Is Karachi Now a Lost Case?

Karachi has had a long history of volatility stemming from sectarian, ethnic and political strife. Political parties fighting each other for control have drawn the city into a spiral of violence in recent years, a trend which seems to be getting worse.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-4-132841-MQM-ANP-workers-among-eight-slain ]

1,700 people were killed in Karachi between January and August 2012. At least 1,345 of these murders were politically motivated – a dramatic increase on 2011.

The ongoing killings are multidirectional. Largely, the killings are of a political, ethnic or sectarian nature and then in some cases personal scores are settled.

According to police statistics, there were 60 sectarian killings between January and August 2012, with both Shias and Sunnis targeted. While sectarian killings are relatively small in number, they often receive more media attention as the targeted personalities are usually prominent.

The growing number of killings has caused widespread alarm, and life is cheap. A target killer fee ranges between 5,000 [US$53] and 500,000 [$5,282] rupees.

What are the origins of the violence?

Much of the violence can be traced back to the regime of military dictator Zia ul-Haq who radically transformed society.

Pakistan became a breeding ground for Islamist propaganda; many young people were recruited and trained to fight alongside the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. When they returned, they brought their weapons and fighting skills with them.

Drugs, especially heroin, became a major source of income for religious militias in Pakistan at this time.

Till the late 1970s, the society was quite enlightened, progressive and liberal. Even a single murder would have sensationalized the whole city in those times. But afterwards, the gun was made the symbol of power, and the political party considered most powerful was the one brandishing the most weapons.

Karachi’s university campuses became battlegrounds for open conflict between secular and Islamist students, the latter obtaining weapons en route to Afghanistan.

In the mid-1980s, this low-intensity conflict gave way to more deadly confrontations. After an operation by the security services to control criminal activity in an area where many Pashtoons lived, ethnic Pashtoon mobs financed by drug barons attacked the city’s Urdu-speaking majority (Muhajirs) in Karachi: Hundreds were killed in the December 1986 Aligarh massacre.

What is prompting the current killings?

There is a complex political divide in Karachi and the monetary stakes are very high.

Killing sprees tend to come in the wake of the arrest of hundreds of political and sectarian activists by the police, though such arrests rarely lead to convictions. There is only a 5 percent conviction rate in criminal cases, and as trials can last for years, 90 percent of jail inmates are currently under trial.

The current situation is tantamount to a breakdown in law and order.

We have to admit that this is a failure of the state. All the political parties should recognize this harsh reality if they feel any responsibility towards the nation.

Sectarian rifts, gang wars, drug peddling and land-grabbing flourish in a city in which political parties draw their support from specific ethnic groups.

Land grabbers and drug barons have taken shelter in political parties and become an integral part of the political culture.

Who are the main players?

MQM, currently the fourth largest party and a key ally of the PPP, came to prominence in 1984 as the sole representative of the Muhajirs. Financed by local industrialists, it became a formidable political force. In 1992 (on orders from then President Nawaz Sharif) and 1995 (on PM Benazir Bhutto’s orders) the army and the paramilitary Rangers tried to shut down the party. The government claimed on both occasions that MQM was trying to establish an autonomous state in Karachi. During these years the government sponsored the emergence of a splinter group – MQM Haqiqi – in an attempt to weaken and outflank MQM. Since that time, MQM has tried to portray itself as a more inclusive, national party, but there are ongoing tensions with other ethnic groups, mainly Pashtoons. Some suspect MQM of being responsible for some of the killings of MQM Haqiqi members.

MQM Haqiqi – Emerged in 1992 during the military operation against MQM. MQM Haqiqi captured MQM’s offices and tried to replace it, but failed to secure sufficient public support. It survives in some parts of the city and is thought to be behind some of the killings of MQM members. It has no MPs.

ANP is a secular party, although one of its key leaders and the current Railway Minister announced a bounty for killing the person who made the video about the Prophet, and key ally of the PPP government in Islamabad and the provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It draws most of its support from ethnic Pashtoons, who are the second largest group in Karachi after the Muhajirs. The Aligarh massacre, committed by Pashtoons, is the reason for the ongoing enmity between the two communities and their respective parties.

Sunni Tehreek is a political group of the Barelvi Sunni Sufi order, without any seats in parliament. Most of its members are said to be former MQM Haqiqi activists and are thus at loggerheads with the MQM. Tehreek activists are often accused of extortion.

Peoples Aman Committee (PAC) is dominated by the Baloch ethnic group. It was formed in Lyari District, western Karachi. Unlike the rest of Karachi, which is mainly pro-MQM, Lyari District is dominated by the PPP. Allegedly PAC used to be a militant wing of the PPP, but the PPP withdrew its support in 2011. PAC was founded by local mobster Rehman Dakait and is now led by criminal kingpin Uzair Baloch. Allegedly it is involved in the weapons’ trade and runs illegal gambling dens. It has been involved in deadly clashes with the MQM over control of some suburbs. PAC was officially disbanded in March 2011, but continues to function.

PPP is the main ruling party which often has differences with MQM (its key ally). MQM blames PPP of using PAC as a proxy.

Katchi Rabita Committee (ERC) rivals PAC and is dominated by ethnic Katchis and has a strong following in Lyari. Some say ERC receives tacit support from MQM to counter the PAC, a claim MQM denies.

Sipahe Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) is a Sunni extremist group banned by the government for its alleged Al Qaeda ties. SSP supports the killing of Shiites whom it believes are infidels. It has no formal HQ.

Sipahe Mohammad is a banned militant Shiite youth group believed to have carried out revenge attacks against SSP.

Tehreek Taliban Pakistan is an extremist Islamist group which uses Karachi as a base for its Waziristan operations.

