After years of restiveness, Lyari is back in business

Most members of the Kutchi community who fled in 2013 have now resettled

KARACHI: Life has returned to normal at Lyari's Alfalah Road, once a bustling centre of commercial activity that was later abandoned after militant groups started making inroads into the area.

"However, business has resumed and now our shops remain open till midnight," said a local shop owner. Above his store, where the building houses several apartments, bullet holes and shrapnel marks are still visible as a haunting reminder of the past hostilities.

Similarly, economic activities in Bihar Market of Lyari, parallel to Alfalah Road, have also resumed. It is near impossible to walk without bumping into someone in the congested alley, where hundreds of shops attract thousands of customers every day.

This market too bears witness to the notorious turf wars, which escalated in the summer of 2013, with damage from mortars and grenades having become a permanent part of the façade.

Life had come to a standstill in that part of Lyari, dominated by the Kutchi community.

The worst affected areas were Phool Patti Lane, Alfalah Road, Ali Muhammad Mohallah, Mandhra Mohallah, Rahimabad Mohallah, Jhatpat Market, Bihar Market and Kutchi Market.

Deliberate displacement

Explaining the reasons behind the 'clashes', Muhammad Yousuf, a resident of Alfalah Road, said "It was basically the Peoples Amn Committee which came [in 2013] and tried to exert its control in the area." The markets were badly affected as a result, and a number of Kutchis lost their lives trying to resist the banned outfit, formed in 2009 as a counterweight to the notorious gangs. The skirmishes between the Amn Committee and the Kutchis were separate from the gang wars Lyari became synonymous with as this was a move to infiltrate areas dominated by the Kutchis.



"Our children couldn't go to schools. People were even afraid to offer prayers in mosques. They remained homebound or moved to safer places," he recalled further.

Mass migration

Ali Nawaz, a displaced resident of one of the worst affected areas of Bihar Colony, said almost 50,000 Kutchi families were forced to move out due to action from the Peoples Amn Committee till the Rangers' operation halted their activities throughout the city, especially in Lyari, in 2014.

According to him, apartments worth millions of rupees were sold off for less than half their value as people migrated to Badin, Thatta, Nagarparkar or other safer places in Karachi. "It was the worst time for the Kutchis but we faced the [Amn Committee's] atrocities courageously," he said proudly.



Iqbal Kutchi, a vegetable seller who lost two of his best friends in the clashes, said no one could even stand on the streets in those days, so running a store and doing business was out of the question.

Zubaida Hingoro, a resident of Phool Patti Lane, is happy to return to her ancestral area with her family, which they had left when the clashes escalated in 2013.



Soaring property prices

Narrating the troubles associated with migrating and then returning, Nargis Saleem, a former resident of Bihar market, complained that she is unable to buy a house now due to the soaring property prices. "We sold our apartment for half its worth when we left. We stayed in Haji Camp for a year in a rented apartment and when we returned last year, property prices are so high that we cannot buy any apartment in Lyari," she explained.

According to Kamran Baloch, also a resident of Phool Pati Lane, it was never a clash of the Baloch and Kutchis even though it was made to look as such. "It was the clash of right and wrong," he remarked, adding that 'criminal elements' from the Amn Committee tried to infiltrate the Kutchi dominated areas.



Securing the future

Fatima Hasan, a volunteer working to mobilise the Kutchi and Baloch communities, said the biggest challenge they face in the area is unemployment. "We have opened an office in Phool Patti Lane where gangsters once ruled the roost," she informed, adding that we have been trying to increase interaction between the Baloch and Kutchis so that in the future, such clashes can be avoided.



Published in The Express Tribune, August 10^th, 2016.