Karachi’s killing fields

Karachi is loses a dozen people a day to target killings. Killers are apprehended, but the mayhem never ends.

While Pakistan is busy worrying about Blackwater and the CIA bribing the Taliban to kill innocent citizens all over the country, and is growing hysterical over a crazy priest burning the Holy Quran in Florida, its economic hub, Karachi, is losing a dozen people a day to target killings. All localities have become unsafe, but certain ones such as Landhi Chowrangi, Qasba Colony and Katti Pahari have suffered the most in the latest spate of violence. Killers are apprehended off and on, but their numbers never decrease, and the mayhem never ends, thanks to the divided nature of those political parties who are in control of the city and the province.

From an analysis of the most recent round of killings, it seems as if activists of all three parties — the MQM, the ANP and the PPP — are being killed, along with those belonging to religious parties as well. However, by and large, what is being fought out seems to be a battle for turf — in the larger political sense primarily — and while each party denies its involvement in the violence, it really begs logic to think that none of them have any hand in it. Even if for the sake of argument, this were taken at face value, surely the parties should have some role in being able to curb the violence, since all three are part of the Sindh government.

As for the city’s police and other law-enforcement agencies such as the Rangers, they seem helpless and powerless to stop the mayhem. Karachi’s recently-appointed police chief said the other day that several people suspected of being the shooters had been arrested, but that did nothing to stem the killings. Also, no effort was made by the police officer to reveal the identities or political affiliations of those involved, perhaps since he reports to a political boss. Even President Asif Ali Zardari’s statement on the city’s situation, made during his address to a joint session of parliament on March 22, that the government would work to improve comes across as mostly fantastical since we have heard these claims many times before.

The most recent round of target killings came on the heels of an MQM-PPP tussle over the so-called People’s Aman Committee, which the MQM has accused of targeting its party workers. However, the Sindh home minister, never one to shy away from speaking his mind, has often accused the MQM of being behind the target killings and the city’s widespread extortion racket. That said, the recent strike called by the Sindh PPP, following the rescinding of the NAB chairman’s appointment by the Supreme Court, also showed that for a change, a strike initiated by the PPP could have its fair share of burnt vehicles and accompanying violence. The depressing thing about all of this, of course, is the stark fact that the law and order situation in Pakistan’s largest city, and its business and commercial centre, is not getting any better, and that no real effort is being made to turn it around.

Apart from political groups, Karachi is also home to a healthy presence of several jihadi organisations. In this the hundreds of madrassas in the city, which have rapidly grown over the years, and whose students can always provide fodder for the jihadi ranks, play a role. This has a nexus with the spate of sectarian killings that the city has seen in recent years, especially of doctors. Of late, the MQM has been claiming that several of its activists who are Shia, have been targeted and that this was done on sectarian grounds. This aspect also needs some scrutiny, but one is not sure whether the police are even considering it.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik must be a deeply optimistic man, predicting an end to target-killings in Karachi every few days. However, he may not be looking in the right direction. If his statements are examined carefully, his new diagnosis traces most terrorism in Pakistan to ‘foreign countries’ headed, one suspects, by the US in tandem with India and Israel. If the state of Pakistan is looking for CIA agents in Pakistan — ‘hundreds of Raymond Davises’, it is said — it can hardly get at the root of the problem in Karachi, which will only be tackled if the political groups in the city rein in their visceral instinct.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24^th, 2011.