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Posted on November 3, 2011 by Huma Yusuf
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Thursday’s attack on the CID (Criminal Investigation Department) office in Karachi will be remembered both for its horror and audacity. The toll of the blast was horrible: it claimed a number of lives, including that of a nine-year-old girl, and injured dozens among Karachi`s anonymous masses who live and work in the adjoining slum areas.
Its motive, on the other hand, was audacious: Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) militants were apparently exacting revenge for the arrest of six of their ranks earlier in the week. One can assume the coordinated strikes were meant as a warning for the local administration — an attempt to dictate the terms of engagement between law-enforcers and lawbreakers. This audacity should be cause for significant concern.
Although Thursday`s attack is seen as the first of its kind against a state target in Karachi, it was by no means unexpected. The perception in recent years that the commercial capital had somehow been spared the violence that has ravaged the northern and western parts of the country was, after all, a phantasm.
Militants of all shapes, sizes, and sects have maintained a presence in the city since the early 1990s. And Karachi`s complicity in Pakistan`s national struggle against terrorism has been obvious for the better part of this decade, from Daniel Pearl`s murder and the arrest of Ramzi bin al Shibh in 2002 to the coordination of the Mumbai attacks and the recruitment of Faisal Shahzad in recent years. It was only a matter of time before the simmer came to a boil.
Despite being the target of this attack, Karachi`s law-enforcers have already been pilloried for unpreparedness and poor coordination. And the critiques are justified: high-profile LJ militants should not have been kept in a facility without maximum security. But these lapses should not be misinterpreted, since Karachi`s security officials are aware of the threat posed by local militants.
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Posted on November 3, 2011 by Huma Yusuf
This article was published by the on November 2, 2010.
Washington, DC – While Pakistan grapples with the worst recorded flooding of the Indus River Delta, the country’s financial capital, Karachi, is on the brink of what is being described as a civil war. A sprawling metropolis of 18 million people, Karachi has long been plagued by political violence. But the sharp escalation this year in politically, ethnically and religiously motivated killings – known as target killings – threatens to paralyse the city and, with it, what remains of Pakistan’s failing economy.
In the context of the ongoing war in the region, Pakistan’s economic and developmental problems are too often distilled through the prism of extremism and terrorism. However, the country’s most pressing problems frequently stem from issues in resource allocation and local politics. As such, Karachi offers a microcosm of Pakistan’s developmental and political concerns – the ones that preoccupy ordinary Pakistanis – and therefore deserves the attention of the international community.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, there were over 260 target killings in Karachi in the first six months of 2010. In mid-October, local elections led to clashes between rival political parties in which over 40 people were killed and more than 50 wounded. On 19 October, 29 people were killed in shooting sprees by unidentified assailants in just one day in Karachi. The most high profile murder around that time was that of Dr. Imran Farooq, a founding member of the Karachi-based ethno-political party, the United National Movement (MQM), in London in September. His death signalled that Karachi’s turf wars had taken on international dimensions.
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Posted on September 5, 2011 by Huma Yusuf
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The Life’s Too Short Literary Review, the first edition of a magazine featuring new Pakistani writing, is now on the stands. The cover illustration depicts a parked ambulance on a typical Pakistani street – implying perhaps that this review is a saviour for the ongoing literary boom, which threatens to go bust in the absence of local publishing outlets. Indeed, editor Faiza Khan declares at the outset that the review is on a mission to encourage, promote, and discover new talent.
The inaugural edition is thus a collection of the best short stories submitted to the first Life’s Too Short short story prize, held last year and judged by Kamila Shamsie, Mohammed Hanif, and Daniyal Mueenuddin. Evolving from the competition, the review boasts brand new voices to the local literary landscape – and the strength of some of the entries bodes well for the future of English-language fiction in Pakistan.
Sadaf Halai’s ‘Lucky People’ – the winning entry – is the most engrossing story. It tells the simple tale of Asma, a housewife who rents the ground floor of her house to a young, westernized couple. As she shares her space, Asma begins to articulate her silent frustrations – with her husband, their home, and lifestyle – by way of comparison with her hip tenants. In a few pages, Halai touches on the poignancy and pitfalls of familiarity, class difference, and existential musings, making her contribution a compelling read.
