Ending the violence

Until we know what sinister games are being played, we will not be able to stop the spiral towards chaos.

Even now, in the offices of bureaucrats, the report the president of Pakistan has sought on continuing incidents of violence in Karachi is in all likelihood being drafted. Many such documents have been prepared before and the truth of the matter is that they have made little or no difference to the reality the people of Karachi live with. Tension has been heightened by October 19’s spree of violence and the killers continue to rampage through the city. No one knows who they are and no one seems to be able to stop them from spraying bullets at will. If anything, the events of the last 24 hours, with at least 30 dead, demonstrate how pointless the ban on pillion riding is, especially since security forces seem unable to enforce it anyway. To impose a curfew, as is being suggested by some quarters, will only be a stop-gap, temporary solution to a festering sore that needs a long-term answer, from all political parties and groups that have a stake in the city's development and future.

The interior minister, who has hopped nimbly onto planes time and again when violence in Karachi resurfaces, should be asked where his efforts have led. The government, and the many agencies intended to safeguard our security, should be asking whose purposes it suits to create anarchy in the business heartland of our country and why these elements have been able to succeed. We need more information, more intelligence and a better understanding of what is going on. The most recent killings seem even more senseless than the murders of the past based on ethnicity or sectarianism. Until we know what sinister games are being played, and the volatile nature of Karachi exploited for this, we will not be able to stop the spiral towards chaos. The strike called in Karachi by the MQM means life in most markets and many offices has ground to a standstill. Many will lose what little they earn as a result. The protests will also in themselves solve nothing but only add to the sense of disquiet that hangs everywhere and has added to the crisis we face as a country where problems of every kind seem to be mounting.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2010.