitely a political and ethnic issue, and a strong political commitment would be needed to bring peace to the city," said a senior security official, requesting not to be named.
"To open fire and kill a few miscreants may stop the violence for now, but in the long-run, a political resolution is a must, or else we will see another surge after a few days."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/08/us-pakistan-violence-karachi-idUSTRE7670ZA20110708
Here's an Express Tribune report indicating Pak military opposes any PPP plans to use the military against MQM:
Amidst straining relations between the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and its estranged coalition partner, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the military brass is learnt to have opposed a series of moves that could have adversely affected an already tense situation – including any move to launch an operation in Karachi.
The military brass had also expressed displeasure over the possible induction of controversial former Sindh home minister Zulfikar Mirza on a sensitive post in the federal or provincial cabinet, The Express Tribune has learnt.
“Mishandling Karachi’s situation, or using coercive means against the MQM, is not something the country can afford at this point in time,” brass as telling top civilian authorities. The military has advised the government against launching any operation against the MQM, which pulled of the ruling coalition last month.
However, PPP’s information secretary Qamar Zaman Kaira said that the government was not planning any operation against the MQM. But at the same time, he added, “I don’t think the military would stop the government from taking action against the law breakers in Karachi.”
Sources said that the PPP was planning either to make Mirza governor of Sindh or to assign him a portfolio in the federal cabinet after getting him elected to the Senate. Reports of such a move had earlier begun appearing in the media. But the military is said to have precluded such a move.
Sources said that the PPP had planned an operation against the MQM, particularly against it supporters among the Kacchi community in Malir. And Mirza, who has good relations with the Sindh police, had alerted the police officials belonging to interior Sindh but serving elsewhere in the country. Mirza’s plan envisaged an operation against the Urdu-speaking people in order to coerce the MQM into compliance. Mirza’s recent meeting with Afaq Ahmad, the chief of MQM-Haqiqi, was actually a message to the MQM.
When contacted by The Express Tribune, Presidential spokesperson Farhatullah Babar refused to comment on the issue and instead switched off his cell phone when pressed hard.
Sources said that the military brass contacted MQM chief Altaf Hussain and assured him that the government would not launch any operation in Karachi. Following the assurance, Altaf cancelled a scheduled address to a general party workers meeting on Monday.
Babar Ghauri is said to have contacted PML-N Senator Ishaq Dar to seek support against any operation in Karachi. And PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, in return, held out an assurance that his party would oppose any operation against the MQM in Karachi. Sources said that the two parties would soon start a movement against the PPP-led government from the platform of a grand opposition alliance.
The Express Tribune has learnt that, following its failure to muster military support against the MQM in Karachi, the government’s top leaders took a ‘U-turn’ and decided to send PML-Q leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain to Nine-Zero to assure the MQM on behalf of the president that the government would not launch an operation in Karachi. Qamar Zaman Kaira said that the government’s coalition partner might have endorsed Shujaat’s trip to Karachi.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/208549/rising-political-temperatures-military-brass-opposed-use-of-force-against-mqm/
Some 700 people have been killed in more than half a dozen militant attacks in Mumbai since 1993, including the horrific assault in November 2008. And the violence shows no signs of abating, according to Soutik Biswas of the BBC:
The most commonly peddled narrative is that by attacking its much touted financial and entertainment capital, you deal a body blow to India and get global media attention. But that is only a small part of the story. Many residents will tell you that Mumbai began going downhill in early 1993 when it convulsed in religious rioting and murder for two weeks following the demolition of the Babri mosque by Hindu fanatics in December 1992. At least 900 people died, mostly Muslims. Two months after the riots, the underworld set off series of bombs to avenge the riots, killing more than 250 people. Many of them were Muslims too.
That is when the rule of law broke down, many say irretrievably. A 1998 two-volume report on the religious riots was ignored by successive governments, who failed to prosecute politicians and policemen involved in the rioting. At the same time, the authorities were seen to proceed swiftly with prosecuting those involved in the bombings, leading to allegations that the government was anti-Muslim. The seeds of mistrust between the two largest communities in India's most cosmopolitan city had been firmly planted.
The image of Mumbai as a liberal city ruled by law and reason has long turned out to be a chimera, according to Gyan Prakash, author of Mumbai Fables, a much acclaimed book on the restless city. Over the years, say many analysts, the state's authority has been eroded as a nexus of greedy politicians, a thriving underworld, unscrupulous property developers and a discredited police force seem to have been ruling the roost, undermining institutions.