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Posted on September 5, 2011 by Huma Yusuf
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The Pentagon counts Karachi among the “feral, failed cities” that are expected to be the battlefields of the 21st century. In these millennial war zones, fighting is instigated by poverty, urban squalor, degrading housing conditions, and unemployment. But the rhetoric of the battle cry is framed in terms of political rivalry, ethnic tensions, and sectarianism. As such, the multifaceted problems of ‘failed’ cities such as Karachi pose some of the greatest challenges of the contemporary era.
It is apt to describe Karachi as a battlefield in light of the recent escalation in ‘target killings’—there were over 300 politically or ethnically motivated deaths in the city this year, before the assassination of MQM MPA Raza Haider on August 2 sparked a killing spree that claimed 97 lives, and counting. This violence is a cause for national concern because, as politicians like to remind us, destabilizing Karachi is akin to destabilizing Pakistan. Seventy per cent of the income tax and 62 per cent of the sales tax collected by the government comes from Sindh, and of that, 94 per cent is generated in Karachi. When gunfire and arson attacks shut down the financial capital, the repercussions can be felt across the country.
It was not meant to be this way. In August 1947, the Dawn newspaper celebrated independence by lauding Karachi as a “city with a future” that is “supremely blessed by not having a long history.” Sixty-three years on, Karachi’s history has been marred by recurring waves of violence. In the 1980s, the violence was described as ethnically motivated. In the early 1990s, it was in turn political or sectarian. Now, the nebulous ‘third force’ of militancy is being held responsible for Karachi’s woes. But the underlying causes of strife in the city have been fairly consistent, and they begin with a gross failure in urban planning.
Since the 1950s, Karachi’s integrity as a city has been threatened by schismatic urban policy-making. The first master plan of 1952 called for the separation of the city and the Federal Captial Area. Though it was never implemented, that plan set a precedent for future master plans, which have all emphasized cleaving the city, rather than making it a coherent whole. As early as 1958, the Greater Karachi Resettlement Plan aimed at relocating Karachi’s migrant and working class population at a 25-kilometre distance from the city centre. This initiative transformed Karachi into an area of low-density sprawl, in which the corridors between the port, central business district, markets, and new satellite towns were soon crowded with squatter settlements.
This urban chaos is exacerbated by the fact that the city’s development falls to over 20 government institutions that vie for planning projects and operate independently of each other without guidance from a centralized metropolitan authority. The Karachi Strategic Development Plan 2020 acknowledges that this multiplicity of ownership has resulted in a “lack of a holistic and unified vision for the city,” “unplanned and haphazard growth,” poor crisis management, and environmental degradation. In the absence of top-down management of Karachi’s resources, it is no wonder that land mafias have emerged as the most powerful stakeholders in this city of 17 million, and are willing to resort to violence to retain control or their urban territories.
Of course, the need to control land and profit from rampant encroachment has a political dimension. Karachi’s slums are, in essence, teeming vote banks. Political parties are compelled to maintain ties with the ubiquitous land mafia for electoral – if not more sinister – reasons. And the ballots of slum dwellers are most easily secured with the promise of providing water, electricity, roads, and other infrastructure in areas that have been illegally, and thus poorly, developed. This explains the historic triangulation of Karachi’s violence between the ethnically defined MQM, ANP, and PPP parties.
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Posted on September 5, 2011 by Huma Yusuf
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“If you want to save Karachi, the face and index of Pakistan, then deweaponize it.” These wise words were uttered by Azam Swati, Minister for Science and Technology, in the Senate on Thursday as the Karachi killings continued unabated. But they are words we have heard before, from General Pervez Musharraf, in the wake of the May 2007 violence; from former interior minister Moinuddin Haider, during the deweaponization campaign of 2001; and countless times in between over the past decade.
