Violence in Karachi

The group clashes that started in Karachi on June 12 have taken 24 lives and the carnage is going on at the time of writing. It is a terrible déjà vu with additional frills, like the laid-off KESC employees using scorched earth tactics to get what they want, students killing each other at a university and the shooting of an innocent citizen by security personnel caught on camera. If the criminals were killing each other like the drug mafias in the United States of yore, one would take dubious satisfaction from the mayhem, but it is citizens getting killed at the hands of thugs who shoot to kill indiscriminately.

Opposed groups in Orangi are simply not giving up, despite a period of lull, and their war has spread to other settlements like Banaras, Qasba and Aligarh. The killing rage has spread through Karachi and peace is now described not as absence of violence but as low level of violence. After four years of a ruling coalition in Karachi, it is no longer unreasonable to conclude that politicians are involved in this killing spree: Some are directly involved and represent an interface with the underworld, others staying on the fringes are unwilling to stop what is going on because it has become a part of the political dynamic or because they simply can’t stop something that has become too big to stop.

On June 14, the ANP and MQM condemned the renewed wave of killings in the city and agreed to work together to prevent such incidents and weed out criminals who were causing a breakdown of law and order. This pantomime was organised by the Sindh governor, after both parties had predictably blamed each other for the latest bloodshed. No one in Karachi and rest of the country believed a word of what was said at the meeting. The two sides agreed that those involved in the killings had no political support. The MQM also piously staged a token walkout from the Sindh Assembly to look as if it meant business this time.

Everybody is practicing violence now and conspiracy theorists have run out of scenarios in which terrorists with sophisticated weapons and training are killing Pakistanis at the behest of the US, Israel and India, because Washington is after our blessed nuclear weapons. (This was the scenario given after the PNS Mehran attack). Enraged students of a ‘student wing’ attacked and vandalised a private hospital. Our educational institutions are hardly the safe places they were supposed to be in the past and remain closed after student violence. The result of this closure will come in the shape of more personal savagery in the years to come. The rest of the country is not yet violent the way Karachi is, yet some cities living under the shadow of al Qaeda look somewhat like Karachi. Criminal authority there is single and not a brawling trio.

In truth, Karachi is the shape of future Pakistan as it comes apart at the seams. The fundamental characteristic of a state is its ability to ensure security of property. Political scientists say the state came into being because of the human need to secure ownership of property. In Karachi, land grab mafias, with links to the city’s three ruling parties, are rapidly pulling this crucial plank from under the megacity known in the past for being the best example of civic virtue. Crime and greed for illicit funds has overcome the ideology of the three, all of them secular-liberal in their thinking and therefore the best bet against the creeping ‘takfeeri caliphate’ of al Qaeda. Because of the internecine nature of Karachi politics, al Qaeda is getting stronger in Karachi despite the city’s relatively more cosmopolitan worldview.

Osama bin Laden probably made a mistake hiding in Abbottabad. He could have come and presided over the chaos of Karachi without ever being found out, given the city’s various pockets where sympathy runs high for extremists.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 16th, 2011.