Last month, gunmen shot dead the city's leading crime journalist on a rainy morning and zipped away openly on their motorbikes. A block of flats meant for war widows was allegedly grabbed by politicians, retired army officers and other such privileged folks, until the courts stepped in. "Conspiracies hatched by politicians, builders, criminals, Hindu militants and Muslim dons appeared to be the underlying dynamic of the city. Anger and violence ruled the street," wrote Mr Prakash of the city in the mid-1990s. Not much has changed - the poisonous cocktail endures, and makes the city easy to attack. The rich in Mumbai, as a friend says, live with one foot in New York and one foot in the city. The poor and the middle-class bleed.
Behind the deceptive facade of its glitzy nightlife, fancy ocean-front flats owned by film stars and businessmen, and India's most expensive building, owned by its richest man, Mumbai is a tired and bitter city, being eaten up from within. The majority of its people live in slums, and millions live on the streets. This cannot make for a very happy place, and the city's "resilient spirit" has now become the cruellest Indian cliche. And what attracts religious extremists to launch attacks here? They are appalled, says the city's most famous chronicler, Suketu Mehta, that Mumbai stands for "lucre, profane dreams and indiscriminate openness".
Many believe the city's explosive growth - Mumbai is expected to be home to 23 million people by 2015 - is driving it towards urban and social extremes. "If Mumbai is the future of civilisation on the planet," Mr Mehta famously wrote, "then God help us." In many ways, India's richest - and most vulnerable - city is also its most dystopic. For me, it conjures up images, all at once, of wealthy Manhattan, lawless Chicago during the 1920s, and the most infamous fictional city, Gotham.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14140991
Here's an Op Ed by Farrukh Saleem on Karachi violence in The News:
Sixty-four years ago a majority of Karachi’s population was Sindhi-speaking. In 1981, close to 55 percent of Karachi’s residents claimed Urdu as their mother tongue. According to the 1998 census, Urdu-speaking residents were no longer a majority.
In 1998, nearly 15 percent of Karachi’s population claimed an affiliation with Pushto (census). In March 2004 began the Battle of Wana forcing economic refugees to head to Karachi. In October 2005, the earthquake sent in additional mohajirs. In 2007, Operation Rah-e-Haq, and in 2009, Operation Rah-e-Nijat, sent in even more mohajirs to Karachi. Then came the 2010 floods and Karachi had to host additional mohajirs. Currently, Karachi’s new, Pushto-speaking mohajirs are estimated to be around 25 percent of the population.
Sixty-four years ago, Karachi’s Sindhi population felt threatened. Karachi’s old mohajirs, the ones who came 64 years ago, now feel threatened by the new mohajirs. Whereas Karachi’s new mohajirs feel disenfranchised and excluded – both from the political infrastructure and the administrative pyramid. Exclusion, particularly youth exclusion, breeds violence. According to a briefing given to the House of Commons, “political systems that fail to address the needs of their citizens, or exclude them from meaningful participation, will not result in ‘stability’ that lasts.”
Violence in Karachi has at least three overlapping layers. At the very top of the pyramid is political violence primarily MQM versus ANP. Then there’s inter-faith Shia-Sunni violence. Then there’s intra-faith Deobandi versus Barelvi violence. And around these two layers of violence are organised criminal gangs, drug mafias, weapon mafias and land mafias. Add to that cocktail a more recent addition – the Taliban whose goal is to de-legitimise the state.
Here are the three primary drivers of violence in Karachi: One, the predatory behaviour of our political leaders; Two, inter-ethnic feelings of relative deprivation (the ‘grievance theory’); Three, elite competition to capture resource rents (the ‘greed theory’).
Here are the two secondary drivers of violence: One, conflict actors see little or no incentive to abstain from violence (the ‘commitment problem’); Two, ethnic geography and the rapidly changed group population ratios.
The PPP, MQM and ANP continue to play their own power games while Karachi burns (the ‘greed theory’). Are our leaders moving towards giving up their predatory behaviour? Has the leadership in Sindh started taking steps to alleviate inter-ethnic feelings of relative deprivation? Are our political parties preparing to restrain their militant wings? So far, the answer to all these questions is a big ‘No’. And as a consequence, Karachi will reignite.
The social contract between the government of Sindh and the residents of Sindh’s largest city has failed. To begin with, the government of Sindh must provide the residents of Sindh’s largest city three things: physical security, economic security and justice. Or, Karachi will reignite.
http://thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=59311&Cat=9&dt=7%2F24%2F2011
Here's a western media report on Taliban hiding and raising cash in Karachi as violence continues unabated:
The worst violence to hit Karachi in more than a decade is helping the Taliban to raise cash and allowing their fighters to rest in Pakistan’s largest city, The Times of London reported Thursday.