The term ‘deweaponization’ has become a strong candidate for inclusion in the mantra of meaningless phrases uttered by our politicians in response to severe security lapses, along with ‘inquiry,’ ‘foreign element,’ and ‘destabilize.’ And yet, the only concrete government response to the recent killing spree – the issuance of shoot-on-sight orders – contradicts the goal of reducing small arms in the city, and instead aims to fight fire with fire.
The prime minister on Friday established a commission to investigate recent target killings and identify the perpetrators on all sides. In the past, such commissions have failed to deliver, and suspects are often acquitted by Anti-Terrorism Courts for lack of evidence. The commission could better serve the people of Karachi by brainstorming ways in which to make the dream of deweaponization a reality. Eliminating small arms is, ultimately, the only solution to Karachi’s persistent turmoil. Sadly, it is also one that requires the most strategic thinking, institutional commitment and capacity, and financial resources. In the chronic absence of these, Karachiites have little cause for optimism.
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Posted on September 5, 2011 by Huma Yusuf
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The murder of a politician on Monday sparked deadly riots in ‘s southern port city of in which 35 people were killed and at least 80 wounded.
The death of , a member of parliament and senior leader of the secular (MQM) party, is the latest and most high-profile in a series of political assassinations that have deepened ethnic tensions in Pakistan’s financial capital. Over 300 people have been assassinated for ethnic or political reasons in Karachi this year. But now, the government claims that militant groups are behind Haider’s assassination.
That may be the case, but Pakistani society is seeing a of both religious and ethnic polarization. There have been attacks by militants on in other parts of the country. And while retaliation has been limited so far, there were signs of further trouble in the overnight rioting. The MQM represents Karachi’s majority Urdu-speaking population and are rivals for political leadership and land ownership with minority Pashtuns who have migrated from northwestern Pakistan seeking employment.
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Posted on September 2, 2011 by Huma Yusuf
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Afghan leader and many Pakistani militants have been reported to be hiding in , where the Afghan insurgency’s No. 2 was captured last week.
The arrest of a senior Afghan Taliban commander in Karachi, made last week and revealed Tuesday, adds to growing reports that militants are using the Pakistani city as an organizational hub and safe haven.
, the second in command to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was apprehended in a joint raid by Pakistani and American intelligence agencies, though a Taliban spokesman denied this.
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In recent months, local and international media have reported that Taliban commanders fleeing military operations in and in Pakistani tribal areas have relocated to Karachi, which is the country’s largest city and has largely avoided the that have struck the northwest and other major cities.
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Posted on September 2, 2011 by Huma Yusuf
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A convoy came under assault Thursday while carrying supplies through to in a rare ambush inside , the relatively secure port city from which 300 to 400 of the coalition’s trucks leave each day.
Any assault on the Pakistani supply route is worrisome to the -led forces in Afghanistan, who use it to ship three-quarters of their materials and will need it even more as the surge of 30,000 US troops progresses.
But the attack in Karachi – which is the commercial capital of Pakistan, and has largely escaped the bomb attacks troubling other major cities and the northwest – raises particular concern, especially if it marks the beginning of a trend.
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Posted on September 1, 2011 by Huma Yusuf
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Interior Minister Rehman Malik stated on Friday that there are no similarities between Karachi and Swat. This statement of the obvious is in some ways the best response by the authorities to the recent spate of violence in the port city. Acknowledging that the dynamics of violence are locally defined and steeped in histories and circumstances particular to certain places and events is the first step towards effectively maintaining peace and stability.
Karachi has a long history of ethnic conflict, sectarian violence, land mafias, and intra- and inter-party tensions. All these have been in play during this past fortnight, making it abundantly clear that a discerning approach to Karachi’s violence is required. Policing and investigations into recent incidents must be informed by knowledge of ‘local’ social, political and economic factors, which in this city of 18 million differ from locality to locality. For that reason, MQM leader Dr Farooq Sattar’s request for the Rangers, army, and intelligence agencies to maintain law and order in the city is akin to slapping a band-aid on a deep, infected wound.
Violent incidents since December 28 have confirmed that Karachi is facing a hydra-headed threat. Rather than work towards teasing apart the different types of violence and addressing each systematically and comprehensively, the authorities are operating in a muddle.