KESC Privatization Responsible for the Present Power Shortage Mess in Karachi

Power crisis in Karachi — an offshoot of privatization

by Lateef Mughal

It is a fact that uninterrupted supply of electricity is the responsibility of a power utility, mostly owned by the governments across the world, but unfortunately in 2005 the Musharraf government handed over the management of one of the major institutions of the country, Karachi Electric Supply Company, commonly known as KESC, to a Dubai-based group under the garb of privatization and without taking into consideration the repercussions of the deal, saying that the utility company is in bad shape and suffering huge losses.

KESC, which is responsible for providing uninterrupted power supply to the citizens of the city, was granted transmission and distribution license in 1913 and since then it is performing its duties.

It is a practice across the world that the expenses of institutions such as KESC were borne by the government through various sources, including provision of subsidies. These institutions are established with the objective to serve the masses.

In almost 95 percent of the cases around the world, the privatization of power distribution companies has failed to deliver the purpose and the governments had to take back the management control. The main reason for the failure of the process is that the new managements take measures, including retrenchment of the staff and raise in power tariffs at short intervals, to earn huge profits. This results in strong resentment among the masses and they take to streets against this anti-people sentiment.

Likewise, KESC is passing through the same situation. General Musharraf justified the privatization saying that through the sale of KESC shares the country will receive foreign direct investment, the government will be able to end subsidies and the performance of the organization will improve. At the time of privatization, the government also promised that no employee will be retrenched and that the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) had frozen the power tariff for seven years and till then no raise would be made in the tariff.

The new owners also claimed that they will enhance electricity generation, which will help reduce power outages. It was also decided at the time that no KESC employee will be retrenched and that the foreign buyer will be liable to Pakistani laws.

The buyer had also pledged to invest $500 million in the power utility for bringing improvement in the condition of the organization. Interestingly, before its sale, KESC has a liability of around Rs 92 billion of local and foreign banks, but the government spent Rs 14.5 billion to improve its working and also took the responsibility to pay the liability and makes the organization liability-free.

On the other hand, the privatization process of KESC was also not transparent as on February 4, 2005 a Saudi Base Company Kanuz Al Watan offered the highest bid and was announced successful bidder, but later on the company refused to buy KESC without giving any reason and suffered a loss of Rs10 billion paid as guarantee money.

After refusal from Kanuz Al Watan, the government started negotiations with the second highest bidder, a broker company Hassan Associates, rather than conducting re-bidding for the same, because it has decided to sell the utility, as the then privatization minister Hafeez Sheikh had said that the company will be privatized what come may.

Hassan Associates was asked to form a consortium, which included Premier Mercantile and AKD. After negotiations, KESC was sold to the consortium at a throw away price of Rs15.86 billion, whereas at that time the assets of KESC was worth Rs300 billion.

On the one hand, KESC was sold to a broker who has no experience of running a power utility, rather it was involved in the construction business, and on the other, the power utility was sold for half the amount it worth at that time. Not only this, but the government also paid Rs14.5 billion under the FIP plan, whereas Rs4 billion were already there in the account. Other than this, the power consumers, including residential, commercial, and industrial units, owed around Rs25 billion to the utility.

In this way, KESC was sold for around Rs16 billion and the government paid around Rs43 billion. Since its privatization, the respective governments have so far paid another Rs33 billion to KESC in subsidies and in the Budget 2011/12, the government has allocated another Rs47 billion for the power utility.

After all this as expected Hassan Associates formed a consortium in which a Saudi-based company Al-Jummaiah has the major share. Siemens Pakistan was appointed technical assistant. Both Al-Jummaiah and Siemens have no experience of running a power utility as the Saudi-based company was associated with the automobile sector, while Siemens Pakistan was manufacturing switch boards, PMTs and various other electric appliances, which were already in use at the KESC as the company was the registered contractor of the power utility. Taking advantage of the situation, Siemens after becoming the technical assistant supplied all of its substandard equipment to KESC and get the contracts for setting up various grid stations under the FIP plan worth around Rs15 billion.

The then government had promised that after privatization KESC will not be provided subsidy, and the new owners will invest in the company and that power generation would be enhanced, but after passage of almost six years, none of the claims were fulfilled, whereas the electricity consumption of the city is continuously rising at an average of 10 percent per annum. From November 29, 2005 to March 2008, Al-Jumaiah management failed to improve the situation of KESC. During this period, several experiments were carried out, but to no avail.

After its failure, Al-Jumaiah decided to quit the project and in March 2008 the company management returned to Saudi Arabia. In the same month, the government again gave the management control of the power utility to another Dubai-based company, Abraaj, whose owners belonged to Pakistan.

Abraaj was registered in Caymon, Latin America, which is popular for hosting mafias. It is an island known for money laundering and black money holders who take refuge here.

Once again, Abraaj made several promises such as investment of $500 million in KESC system to improve its condition and increase in power generation by 1,000 megawatts in a year’s time, but it could not do so. Rather it intentionally reduced 1,924 megawatts installed capacity and around 1,500 megawatts effective capacity in order to mint money through less use of furnace oil. The situation is the same even today as KESC is only generating 400 to 600 megawatts and WAPDA is providing 7,500 megawatts. Other than this, around 70-80 megawatts is being taken from KANUPP, 100 megawatts from two independent power producers of 250MW capacity.

The fact is that KESC management has created artificial power crisis, which ultimately made the life of the people miserable. It is also putting the blame of this crisis on the KESC workers union, which is very unfair on the part of the management.

There is no power shortage in the city as KESC is producing the desired consumption, but unfortunately the KESC management is bent upon paralyzing the city by carrying out 16 to 18 hours power outages. The load shedding resulted in closure of several industrial estates, especially small-scale industrial units and around 0.7 million to 0.8 million people have lost their jobs.

The exporters failed to fulfil their commitments due to the power crisis, which give advantage to other countries such as India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, etc, and they have captured the Pakistani clients in the international markets. Owing to mis-commitment the country is suffering a loss of around $1.5 billion annually.

Likewise, the oil import bill surges by around $800 million to $1,000 million, because of the use of furnace oil in generators across the country, which is not only increasing atmospheric nuisance, but also giving rise to noise pollution.