More than 300 people were murdered in Karachi last month, the majority simply because of the language they spoke. The chaos is allowing the nexus between extremist Islamist groups and criminal gangs to thrive like never before, security officials told the newspaper.
Extortion, drug, land and weapon mafias are bankrolling the insurgents, while fighters and commanders use the city to rest and gain medical treatment, according to political parties. The worst tension in recent weeks has been between the Urdu-speaking majority and Pashto-speaking migrants from the tribal regions of Pakistan.
The Pakistani government refuses to publish census data on the numbers of Pashtuns living in Karachi, but estimates range from three million to five million. Most live in illegal colonies that ring the northern outskirts of the city. The violence has created no-go areas in which Taliban fighters and commanders can operate with almost total impunity.
Overlooking Orangi Town, South Asia’s largest slum, is the notorious district of Katti Pahari, where a road has been blasted through the mountain. The intention was to create a barrier between an overwhelmingly Pashtun district and another dominated by Mohajirs, Urdu-speaking Pakistanis originating from India who make up the biggest group of the city’s 20 million population. Instead, it has become a bottleneck and shooting alley.
It was from Katti Pahari that the worst of the recent violence was unleashed in a four-day assault on the district of Malir. Naushad Asim, whose brother Mohammed, a factory worker, was murdered during it, said, “It was just after sunset when my brother went out to fix his car. He was attacked by men who were wearing beards and long hair and had camouflage jackets. They looked like Afghans.”
The bodies of gang members and political activists are dumped in sacks with their hands and feet tied -- but civilians are left where they fall, the ambulance drivers, whose job it is to clear the corpses, said.
Mohammed Raza Haroon, a leading figure in the MQM, a party that draws most of its support from the Mohajir community, denied that it was orchestrating violent retaliations. “If the MQM did not appeal for peace this city would be on fire,” he said. Although careful to avoid making overt ethnic claims, he said that its opponent, the Awami National Party (ANP), was giving shelter and support to the Taliban.
Shahi Syed, president of the ANP, an overwhelmingly Pashto-speaking organization, denied this as a smear and graphically abused the Taliban by way of proof.
Although there is no chance of the Taliban seizing the whole of Karachi, it is acting with ever greater impunity within pockets that it controls in collusion with criminal gangs. All sides agree that the insurgents and criminals are exploiting the space left by an administration and police force hamstrung by political and ethnic conflict.
“This place is going to turn into Beirut,” Syed said. “It’s dividing on ethnic grounds. We are in a dangerous position.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/08/17/taliban-cashing-in-as-pakistans-karachi-is-torn-apart-by-violence/#ixzz1VLRw77YT
Here's a Guardian newspaper report on Ramadan violence in Karachi and Zulfiqar Mirza's claims of MQM culpability:
Weeks of violent mayhem that have left more than 1,000 dead in Pakistan's biggest city culminated on Sunday in troops entering a gangster-run district in an attempt to end the violence.
The holy month of Ramadan, supposedly a time of piety, has only increased the slaughter on Karachi's streets, with beheadings and horrifically mutilated bodies dumped in sacks in gutters, the debris from a war between gangs divided on ethnic lines.
Over the weekend, the prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, described the violence in Karachi as the country's "greatest challenge".
In an extraordinary televised press conference on Sunday, a senior official of the ruling Pakistan Peoples party (PPP) accused the interior minister, Rehman Malik, also of the same party, of culpability in the killings in Karachi.
Zulfiqar Mirza, the senior PPP provincial minister, claimed he had proof that Malik was "hand in glove with the killers".
Mirza resigned on Sunday, claiming that the city's largest political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), was behind the bloodshed, allegations that could spark more trouble.
While holding a copy of the Qur'an, Mirza said the MQM was responsible for kidnapping, extortion and violence, including the killing of the journalist Wali Khan Babar, 28, earlier this year. "I am saying it openly that the MQM killed him," he told a news conference televised live around the country.
The MQM was not available for comment about the unusually blunt accusations.
The gang turf war is also a political and financial struggle about the control of extortion rackets – known as bhatta – with three mainstream political parties all drawing support from different ethnic groups and each having a criminal underworld following in the city.
