The fast-spreading darkness

Letter March 15, 2013
Karachi appears to be the main loser in the war on terror.

JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: Another dark evening, another victim of the ongoing madness and lawlessness in Karachi — Parveen Rehman. Ms Rehman, the respected social worker and director of the Orangi Pilot Project, was gunned down in a militant-infested locality of Karachi. Orangi is Asia’s largest low-income locality to which Ms Rehman dedicated her life. She worked devotedly for the rehabilitation of its residents, documentation of encroached lands and assisting victims of the land mafia.

How long will it take Karachiites to realise that their city is in complete control of land grabbers, drug dealers and peddlers, weapons dealers and the newly added mafia to this list are the religious extremists and militants. These mafias use ethnic and sectarian cards to advance their nefarious interests.


Lawless Karachi is a dead corpse on which numerous vultures, some wearing political masks for administrative protection, are busy grabbing whatever is left. Karachi appears to be the main loser in the war on terror as thousands of religious extremists from the north of the country have made this unfortunate city their base. The step-motherly treatment this city received during the last five years, wherein positions of authority promoted mafias, has led to this widespread lawlessness. Ms Rehman was killed in an area that is a no-go zone even for Pashtun political workers.


Farida Afridi, Malala Yousufzai, numerous female polio health workers, and now Parveen Rehman, have ended up as victims of the cowards who attack anyone who doesn’t agree with their ideology or objects to their excesses, with impunity.


Masood Khan


Published in The Express Tribune, March 16th, 2013.