The country has suffered a loss of around $16 billion, or two percent of the GDP since the privatization of KESC.

Abraaj Group, on the one hand, never invested in the power utility, and on the other, took a loan of over Rs100 billion from international banks and IFI by keeping the valuable land of the power utility, having Bin Qasim Power Plant and several other, grid stations on mortgage.

KESC also owed over Rs100 billion to several other local institutions and organizations, such as Water and Power Development Authority, Pakistan State Oil, Sui Southern Gas Company, independent power producers and KANUPP.

In this way, KESC has been indebted with Rs200 billion, while its T&D losses also witnessed an upsurge during this period.

The insincerity of KESC management can be gauged from the fact that, on the one hand, it had shut down several power plants, which run on furnace oil, to save money and after every few months got permission from the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority to raise power tariff, and on the other, it sent a letter to NEPRA in 2009, seeking permission to retrench 7,000 employees of the power utility, which they claimed were additional.

NEPRA gave the decision against their request and said that there is no surplus staff in KESC and the management cannot retrench a single person for the next seven years. It also gave permission to KESC management to raise power tariff by 13 paisas per unit and pay the salaries of the staff from that earning. Now, the citizens of the city are paying an additional 13 paisas per unit, meaning the amount needed for the salaries of the staff, but the management is bent upon forced retrenchment of 4,500 employees.

The KESC management is also making propaganda against the people by terming them power thiefs and earning huge amounts by sending inflated bills to the citizens of the city. When people approach the office of the power utility they were informed that their bills are correct and they should pay the bill to avoid power disconnection and arrest.

At the time of its privatization, the then privatization minister Hafeez Shaikh had said that NEPRA had freeze the tariff for seven years, and that the new management will not be permitted to raise the power rates, but on the contrary, power tariff has been raised by over 100 percent during the last five-and-a-half years.

The KESC system needs huge investment as it is over-loaded and outdated. A large number of substations switch boards PMTs, feeders, cables and wires need to be replaced on an immediate basis, but unfortunately the old copper cables laid during the British rule were replaced by aluminium wires, which cannot bear the present electricity load, resulting total collapse of the system in the next few years.

The present management has no technical know-how and it is sad to see that a purely technical entity is being run by a non-technical management.

The regular employees were also promised not to be retrenched from their jobs, but on the contrary, Abraaj Group from time-to-time continue to retrenched employees on one or the other reasons. Firstly, the group offered senior officers working on a regular basis to discontinue the same and re-appointed on contractual jobs. Some of the officers accepted the offer, but most of them rejected it. After rejection from the employees, the KESC management created a surplus pool and transferred over 300 employees into it. The employees protested against this decision, but the management never paid attention to their grievances. It also prepared new service rules in March 2010 and under its cover, forcefully sent 294 officers home, without giving any reason. Later, these officers went to court, where the case is still pending.

After the officers, the management started the same exercise with the employees and introduced Voluntary Separation Scheme on December 31, 2010 and asked the employees to avail it by January 14, 2011. On the one hand, the management said that it is not mandatory, but on the other, it started forcing the employees to avail it or face dire consequences. The scheme was targeted as the management issued letters to 4,500 lower-cadre staff by name, including drivers, security guards, bill distributors, clerical staff and naib qasid. The KESC employees did not come under pressure and 92 percent of them refused to fill the VSS form, resulting in a harsh decision from the management on January 19, fired 4,500 employees, who were issued letters with the stroke of a pen.

It is to be mentioned here that 4,500 retrenched employees also included 225 widows, deaf, dumb, disable people and minorities. After four days of continuous sit-in, the federal and provincial governments take notice of the uncalled for decision of the KESC management. The government pressurized the KESC management and succeeded in reinstatement of these employees to their respective jobs.

After finalization of the negotiations between the governments’ representatives and KESC management, Provincial Power Minister Shazia Marri, while talking to the sit-in protestors announced their reinstatement after which the sit-in protest ended. On January 24, all the reinstated employees returned to their offices. Later, the union leaders thanked the President, Sindh chief minister, governor and federal ministers, Syed Khursheed Shah, Raza Rabbani and Raja Pervaiz Ashraf for their support.

But only three days later, KESC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tabish Gauhar addressed a press conference and said that the decision of reinstatement was taken due to the pressure from the government, but he stands by our decision and now these employees would be retrenched in a phased manner.

Not only this, but the KESC management filed terrorism, burglary, harassment, bid to kill involvement in torching of vehicles and other property like cases against 19 union leaders. Later, all the union leaders get bail before arrest from the court.

On January 26, the chief executive again announced retrenchment of the employees and started the drive from the non-technical staff by terming them non-core employees and stop paying overtime to them. Drivers were asked to hand over the keys of their vehicles. Bill distributors were stopped from performing their duties and likewise the clerical staff was also asked to stop working.

4,500 employees were once again retrenched and the KESC management replaced them by hiring laborers from Labor & Manpower Companies and started paying them salaries without assigning any duties. On the other hand, the KESC management is also paying a huge amount to these labor and manpower companies, which have ultimately enhanced the expenses of the power utility, despite tall claims by the management that it has no money to run power plants and the utility faces financial crunch.

The KESC management is also paying huge amounts to its directors, which are over 100. The salaries of these directors are in the range of Rs 1million to Rs6.5 million. This had already been published in the newspapers, which seconded our claim that there is discrimination among the employees of the power utility. Fuelling fire to the situation, the Supreme Court of Pakistan on June 2 gave a decision regarding IRA 2008, according to which the law will not be in effect from April 2010, resulting in abolishment of NIRC. At present, there is no labor law in the country. Taking undue advantage of the SC verdict, KESC started dismissing those employees who have taken stay orders from the NIRC.

The KESC management issued a circular, saying that under the directives of the Supreme Court regarding suspension of IRA 2008, no CBA union will exist from now onwards. This issue has been challenged in the court and the decision is pending.