The bloodshed has essentially pitted a gang associated with the PPP, the party of President Asif Ali Zardari, against thugs linked to the MQM, headed by Altaf Hussain, who lives in exile in London.
The MQM has long dominated Karachi but it is being challenged by the PPP and the third significant player, the Awami National party (ANP), which represents the city's huge ethnic Pashtun population, originally from north-west Pakistan. The MQM's base is provided by the Mohajirs, people who migrated to the city from northern India during the partition.
British diplomats have been active behind the scenes, pressuring all sides to quell the violence, which is crippling Pakistan's economic heart.
The MQM, the ANP and Karachi's business community have in recent days called for the army to intervene, with at least 1,000 people falling prey to the tit-for-tat killings this year – easily eclipsing the violence by religious extremists across the rest of the country.
But the PPP fears that deployment of the army could eventually topple its three-year-old government and Pakistan's latest, western-backed, experiment with democracy. The paramilitary units deployed, the Rangers, come under civilian control.
The Rangers uncovered torture chambers and arms caches during raids on Sunday in the Lyari district, a PPP stronghold. One dank basement shown to journalists contained a chair with handcuffs and padlocks attached. Two earlier attempts to enter Lyari failed.
The gangs often fail to capture rival gang members, taking out their anger instead on anyone from other ethnic groups – many innocent victims are innocent bystanders, often abducted or killed.
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Another senior security official in Karachi said: "The MQM doesn't want to share the cake. But the others want their slice."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/28/karachi-gang-wars-intervention
Here's an interesting excerpt from a Friday Times story about the centrality of Karachi to the NATO war effort in Afghanistan, and how it impacts the politics and peace (or rather the lack of it) in Pakistan's financial capital:
"Over the years Karachi has become one of the most important cities of the world not because of its ethnic tensions but because of its strategic location and the port which receives more than 80 percent of NATO supplies," a senior foreign diplomat said. ...
Americans have built one of the largest consulates in the world in Karachi and have repeatedly used British diplomats to pressure MQM - one of the largest stakeholders in Karachi - to maintain peace in the city. According to one source, the ANP has huge stakes in NATO supplies and has strong influence among Karachi's transporters.
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In Karachi, there are many third-tier sub-contractors working for NATO, most of them of Pashtun and Mehsud origin. They get contracts from second-tier sub-contractors from Dubai, who the contracts have been outsourced to from contractors in Washington, DC.
One such sub-contractor, Abdul Hakim Mehsud said, "Its one of the toughest jobs in the world - recently over 13 of my trucks and three of my drivers had been vanished in interior Sindh. But the profit margins are high and that keeps me motivated."
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"In December 2008, militants destroyed 400 containers carrying food, fuel, and military vehicles," a NATO source said. After that, NATO and ISAF began paying tribes to ensure supplies get across safe.
Karachi's ethnic riots, political instability, and sectarianism have earned it the reputation of being the world's most dangerous city. In the last four years, over 5,000 people have been killed in politically-motivated violence. Not very long ago, it hosted Al Qaeda's operational headquarters. It is still considered by many as a Taliban stronghold.
In Karachi's chemical markets, ammonium nitrate is produced by fertiliser companies. While the chemical is on the Pakistani customs control list, it is widely available in open market. This ammonium nitrate is used in improvised explosive devices that account for 66 percent of foreign casualties in Afghanistan since the war started in 2001. The makeshift bombs have claimed 368 troops in 2010. This year, the number has already reached 143.
"We can deliver you big quantities of the chemical at the right price," said Ahmed Jan, a local smuggler, one of the few willing to speak on the record. "For a higher price we can deliver you the items in Afghanistan."
The US Consulate and Pakistani customs intelligence have been working closely to stop the smuggling.
Earlier this year, the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Commerce was informed that more than 6,000 trucks of NATO/ISAF supplies had not reached in Chaman and Iman Garh borders. The disclosure sparked an internal auditing within NLC and FBR and corruption of Rs7 billion was found. The FBR and NLC had reportedly issued notices to 21 and 22 grade officers and had put 100 of its officers and clearing/forwarding agents in the Exit Control List.
