The system was so paralysed that honest politicians became an endangered species, silenced at gunpoint or forced to withdraw from politics altogether. It became impossible for the out-financed and infiltrated local authorities to deal with the anarchic situation and it took years of federal action to be rid of the menace. Except now, the gangster mafia in the US has been replaced with permitted as well as under-the-table corporate-money buying influence and political candidates.
The turf wars of Karachi have been brazen for several decades: Everyone knows the culprits and can identify them in private and off the record, but those who value their lives dare not stand witness. There are other differences here that make our situation seem more hopeless. America never had to put up with a standing hegemonic threat railed against it as most south countries have to, Pakistan more than most. It didn’t have the World Bank, the IMF and other institutions, essentially creatures of the US, hijack and manipulate the international financial system as well as country systems, dictate trade and export-orientation and imposed unconstitutional rules and policies, so that no matter how many times we paid off real debts, we remained in even deeper debt, hunger and poverty.
Even so, a semblance of internal stability and conditions for reasonable survival could have arisen here, if a sense of allegiance to the common good viewed as an inherent political advantage had developed even among the self-appointed. The majority of US citizens may be so brainwashed by official propaganda and corporate advertising that they firmly believe that they are the master race and can turn a blind eye to the havoc their government wreaks on the outside world.
The news tells us how many people got killed. But, as one doctor pointed out, those taken to hospital, who died en route or soon after, are not counted. Other news we don’t get is how many didn’t get to eat the day of an all-out strike. When shops are fearfully shut down; when supply trucks stay off the roads and people without electric pumps to raise water, relying on donkey-carts and tankers selling house-to-house, have to do without cooking and washing water. Owning refrigerators no longer means stocking up ahead unless one owns a heavy-duty generator. Daily electricity outages for 8-18 hours has made that impossible. Families dependent on daily-wage breadwinners eat only as adequately as the day’s earnings — or lack of it — allow.
The political parties should know, but do they, about citizens who live day-to-day? About half of Karachi’s population of some 18 million are migrants from rural areas and other provinces. That includes the inhabitants of the 1,000-odd small villages that Karachi swallowed up in the process of unregulated, corrupt expansion.
The basically unaltered feudal and patronage system grafted onto ‘modern’ government with increasingly badly educated and unfit recruits who effectively silence the meritocrats has, over time, spawned powerful hybrid offshoots, such as urban and uniformed feudals. Indeed, too much land and/or too much easy or ill-gotten money has reinforced the belief in dynastic, unquestioned leadership as a birthright.
The rural slave mentality rooted in feudal oppression that has filtered into urban areas also partly explains why hapless ordinary citizens invariably wait for subsequent governments to deliver on tall promises not intended to be kept — instead of making their own comprehensive constitutional checklist of expectations and duties of government towards all citizens, irrespective of party affiliation if any.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 12th, 2011.
COMMENTS (6)
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@mkd: @Mirza: This is a very informative article encompassing a range of issues in trying to put Karachi's current day situation into perspective.
FACT: The early white immigrants of the US first ethnically cleansed the lands of the Red Indians et al and then imported slaves from Africa and treated them worse than animals for generations.
Please get over your embarrassment and start doing something tangible to improve the lot of your people, like Ms Sadeque is.
@mirza
I am with you 100%. The author's insinuation on US being racist is deplorable. Asian in general and the people of the sub-continent in particular are the most racist people on this earth.
Isn't there even a single brave person in more than 10 million population of Karachi, who could stand up and say, these are the people responsible for this carnage??
You wrote about the American people: "they firmly believe that they are the master race" This is the most dishonest and racist statement that one can make about a country who is ruled by a black president. How are Makrani treated in Karachi? I have never seen a more racist country than some of the Asian countries. There is no country I have found least racist than the US. I am ashamed of this senseless tirade against the American people. There may be Mafia in some large cities of America over a hundred years ago but they have all been eliminated with the help of law enforcement and new technology. While in Pakistan there are religious and ethnic groups in the 21st century and they are increasing every day. Now there are even Taliban in Karachi and causing trouble against civilians. Writing about the killings in present day Pakistan has nothing to do with the US. This certainly is the worst article I have read even in a Pakistani paper. The waste of 15 minutes of my life that I am never going to get back.
Democracy is not just the right to elect someone to represent the citizen in the governance of the country.Democracy stands on institutions like judiciary,law enforcement,civil society,free media etc.As long as these institutions are not build and strengthened all 3rd world countries will remain a loose confederation of tribal warlords.
Dear Madam Author, what exactly have America and IMF to do with political turf wars and killings in Karachi ? Kabhie Apni Shakal Dekhi Hai ?