Despite this anti-worker behavior, the representatives of the retrenched employees tried their level best to hold negotiations with the management so that the issue could be resolved, but to no avail.

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About the Author: Lateef Mughal, General Secretary, Peoples Workers Union (KESC) and he can be reached at mughal.lateef@gmail.com

 

Karachi Part of the Biggest & Wobbliest Domino on the World Stage

By Andrew Marshall /Karachi

Karachi is doomed. Karachi is indestructible.

Drink tea with Hussein Hazari at his tiny shop in the city’s old quarter, and both statements feel true. Hazari is a neat, guarded man who wears a spotless white robe and a gold-laced skullcap. He sits with his constantly beeping BlackBerry amid shelves stacked with spray paint, car polish and adhesives. Recently Hazari began selling another product: gun lubricant. “I thought it was worth a try, because weapons are so readily available here,” he says.

That’s an understatement. More than a thousand people died in 2011 in ethnic turf wars fueled by heavily armed supporters ofKarachi’s main political parties, perishing in street battles fought with assault rifles, machine guns and grenades. Some victims were decapitated. An official likened a Cabinet briefing on the violence to “watching the trailer of a horror movie.”

There could be a sequel. Despite the heavy presence of Rangers — the government’s internal security force — there are fears the city is entering an even more dangerous era. This is worrying because what happens in Karachi has global implications. With a population of 18 million, it is Pakistan’s largest city and commercial capital, providing at least half its tax revenues. “You cannot destroy Pakistan by destroying cities like Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar,” says Mustafa Syed Kamal, the city’s fast-talking former mayor. “You have to destabilize Karachi first, because it isPakistan’s economic backbone, its oxygen provider.”

Karachiis a fractured city in a nuclear-armed and perhaps failing state, and its problems are Pakistan’s. AndPakistan’s belong to us all. The city’s port has been part of a vital supply line to US and coalition troops in landlocked Afghanistan. That route was closed in late November after NATO air strikes killed 25 Pakistani soldiers and pushed U.S. relations with the country — already in free fall since the Navy SEAL operation that killed Osama bin Laden in May — to an all-time low.

Internally,Pakistanis dangerously divided. The ongoing “memogate” scandal has exposed tensions between the country’s powerful military and the weak civilian administration of President Zardari. The leak of the unsigned memo, in which Islamabad apparently asks for the Pentagon’s help to divert a feared military coup, forced the resignation of Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington and could ultimately topple Zardari himself.

Unsurprisingly, British author, academic and terrorism analyst Anatol Lieven calls Pakistan “perhaps the biggest and wobbliest domino on the world stage.” And the most dramatic symbol of that instability isKarachi. A recent surge in violence has sealed its reputation as life-threatening and unlivable. In November, global consulting firm Mercer ranked it 216th out of 221 cities in a personal-safety survey that took into account not just sectarian and ethnic unrest, but also terrorist attacks.

Of those, there have been plenty. On May 22, militants from the Pakistani Taliban seized the Mehran naval air base inKarachito avenge bin Laden’s death. The base was retaken only after a 12-hour battle involving hundreds of Pakistani troops. Four months later, a Taliban suicide bomber killed eight people outside the home of Chaudhry Mohammad Aslam,Karachi’s senior superintendent of police. In 2010 the Taliban’s military chief, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured not in some stifling mountain hideout but in Karachi.

Take away political violence, andKarachiis still plagued by the common variety — armed robbery, kidnappings for ransom, murder — with only 30,000 underpaid police to tackle it all. And the city is still afflicted by the problems of a fast-growing metropolis: pollution, bad sanitation, slums and a transport system so overburdened that thousands of Karachiites commute to work on bus roofs. Chronic power shortages routinely plunge the City ofLights(as it was known in a bygone era) into darkness. In September, monsoon rains caused floods that brought the city to a halt. “It is perhaps Asia’s worst-governed megacity,” says Arif Hasan, an eminentKarachiarchitect and town planner.

When it comes to buying weapons, however,Karachiis king. That Karachi traders must sell gun lubricant to make ends meet shows just how far the city has sunk. Or it could be interpreted another way: as an example of the indomitable entrepreneurial spirit that makes this filthy, frenetic place a magnet for so many Pakistanis. For as well as representing Pakistan’s dysfunction, Karachi embodies its resilience. Wander Hazari’s bustling neighborhood and you realize that what energizes Karachi is not religion or ethnicity or politics, but commerce and its universal corollary: the dream of a better life.

A Plague on All Their Houses
War, trade and migration shaped modernKarachi and shape it still. Its natural harbor and accessibility to the interior of Sindh province (of whichKarachi is the capital) andCentral Asia ensured its rapid expansion during British colonial times. By the early 1940s, it was a predominantly Sindhi-speaking city of fewer than 500,000 people, half of them Hindus. Then came the bloody partition ofIndia in 1947. Most ofKarachi’s Hindus fled toIndia, while huge numbers ofIndia’s Urdu-speaking Muslims sought refuge in Karachi. By the 1950s this influx had tripled the city’s population, which continues to multiply. According to a projection by the Asian Development Bank,Karachi could be home to at least 26 million by 2020.

Karachi’s Urdu speakers called themselves Mohajirs, from the Arabic for migrant, and in the 1980s formed the political party that dominates the city today. The MQM owes its rise to “efficient organization and willingness to use violence and intimidation to achieve its goals,” according to the U.S. State Department. ButKarachi’s ethnic makeup is changing, and this is challenging MQM’s traditional dominance.

The city’s relative prosperity has long lured people from across the country. However, military operations against the Taliban in northwestPakistanhave accelerated the influx of ethnic Pashtun and boosted the influence of the ANP, which claims to represent them. The ANP won two seats in Sindh’s 168-seat provincial assembly in the 2008 polls — an electoral first for the party.

