Karachi, the business capital of Pakistan, is a city with several faces. And you will see a different facet of the city depending on who you are talking to.
The morning newspaper on any day talks about at least a couple of crimes; the letters column in the Pakistani daily Dawn , has more woes. In Tuesday's column, a retired brigadier moans about how his car was snatched at gunpoint at midnight right outside his house in the upmarket Karachi Defence Housing Area. A white Corolla with tinted glasses and a Suzuki Alto were involved in the holdup by five people. “What is the Anti-Car Lifting Cell (that there is such a cell tells you how rampant this practice is) doing to curb such crimes”, wonder the hapless man. “Why are criminals who are caught not brought to trial and punished,” he fumes.
Numerous stories abound on how at traffic junctions and on the roads mobile phones, watches and money are looted with absolute impunity, and houses are regularly burgled.
A Karachi businessman tells me that his wife and daughter-in-law, while going to a wedding at noon, were chased on an arterial road such as Sarah-e-Faizal by two people on a motor cycle “but my driver stepped on the accelerator and got away. And this happened in broad daylight. Forget the roads, people don't feel secure in their own homes… they are killing people like flies here.”
Long years of turmoil in Afghanistan, particularly General Pervez Musharraf joining hands with the US in its war on Afghanistan, are held mainly responsible for the mess in the country. “People have much more arms and ammunition… all kinds of modern weaponry… than the police and other law enforcement agencies. Firing guns has become so ingrained in our culture that if there is a wedding in a rich household, an arms dealer can sell Rs 1 lakh worth of firearms in a jiffy, so that shots can be fired in the air for celebration,” he says.
To the brigadier's question on why the criminals who are caught are not punished, he says cases filed in courts come to naught because nobody will come forward as a witness. Anybody who dares to do so will get a call: “ Hum ko pata hei tumhari beti kaunsi school jati hei, yaad rakhna (We know which school your daughter goes to; beware).”
But what has traumatised him, even more than his wife's car being chased in broad daylight, is the telephone call he received from a five-year-old boy, whose father was a regular customer of this businessman.
“He and his two siblings would often come to my office and I would always give them biscuits and he became my friend. Last week he called me and said: ‘ Merey abbu ko goli lagi aur who shahid ho gaye . (My father got bullet shots and he has become a martyr)'.”
The child's father was an MQM (Muttahida Quami Movement) worker and it was apparently a political murder. While holdups, snatching, looting and kidnapping are done for gain, most of the murders in Karachi relate to political rivalries. MQM has a strong presence in the city and its main rival is the Pakistan People's Party, but the military operations against the Taliban in northwest Pakistan has resulted in the influx of Pashtuns into Karachi in recent years, and given a foothold to the Awami National Party. Each of these parties have their armed gangs and it is widely believed that the arms and ammunition these parties, and the criminal elements in the public, possess, far exceeds what Karachi's 30,000-odd policemen have.
But if you think car snatchings or innumerable incidents of holdups and looting have put this megacity of almost 18 million people on the backfoot, you'd be wrong. If in India, Mumbai is known for its resilience, Pakistanis are proud of the resilience and never-say-die spirit of Karachi.
Many among Karachi's elite intelligentsia believe both Karachi and Pakistan are going through a “painful cleansing phase” and will emerge stronger, calmer and prosperous from it.
(to be continued)