An open letter to the Chief Justice on Karachi

You are requested to please order ‘across the board’ and total deweaponisation of all weapons licensed or otherwise.

Honourable Chief Justice,

Welcome to the city of Karachi, and thank you for choosing to deliver justice at the doorsteps of the aggrieved and the aggressors. This looks certainly better than the earlier ‘access to justice’ $350 million loan that we borrowed from the Asian Development Bank, which somehow disappeared without causing any impact on the ‘access to justice’ in Pakistan. Please accept our deep apologies for the inconvenience caused by the deafening sound of Kalashnikovs and other automatic weapons on chand raat. We do understand that you are not used to such spontaneous display of pathological joy. But please for a moment bear with us, for our militant criminal gangs are at a complete loss on what to do with their weapons when not being actually used for killing fellow citizens.

At one time, Karachi used to have political parties who had their own militant wings. They have now re-engineered and upgraded themselves to become militant parties who have their own political wings. So how can we even begin to create the possibility of initiating a process of sanity, peace, dialogue or accommodation? We have great respect for your earlier judgements, some of which changed a commissioner, a prosecutor, an investigator, or an inspector general (IG), but can we humbly state that none of this is likely to make a difference in the city of Karachi. If one were to keep explosives, matchboxes and oxygen cylinders together in the same compartment, and simply change the store keeper, the outcomes are not likely to be any different.

We believe that nothing can achieve peace and dialogue in Karachi, unless we can implement complete deweaponisation and confiscate all the weapons from the city. Every party, every gang and every individual (regardless of status or position) must surrender every weapon of every kind, licenced or otherwise. This is an essential first prerequisite for peace in the city. There are an estimated five-million weapons (both licensed and otherwise) in the city. One knows that no administrator, IG, nazim, home minister, police or Rangers can deliver peace when faced with hundreds of warring private armies whose weapons far exceed their scruples. You may therefore, please, be kind enough to listen to the voice of ordinary citizens whose only role in this city is to patiently await their turn to be the next number in the day’s count of victims. You are requested to please order an ‘across the board’ and total deweaponisation of all weapons licensed or otherwise.

A number of other steps are needed to execute an effective deweaponisation programme: Declare all previously issued licenses as void and ban any further issuance of licenses for any kind of weapons. The Pakistan Arms Ordinance should be declared discriminatory and repugnant to the spirit of the constitution and must be struck down. You will appreciate that it provides discretionary powers to individuals to issue licences to friends, relatives and people in power, and that these are invariably misused. Thousands of such licences (including those for weapons of prohibited bore) have been issued, as an instrument of graft or appeasement, by every successive government. Needless to say that the sale, supply and smuggling of weapons will also need to be curbed in order to prevent fresh weapons from replacing the ones confiscated by the state. We hope a detailed judgement will include instructions on all these issues as well. The entire deweaponisation programme must be overseen by a commission headed by a Supreme Court judge and assisted by a team of prominent citizens, especially chosen government officials.

Finally, your Lordship, please allow me to say a few words of grievance. Your travel in the city of blood and tears sitting in a seven-series BMW, surrounded by a dozen police vans reminds one of the inappropriateness of the naval chief, visiting a burning Mehran Base, in a similar show of grandiosity.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 12^th,  2011.