Different ethnicities, same reactions, says UN information unit report

Mounting tensions between ethnic groups and political rivalries have left Karachi haunted by violence.

KARACHI: In the courtyards of busy hospitals in Karachi, many different languages can be heard, as families chat to each other while waiting for consultations or to visit patients. Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto and Balochi — languages of all provinces — can be heard. But once outside the public space where they have come together by accident, the groups only rarely mingle, making their way home to residences often based in localities where a particular group is dominant.

Recently, mounting tensions between ethnic groups, and the political rivalries that spur these on, have added to the unrest. These factors have also triggered violence, with at least 33 people killed and others injured in the latest outbreak of killings this month, reports IRIN, the UN information unit.

Last year, according to police, over 1,000 people died in murders carried out in most cases by gunmen who roamed the streets, apparently killing at random. The murders continued throughout the later months of the year. Pakhtuns, who have moved to Karachi from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa over many decades, usually in a quest for jobs and an improved life and Urdu-speaking people who moved from India to Pakistan at the time of the partition in 1947, are the chief victims of the murders, which follow a “tit-for-tat” pattern, the report says.

“Unemployment among young people is a factor in all this because young people are at a loose-end and they can be quite easily exploited,” Faisel Edhi, trustee of the Edhi Foundation, says. The killings and an operation by security forces in troubled localities across the city have triggered fear.

“There is an awful sense of harassment for us Pathans. My family has lived in Karachi for over 30 years, after moving here in the 1970s, but even now we are treated like unwanted outsiders,” Sheeraz Jan, 40, says. He says that he and other Pakhtun families had been avoiding sending their children to school. But the Pakhtun community is not alone in its fear. In Orangi, residents say they have been detained by security forces for hours, or forced to hide in their houses, as search operations continue. “I felt very harassed because about three paramilitary personnel entered my home and demanded I produce my national identity card. I was forced to stay there till I was able to reach my husband and ask him to bring it in, as he keeps it at his office in a file,” says Sajjida Siraj, 25. Farooq Rashid, a Punjabi resident, narrates, “Security forces detained me in my home for hours, causing me to miss a day’s work, which I cannot really afford.” He is considering moving back to the Punjab with his family.

“It is sad that people in this large city cannot learn to coexist,” says Ahsan Sidiqque, 55, a social worker. Civil society activists have been calling for a “de-weaponisation” of Karachi, where there are believed to be millions of small arms. According to a report by the International Action Network on Small Arms, a worldwide network against gun violence, Pakistan has one of the highest per-capita figures of gun ownership in the world. Though official figures are not available, estimates put the number of small arms, licenced and unlicenced, in the country at more than 20 million, the report adds. “When so many people have arms, there is bound to be violence,” believes Sidiqque.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22^nd, 2011.