MQM’s main rival — and also its partner in Pakistan’s shaky ruling coalition — is the PPP, which was led by Benazir Bhutto until her assassination four years ago. InKarachi, the PPP traditionally represents the interests of ethnic Sindhis, whose numbers have been boosted by refugees from last year’s devastating floods. Many Sindhis accuse the MQM of attempting to separate Karachi from the rest of the province and turn it into a Mohajir enclave.

In short,Karachiis riven by complex ethnic and political fault lines, which intersect bafflingly with local criminal interests and national affairs. And when every resource — every job, house or bucket of clean water — is scarce, and every vote coveted, it is no surprise that the prospect of civic harmony feels remote.

The first battle inKarachi’s current turf war erupted in May 2007. After General Musharraf, then President of Pakistan, suspended Iftikhar Chaudhry as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, anti-Musharraf lawyers sponsored Chaudhry’s visit toKarachi. The MQM, which supported Musharraf, was blamed for fomenting what followed: deadly clashes with the lawyers, and PPP and ANP loyalists.Karachiburned and corpses choked the streets.

The MQM’s headquarters lie in a middle-class neighborhood, guarded by young men in baseball caps and aviator shades. It was there that I met ex-mayor Kamal. Well-groomed, Western-educated and attired in chinos and navy blue blazers, Kamal is credited with improving the city’s decrepit infrastructure, and embodies what Lieven has called “the dream … of Karachi as a Muslim Singapore on the Arabian Sea.” As an MQM politician, however, Kamal is bitter about the partisanship that is tearing his home city apart.

Kamal blames the city’s descent into lawlessness on Zulfiqar Mirza — a Sindhi ultranationalist who, as the PPP’s Home Minister of Sindh province, controlled theKarachipolice. The police, it is universally agreed, did nothing to stop this year’s violence. Mirza has railed publicly against the MQM: “For your own sake, for Pakistan’s sake, forKarachi’s sake, stand up and rid us of these wretched people,” he fumed in July. At least a dozen people were killed in the hours that followed. Mirza later resigned, saying, “I have raised my voice against violence in this city and will continue to do so.”

Doves and Hawks
That the MQM, PPP and ANP have militant armed wings is one ofKarachi’s worst-kept secrets. Their leaders deny this (although Kamal concedes that many MQM supporters own licensed weapons “for self-defense”) and, in strikingly similar terms, portray themselves not as perpetrators of violence but as its peace-loving victims. Kamal gave me a VCD titled Genocide of Mohajir Nation. Over footage of mutilated corpses, a narrator accused ANP “mercenaries” of joining forces with PPP “terrorists” to slaughter MQM supporters last year. A sign at the entrance to the MQM’s headquarters reads STREET OF LOVE AND PEACE.

Across town, at the ANP’s office — situated in a mansion inKarachi’s poshest district — are a white dove and a sign reading PEACE ON EARTH. Not that Shahi Syed, the president of the ANP Sindh chapter and the mansion’s owner, is much of a dove. He is a hulking, square-jawed Pashtun who accuses the MQM of ethnic cleansing, extortion and vote rigging. Ordinary Mohajirs are “good, educated, helpful people,” he says. “But MQM is a terrorist group that won’t allow us to make peace with the Urdu-speaking community.” Hundreds of ANP activists and ordinary Pashtun died in this year’s violence, claims Syed.

The gulf betweenKarachi’s political leaders is mirrored on the streets. “Employers only give jobs to members of their own ethnic group,” says Abdul Ahad, a Kashmiri resident of the Mohajir-dominated district of Nazimabad. “People have stopped trusting one another.” That’s also true in Qasbah Colony, where some of the worst bloodshed recently occurred. The neighborhood clings to a dusty ridge in northernKarachi. Hanging from the rebar that sprout from rooftops are tattered ANP and MQM flags. Party initials are graffitied on the walls like gangland tags.

Achieving peace is not the only critical issue dividingKarachi’s politicians. For the past two years, this megacity has been in an administrative limbo, while the PPP and MQM squabble over how it should be run: by a locally elected government or centrally appointed bureaucrats. “Nobody is talking about how essential services will be provided to the citizens,” says Noman Ahmed, an architect and town planner with the NED University of Engineering and Technology. “That appears to be a sideline.”Karachiremains a maximum city with minimum governance.

The MQM’s decline is inevitable, because despite its political stranglehold the party has done little to improve city life. For Farooqi — a Mohajir who writes for the Daily Jasarat, a newspaper owned byJamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan’s oldest religious party —Karachiis proof that “secular forces are failing in every respect” and that “religious parties will emerge as a strong political force on their own merit.” He points to post-MubarakEgypt, where Islamic parties won at least two-thirds of the seats in recent parliamentary elections.

However,Pakistan’s religious parties fared poorly in the last national elections, in 2008. The religious coalition known as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal lost 50 out of 272 seats in the assembly, falling to a total of just six. Even if they were to establish a presence in provincial assemblies like Sindh’s, there is no guarantee religious parties would run Karachi any better. A December report by Crisis Group, the Brussels-based think tank, says that they are “committed to a narrow partisan agenda and willing to defend it through violence” — a description that could apply equally to Karachi’s secular parties.

Salvation in Growth
So is there any good news? Ghazi Salahuddin has mixed feelings. On one hand, he takes heart inKarachi’s growing civic-mindedness, pointing to successful local nonprofits such as the Citizens Foundation, which has built hundreds of schools acrossPakistan, or Shehri, an environmental group that has fought to save city parks from land-grabbers. On the other, he wonders whether such efforts will be “overwhelmed by the darkness.” By that, he means continued political bloodshed. While gangs of land-grabbers and mafias have tried to exploit the breakdown of law and order, they do not appear to be the main directors of the horrible game of death and destruction; that distinction belongs to more powerful political groups.

If Karachi’s future depends upon its politicians, then it’s hard to be optimistic. “None of the parties negotiate on principles,” says town planner Hasan, who is also chairman of the Urban Resource Centre, a highly respected nonprofit that documents Karachi’s many infrastructural challenges. “They negotiate on the basis of guarding their turf, then consolidating and expanding it.”

