Pakistan’s bloodiest city
Karachi has always been a volatile city with a turbulent past but even by its standards the recent violence has been shocking. Channel 4 News presenter Saima Mohsin looks at the issues.
At least 200 people were killed last month, 44 in one weekend and 17 in just the last day of the month according to police.
A recent report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 1,138 people have been killed in Karachi in the first half of 2011, with 490 victims of political, ethnic and sectarian violence.
Aside from gang warfare and violent rioting target killings have seen a steady increase with some high profile deaths. Each murder sees a retaliatory attack or similar killing.
Reporters who have covered the city’s streets for more than three decades say this is as bad as it gets. But this is not down to terrorism as you might expect. Karachi is the arena of bloody turf wars sponsored by political groups not content with political power alone – it’s bricks as well as ballots that count here.
Political division
Ethnic violence is also enshrined in the political violence as warring factions come from different backgrounds. The parties are divided by geography and ethnicity rather than political manifestos.
The PPP has the rural vote in Sindh, the southern province which is home to Karachi. The two parties representing the Pashtuns and Muhajirs are the ANP and MQM. The Pashtuns are mostly migrants who have escaped fighting and poverty in the troubled tribal areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
The parties are divided by geography and ethinicity rather than political manifestos
Some families though have been here for generations. The MQM represents the “muhajir” community, Urdu-speaking communities who moved to Karachi from India during the partition, when Pakistan was created. The two parties have a history of violent clashes between them. Add to the mix secular tensions and groups throwing their bad blood into the fray. A rise in Sunni-Shia violence has also erupted.
The MQM has had a violent past, in the 1990s a controversial campaign backed by the then PPP government led to mass killings of MQM supporters and members.
The two parties have barely recovered from that time. But the MQM has cleaned up its act and image and came back into central government after shaking hands with the dictatorship of General Musharaf.
The MQM enjoyed high praise and backing during that tenure with a popular mayor, Mustafa Kamal, developing Karachi and not just for the elite upper class – his regeneration projects in North Karachi, where the middle classes live, have been extremely popular.
The talk of the town is the fear that Karachi is now returning to the bloodbath people witnessed in the 1990s. The crackdown overseen by Benazir Bhutto’s government and headed by General Naseerullah Babar saw police raids and indiscriminate killing while the government turned a blind eye.
But that was then, the PPP is unlikely to do the same now as the MQM wields more power and is part of the coalition governments both in Sindh and the federal government.
However, the pressure is mounting on the government to take some kind of action. We may not see a wide-scale operation but a smaller one in troubled pockets may well be in the offing.
The current situation
Karachi is Pakistan’s financial hub – collecting 68 per cent of the country’s tax revenue, it is home to the state bank and the largest port. Institutional corruption and land mafia means political power leads to financial prowess too.
But analysts are predicting the death of the economy as Karachi is continually brought to a halt with shut-down strikes and many shopkeepers too scared to open up for days on end because of violence. I left Karachi on 10 July. Fighting broke out that night and six days later only a few shops were open.
This does not bode well for a country whose economy is already struggling to deal with high inflation and poor revenues. The crippled economy and blackouts are only fuelling the flames.
Karachi may be the financial hub but its 180 million-strong population sees little of the money that the country’s elite are earning. The ever-increasing cost of basic food items and low employment rates have seen long queues, minor protests in the past and even suicides by struggling parents – some took their children with them.
The government’s inability to address the power-generation quandary and a series of corruption-embroiled deals have left people literally in the dark.
In an already beleaguered community with little or no money to feed their young and no electricity in temperatures of 45 degrees Celsius, tensions are bound to boil over. The political elite and gangs are using this to direct their anger against each other.
The future
The Pakistani public have little respect for the corrupt police and administration. The Rangers, a para-military force, has an even worse reputation.
A video leaked to the media a few months ago showed a young man being shot at point blank range by the Rangers while he begged for his life. He was suspected of thieving, but was not given the right to arrest, trial or a defence.
The video led to rioting and yet another breakdown in law and order. The government, ill equipped to deal with the situation and with little credibility, has lost its authority to command.
With a weak government and even weaker law enforcement agencies, the gang warfare backed by political forces is taking over with little or no end in sight
A recent outburst by the former Home Affairs Minister Zulfikar Mirza, a good friend of President Asif Zardari, saw him make abusive statements about MQM leader Altaf Hussain which led to a violent rampage and backlash in MQM-controlled areas. Fourteen people were killed in the fighting.
Mirza had been sidelined from his post as home affairs minister but was not sacked. The PPP seems to be impotent in dealing with the tensions and in some cases allowing its MPs to make incendiary statements.
Last week Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik proposed an all-party parliamentary committee to investigate the violence in Karachi to show the parties were on the same page.
But in the same speech he insinuated how the parties themselves were involved in giving tacit support for violent power struggles in the city.
With a weak government and even weaker law enforcement agencies, the gang warfare backed by political forces is taking over with little or no end in sight.