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The attacks are not likely to stop any time soon, according to a foreign diplomat, "But we have made pacts with warlords, tribes and various stakeholders in Pakistan who ensure safe transit of the goods. They include political parties both in Pakistan and Afghanistan."
http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20110902&page=6
Here are excerpts from Wikileaks on the "Gangs of Karachi":
US embassy cable - 09KARACHI138
SINDH - THE GANGS OF KARACHI
Identifier: 09KARACHI138
Origin: Consulate Karachi
Created: 2009-04-22 11:52:00
Summary: The police in Karachi are only one of several armed groups in the city, and they are probably not the most numerous or best equipped. Many neighborhoods are considered by the police to be no-go zones in which even the intelligence services have a difficult time operating. Very
few of the groups are traditional criminal gangs. Most are associated with a political party, a social movement, or terrorist activity, and their presence in the volatile ethnic mix of the world,s fourth largest city creates enormous political and governance challenges.
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MQM\'s armed members, known as \"Good Friends,\" are the
largest non-governmental armed element in the city. The police estimate
MQM has ten thousand active armed members and as many as twenty-five thousand armed fighters in reserve.
This is compared to the city\'s thirty-three thousand police officers. The party operates through its 100 Sector Commanders, who take their orders directly from the party leader, Altaf Hussain, who lives in exile in the United Kingdom.
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Low to middle-ranked police officials acknowledge the extortion and the likely veracity of the other charges. A senior police officer said, in the past eight years alone,MQM was issued over a million arms licenses, mostly for
handguns. Post (Consulate) has observed MQM security personnel carrying numerous shoulder-fired weapons, ranging from new European
AKMs to crude AK copies, probably produced in local shops.
MQM controls the following neighborhoods in Karachi:
Gulberg, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Korangi, Landhi, Liaquatabad, Malir, Nazimabad, New Karachi, North Nazimabad, Orangi Town, Saddar and Shah Faisal.
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The ANP represents the ethnic Pashtuns in Karachi. The local Pashtuns do possess personal weapons, following the
tribal traditions of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP),
and there are indications they have begun to organize formal armed groups. With the onset of combat operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in August 2008, a growing number of Pashtuns fled south to swell the Pashtun ranks of that already is the largest Pashtun city in the world. This has increased tensions between ANP and MQM....contd
http://tacstrat.com/content/?p=4362
Here are excerpts (contd) from Wikileaks on the "Gangs of Karachi":
7. (S) If rhetoric of the police and the ANP leadership is to be believed, these armed elements may be preparing to challenge MQM control of Karachi. In March, the Karachi Police Special Branch submitted a report to the Inspector General of Police in which it mentioned the presence of \"hard-line\" Pashtuns in the Sohrab Goth neighborhood. Sohrab Goth is located in the Northeast of the city.
8. (S) The report said this neighborhood was becoming a no-go
area for the police. The report went on to claim the Pashtuns are involved in drug trafficking and gun running and
if police wanted to move in the area they had to do so in civilian clothing. A senior member of the Intelligence Bureau in Karachi recently opined that the ANP would not move
against MQM until the next elections, but the police report ANP gunmen are already fighting MQM gunmen over
protection-racket turf.
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10. (S) PPP is a political party led by, and centered on the Bhutto family. The party enjoys significant support in
Karachi, especially among the Sindhi and Baloch populations. Traditionally, the party has not run an armed wing, but the workers of the PPP do possess weapons, both licensed and unlicensed. With PPP in control of the provincial government and having an influential member in place as the Home Minister, a large number of weapons permits are currently being issued to PPP workers. A police official recently told
Post that he believes, given the volume of weapons permits being issued to PPP members, the party will soon be as
well-armed as MQM. Gangs in Lyari: Arshad Pappoo (AP) and Rahman Dakait (RD)
11. (S) AP and RD are two traditional criminal gangs that
have been fighting each other since the turn of the century in the Lyari district of Karachi. Both gangs gave their political support to PPP in the parliamentary elections. The
gangs got their start with drug trafficking in Lyari and later included the more serious crimes of kidnapping and robbery in other parts of Karachi. (Comment: Kidnapping is such a problem in the city that the Home Secretary once asked Post for small tracking devices that could be planted under
the skin of upper-class citizens and a
satellite to track the devices if they were kidnapped. End comment.)
12. (S) Each group has only about 200 hard-core armed fighters but, according to police, various people in Lyari
have around 6,000 handguns, which are duly authorized through valid weapons permits. In addition, the gangs are in
possession of a large number of unlicensed AK-47 rifles,
Rocket Propelled Grenade launchers and hand grenades. The weapons are carried openly and used against each other as
well as any police or Rangers who enter the area during security operations. During police incursions, the gang
members maintain the tactical advantage by using the narrow streets and interconnected houses. There are some parts of Lyari that are inaccessible to law enforcement agencies...
http://tacstrat.com/content/?p=4362
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