Yet Hasan finds cause for hope in an unusual place: urbanization. The same rapid expansion that has crippled the city might also liberate it by throwing people together, he says, raising expectations and creating “a new world with new freedoms [and] aspirations that are changing the feudal relations and mind-set of Pakistani society.”

At Karachi’s universities, for example, women students often outnumber men, even in traditionally male-dominated subjects. “I taught a batch of 35 students in which 34 were girls,” recalls the architect Ahmed, who is alsoNEDUniversity’s chairman. These young women also seem to be marrying much later, as are the men. “For the first time in the history of this city, you have an overwhelming majority of unmarried adolescents, which is enough to change family structures and gender relations,” says Hasan. “Project these figures 10 years from now and you will have a totally different Karachi.”

The forces of urbanization benefit not only Karachi’s middle classes but also its new arrivals. In the past, says Ahmed, Pashtun men worked inKarachiand remitted their earnings to families in the conservative hinterlands. Now they are bringing their families with them — not to “Talibanize” the city, as MQM propagandists put it, but to gain access to jobs, health care and education. “They even send their girls to school, which is not something they’d do back in their hometowns.”

Karachiis doomed,Karachiis indestructible. Meet students on the NED campus, and you sense they are battling with the same contradiction. They despair of ever dislodging the politicians they unanimously blame for the city’s dysfunction. But they still have hope for their hyperkinetic hometown. When I asked Fariha Sajid, a 21-year-old architecture student, which part of Karachi was her favorite, she shot me a challenging look. “All of it,” she replied.

 

Story of 7 Places of Karachi

Author Mohammed Hanif travels back in time to tell the story of the places he’s called ‘home’ in Karachi. He recounts a journey from the backwaters to the bright lights of the big city – and how the literary seed was sown…

Here is the story of seven places that are part of his story.

Aagay Samundar Hai

Your first home in Karachi is a little room in a big, empty house near Sea View. The owners live in Norway, the servants live in the house and you live in a little extension that was probably meant to accommodate those servants. You have one bag of clothes and books, a cassette player and three tapes. You drive a Suzuki 100 that you bought from a milkman. This is the first time in your life that you are living close to the beach. Judging by the stench, in the evenings it seems half of Karachi’s population has pissed in the sea. At night you wake up to the roar of the waves. For a few moments you are scared; is this a giant bellowing? Is it a tornado approaching? Is this what grown-up life is like?

A pair of Bengali servants – you’ll never discover their exact relationship – take care of the house. To your lonely heart it seems they have been hired to canoodle in every corner of the house. They seem so much in love with each other, it frightens you. You wonder if you should have rented the premises in Baloch Colony, where the owner promised that the water pump was situated only one street away and it would be okay if you wanted to keep goats.

Your sustenance comes from a one litre bottle of Fanta and a large fruit bun. You take a bite, you take a sip, you kick-start your bike and roar into the city. One day you pick up the bun and see fungus growing on it. You start spending your nights in Sabzi Mandi.

Sabzi Mandi Ki Sair…

Surreptitiously, without ever asking or telling, you move in with a friend who lives in a room in a private school right next to Sabzi Mandi. The school has rented a room to this new arrival in town who is a reformed druggie, a recovering socialist and a struggling theatre artist. You wake up to the cackle of a thousand children in white shirts; it’s a bit like living in the middle of a poultry farm. You can’t really get out of your room till the kids go home. But after school and on the weekends, you are king of the establishment. The basketball hoops are yours, and so is the headmaster’s office. You do the rounds of Sabzi Mandi at night, not really looking for vegetables. People come from all over Pakistan and you get to sample the diverse gifts they bring and share generously. Your new friends in the neighbourhood are embarking on their political careers; one stops by to ask if he can borrow a churidar pajama as he has to report for duty at Nine Zero. Peoples Party boys tell you that the only way to get the PPP leaders to accept their demands is to wield a US flag and a matchbox, preferably when cameras are around. After school hours the school sometimes turns into a gambling den, a drug lab and a rendezvous point for friends of friends for a bit of random love. You come back from work and count five used condoms strewn around the place. You feel melancholic. A friend arrives from one of the backward districts of Punjab and brings with him a stereo so huge that all of you can’t fit in the same room.

Empress Market kay Badshah

You think you are on the top of the world because you find a flat on the top floor of an eight-storey building that overlooks Karachi Grammar school. You hire a maid who some days has to make 25 chapattis because it seems all the drifters from the Punjab’s backwaters have congregated here. Sometimes there is nothing to go with the chapattis except yogurt.

You go to work where your office tea boy is a 55-year-old who lives with 18 cats in a tiny shack. He used to be a butcher once, he shows you his sliced thumb to prove it. He would like to get back to his old profession.

One evening a dreaded gentleman from your past barges in with a woman with very large eyes and a chaddar. His claim to fame is that he has slept with two hundred and sixty-three women. He keeps a diary. He has shown you the diary. You are rude to him and make sure that the woman doesn’t become two hundred and sixty-four in your flat. You like being the moral police.

You come back very late from work one night and Empress Market square is resounding with the beat of drums and dozens of Pathans in a circle doing their dance. You have seen that Khattak dance on TV. The circle parts for you and you join in. They all think you are queer.

Meanwhile, your tentative housemate’s tentative girlfriend threatens to throw herself out of the window. The place is clearly way above your budget.

Kashmir Road kay Mehmaan: Azaadi ya Maut

You live as a paying guest at a famous poet’s rambling mansion on Kashmir Road. Your head spins as you enter your room. The room is circular, the bathroom looks like an igloo from the outside. Your life turns into a bizarre set of events. You adopt a street puppy which is kidnapped. You rescue it and then abandon it. You start meeting boys from Natha Khan Goth who run a theatre group. It seems the goth is populated by theatre enthusiasts. They are so smart they can look at your ashtray and tell your future. They tell you your future belongs in Natha Khan Goth.

