Karachi Violence...

EDITORIAL:THE FRONTIER POST

Lyari, one of the most densely populated and explosive areas of Karachi, continues to shed human blood midst the rattling of gunfire, explosion of bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, and is virtually bracing a war like situation since the police operation against heavily armed gangsters that started on April 27. The fresh spate of violence has killed a minimum of 20 people inside three days till Sunday. However, some reports claim the number of casualties is no less than 40. Hundreds of people from all sides of the fray have been wounded. Simultaneously, people in many parts of the port city, the largest metropolis of Pakistan, staged rallies seeking peace. As the death toll continued to climb early on Monday, gangsters were seen ahead of police in bringing more areas under violence. On Sunday, police had to pull back from the Nawa Lane and Afshani Gali areas after day-long fierce battles with gangsters. As violence continues to mount, panicked residents started leaving the locality for relatively safer neighbourhoods on Sunday, a process which continues with no sign of normalcy returning to once the city of lights. As markets remained closed, people in the troubled district have also started feeling scarcity of food. Considered to be one of the most desperate slum areas in South Asia, Lyari is also the oldest locality of Pakistans sprawling, unpredictable and edgy metropolis, Karachi. In the last decade or so, Lyari has constantly been appearing in the news whenever Karachi erupts into ethnic or gang-related violence. This is not to suggest that this area was a bastion of peace before the 2000s; but it is true that the political and criminal violence emerging within and from Lyari in the last 10 years has had a bigger impact on Karachi than ever before. Criminal gangs dealing in drugs, guns, kidnapping and land scams with some of them even enjoying patronage from assorted political outfits and groups are a common sight in the narrow, crooked and overpopulated streets of Lyari. But all this was not a sudden phenomenon emerging in the last decade or so. Nor is this all what Lyari is about. Lyari also has a rich political and cultural history; a history that needs to be understood in the background of the majority population coming as descendents of negro slaves most of whom have been associated with fishing who migrated from Africa and parts of Gulf states. Primarily they settled in the entire coastal areas of Sindh coastal. As a class they are from the poorest of the poor who have a sharp social sense and, as a result, they are ahead of their fellow Karachiites and even some other regions of the country; that qualifies them to raise critical questions on socio-economic inequality that abounds in the country. Politically an overwhelming population of Lyari has been subscribing to the message of the Pakistan Peoples Party for its claim of establishing an egalitarian society. Most of the dissidents, in this background, are the young people who got frustrated with the PPP having not fulfilled the promise made in its first election manifesto of 1969 enunciating Roti, Kapra Aur Makan as its main commitment. The later developments saw Lyari being deeply polarized particularly after party dissident Dr Zulfiqar Mirza creating political ripples in 2010. As interior minister Mirza set up peace committees across Karachi and the Amn (Peace) Committee of Lyari is said to have a personal seal of the person of Zulfiqar Mirza. As Mirza fell from disgrace, his Amn Committee also saw a turbulent period and the cause of violence in Lyari may substantially be found in this backdrop. It is more than two decades now that the countrys largest city has scarcely seen peace as the metropolis tranquility has been the hostage of various mafias, some of them thriving with political patronage. The issue of Lyari, and the whole of Karachi, is not all criminal but has its roots in political uncertainties that engulf the country as a whole. It is, therefore, imperative that a multi-pronged strategy is adopted taking political parties and all other stakeholders on board.