Natha Khan Goth mein Nautanki

The only window in your flat overlooks a sandbag bunker belonging to the Rangers and a chapli kabab shop. You are one minute off Drigh Road, but it seems you are in a village that can’t decide whether it prefers a traffic jam or a curfew. You start writing and rehearsing a play. In it there are to be nine boys and a girl. You ask your thespian comrades: aur larki kahan se aiyay gi? You manage to find your female character. She starts going out with the best actor in the group. The second-best actor starts spreading malicious rumours about them. The best actor borrows a TT pistol from someone (borrowing a TT pistol in Natha Khan Goth is easier than borrowing a bicycle or getting a girl to act in a play), wanting to shoot the second-best actor. The second-best actor hides behind some props. You remind them that there is no shooting in the script.

Some troubled friends from the backward districts of Punjab decide to use your flat as a rehab centre. Not a good idea. Drugs in Natha Khan Goth are as easy to get, as cheap and as delicious as the chapli kababs just below your apartment. They sell drugs that help you rid yourself of the addiction to other drugs. And then they sell you opium to get over all those drugs they sold you earlier. And you thought opium was so eighteenth century.

The best actor gets married to the only girl in the play and disappears. The second-best actor goes on to win many Best Actor Awards. You think that’s as close to a happy ending as your group is likely to get.

Studio Kay Shab-o-Roz

You get a ground floor studio flat with a little kitchenette in a commercial area in Defence. You have just spent some time in Washington DC and then in Havana. You buy a bicycle and ride to work. You start drinking black coffee and learn to make chutneys. Your friends think you are a lifestyle slut. The fact is that you have no money for a motorbike and can’t afford to eat out. Then a leasing company pays you a visit and you sign a paper. Suddenly you have a big TV, a VCR and an air conditioner. Your barren little studio is suddenly full of stuff. You become a regular at a video shop called Movie Mahal where all below the counter movies are appropriately titled National Geographic. Sometimes when you venture out of your pleasure palace, you find the streets deserted. You have no idea that you are walking into a curfew. Then a police mobile sees you and starts shooting, you run back to your studio.

You try to write plays. There are lots of girls who want to do plays.

And then…You live in a dead poet’s house and learn to read

The life lesson that you’ll learn in this damp Zamzama apartment, you’ll learn from a prostitute. But before that you discover a world of wonder. Your new flat was owned by a poet who died young. The place has nothing but books. Many times thumbed books read with love, passages underlined, reactions noted, little slips of paper with cross references inserted, obscure words circled and explained. Here your housemates are Borges, Calvino and Mohammed Khalid Akhter. You have always read books but you have never really learnt to read like this. Here each book you pick comes with the gentle guidance of your late landlord Sagheer Malal. He tutors you from beyond, he teaches you the bleeding obvious: you can’t write if you don’t know how to read.

Then one day your occasional housemate goes out and comes rushing back with two women. Outside there is a curfew and the women need shelter for a while. They have come all the way from Korangi 6 to meet some clients who seem to have disappeared. One is a tall, dark Amazonian character with wild laughter and wants you to write her tragic love story. She comes from a backward district of Punjab. The other one is short and confident and wants to make a few phone calls to try and make contact with other potential clients. “Aren’t you scared of roaming around in the middle of this curfew, so far away from home?” I ask.

The tall one thinks that not only do you have no money, you are also stupid and replies in her backward district’s mother tongue: “It’s work. You get screwed. You get paid. What is there to be scared of?”

Logical enough. You remain scared…

Mohammed Hanif is a journalist, novelist and playwright who worked as reporter for Newsline before joining the BBC. He is the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

 

Che Guevara Had Visited Karachi in June 1959

Asses of Karachi

Are the Present Riots in Karachi a Conspiracy?

There are a few Sindhis who are claiming that the August 19 killing of an unknown ANP leader is the result of a simple MQM conspiracy to stem the flow of Sindhi flood affectees coming to Karachi.

They say that the Sindh Home Minister made a statement sayng that Sindhi affectees should come to Karachi. MQM did not like it, and decided to come up with the ANP leader assassination resulting in the ensuing riots that so far have resulted in more than 12 deaths.

Pakistan is never short of conspiracy theories and God knows how far is this true?

But one thing is for sure: this country is not short of nincompoops who dont know a thing, except how to earn money illegally and through corrupt means. The least that they can do is to provide the poor masses of this country good governance.

Dialling Wrong Number, Eloping, Then Being Raped & Then Murdered

Three years ago, 17-year-old Asma left her house in Punjab to elope with her 27-year-old boyfriend, who she had never met – but just spoken to over the phone. She trusted her tele-boyfriend, Abdul Rahman, more than her family and decided to elope to Karachi from Dera Ghazi Khan upon his insistence. However, Abdul Rahman had other plans.

She could never have imagined that the man who talked to her for hours and promised to sacrifice his life for her would end up being her murderer.

When she finally arrived in Karachi, instead of marrying her, Abdul Rahman and his friend raped her – continuously. Later, when they had had their fun, Rahman killed her and buried the body inside a house in Abbas Town katchi abadi.

This incident took place in 2007 and Abdul Rahman has resumed his normal life. No one found out what happened in the three-room house located beside the main ground of Abbas Town – her story muted by the din of the concrete jungle.

Even Abdul Rahman forgot – until June 28, 2010 night. He and his accomplice, Shahid Hasan, were arrested by Zaman Town police for their involvement in street crimes.

The police recovered two pistols and bullets from their possession and were conducting an inquiry in custody when Abdul Rahman blurted the truth.

“He revealed during investigations that he had killed a girl three years ago and had buried the body in the room of the house where they stayed,” said Special Investigation Officer Zaman Town.

Abdul Rahman said that he became friends with Asma over the phone and after some time convinced her to elope to Karachi so they could get married. 

Asma took a train to Karachi where Abdul Rahman greeted her at the station.

In order to keep their friendship hidden from the family and the police, Abdul Rahman rented her a house in a katchi ababi of Abbas Town, where he kept her for two weeks. This was the time when Abdul Rahman and his friend, Hasan, raped her several times.

”She insisted on getting married but I did not want to marry her,” Abdul Rahman told police officials, “The night I killed her she had threatened me that she would go to the police station if I didn’t marry her.”

Narrating their love story, Abdul Rahman said that Asma dialled a wrong number one day and came across him. He started pursuing her since then and they ultimately became friends. “I told her that I was in love and wanted to marry her but she knew her family would not let it happen,” Abdul Rahman claimed, “Asma was madly in love with me so she eloped.”

After Abdul Rahman’s confession, a special team of the police and the judiciary decided to visit the rented house to confirm his story. The team included DDO Bin Qasim Town, a first-class magistrate and other police officials.

The house is located in a narrow street of the neighbourhood and most of its residents earn a living by working at factories or as wage labourers. It is inhabited by people belonging to various communities and ethnicities.

The police officials said that they found the body buried in the middle room of the three-room house. None of the rooms had cemented flooring, they added.

The investigation officer said that the body was recovered by the team after the culprits identified the house, the room and exact location of where they had buried the body. Asma’s body was wrapped in coloured clothes in a ditch that was almost six feet deep, said police officials.

The accused have been handed over to the Shah Latif Town police and an FIR under section 302 has been lodged against them.

The police has been unable to locate Asma’s family, but they have informed the Dera Ghazi Khan police, who have started looking for them.

MQM killed 650+ Sind Police Officers?

By Dr Shahid Qureshi

Few years ago I asked Shoib Shuddle former of Director General of Intelligence Bureau and Inspector General Police in London, ‘what is your input about the cold blooded targeted killings of Sindh Police officers who took part in the ‘operation’ ordered by Benazir Bhutto’ in 1995.

He acknowledged the fact that there was a problem.

MQM is a mercenary group whose HQ is in London and possibility of its leader to go to Pakistan is Zero? It exaggerate everything no doubt death one person is too many but their claim that 25000 MQM workers disappeared is the extreme.

Where is the list of those 25000 people and where are they buried?

The South Africa branch of MQM and its activities are very suspicious especially the Nishtar Park – Karachi terrorist incident when whole leadership of Sunni Tehreek was eliminated.

According reliable sources that to those who examined and conducted post-mortems of the bodies found bullet marks and some of them were shot in head. It seems that cause of death was bullets then shrapnel’s of bomb explosion?

According to a source that people who were involved in this terror might have been provided safe passage to South Africa? It is reported that the whole operation was monitored by a MQM leader from a minority group?

It seems a case of targeted killings. Only a high powered judicial investigation into this act can expose the crime.

Army Grabs 3500 Acres of Land & Seals the Centuries-old Grave Yard

A battalion of the Pakistan Army has grabbed the land of old villages of the coastal area of Karachi. The fisher folk have been forced out of their ancestor villages and pressurised to leave the area. In a latest event Battalion 42 of army, stationed at Karachi, has grabbed the land of the centuries old grave yard of Chashma goth along the Rehrhi coastal line.

The fishermen, whose ancestors are buried there have been prevented from burying their loved ones or even visiting the existing graves which is a ritual for Muslims. On March 18, when the body of fisher man, Abdullah Khaskheli, was brought by the fisher folks for burial the army officials stopped the ceremony. The army officials announced that the grave yard was now under their jurisdiction and no one was allowed to bury bodies. The army has also sealed the graves by putting earth walls around the graveyard.

According to Pakistan Fishefolk Forum, a representative body of the fisher folk, the Battalion 42 has till now grabbed of 3500 acres of land from Rehrhi, Landhi town to Ibrahim Hyderi, Korangi. The Chashma Goth grave yard comes in between the areas. The battalion is stationed at Malir Cantonment which is far away from the grabbed land.

The soldiers also prevented the fisher folks fishing in the area coming under the grabbed land. The Pakistan army has already a bad record of stopping the fisher men for fishing. As the army encroaches on the land of revenue board the fisher men and their settlements are retrenched from the occupied land.

The land in question was the property of revenue board and is referred in the record as the No Class (or Na class) land. This land was supposedly for the use of fishermen who have lived in small villages for centuries.

The Pakistan army claims that the land was given as a gift to the army when Second World War was over and Britain left the country. But the army could not produce any evidence to prove that this was true. The actual position is that the land of Malir Cantonment was given to army which is far away from the land which it has been grabbing for a decade.

The army actions cannot be challenged in the courts because of national security.

The Defence Housing Authority in Karachi has stopped the fisher men to use their centuries old route for fishing. Please see the following link, http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2008/2914/, wherein officers of a military residential area, the Defence Housing Authority (DHA), have stopped the local inhabitants from fishing in the areas close to the DHA, burned the boats, fishing nets, and their cycles, the only source of communication for fishermen, and barred them from using their ancestral jetty, in the name of beautification of the military residential area. The Sindh provincial government remains silent spectators.

The Defence Housing Authority was formed in 1980 by the military dictator, General Zia ul Haq. Prior to this the DHA was a housing society under the Sindh provincial government and residential land was acquired at throw away prices in the early 1970s, which incidentally have not yet been paid by the military. General Zia transformed the society into an Authority by a simple ordinance and made it a supra constitutional body, which does not come under the constitution of the Pakistan. No civil law can be applied on the DHA.

After becoming a supra constitutional body in the name of security of the country the DHA has started reclaiming the land all around its territories. It has acquired vast areas of the sea by landfills thereby destroying several centuries old fishing villages. The army has built recreation clubs, golf clubs, hotels, and commercialized the areas reclaimed. The fishermen have been left with nothing and deprived of their basic right to life and livelihood.

The DHA has even bulldozed their graveyards and built commercial structures on them. The Sindh government is a silent spectator to the land grabbing by the powerful army men. It cannot challenge the illegal way of land grabbing by the army because of political expediency and it feels that if army is stopped then it would be difficult for the civilian government to survive.