Karachi: A 'targeted' operation

As to what ails Karachi the diagnostic report was available all these months and years. That most of the lawlessness in the megapolis is the criminals' handiwork, who enjoy political protection being members of parties' 'militant wings', is a fact which was never in doubt. As to who are these criminals, their identities are on record with the local police and other agencies tasked with law enforcement in Karachi. No wonder the city of Karachi is now a safe haven for target killers, street raiders, extortionists, kidnappers and religious extremists. So the issue is no more who the culprits and whose protection they live under; the issue is how to treat this cancer which is eating into the peace and tranquility of twenty million residents of Karachi. The MQM that enjoys the local citizenry's overwhelming political support believes the only antidote that can work is that the city should be handed over to the army, a remedy fully endorsed by the constitution under Article-245. But its political opponents see 'some conspiracy' behind an out-of-power MQM that's tossing like a fish out of water. The harsh realities on ground in the mega city, however, transcend these contending postures - the city is in an ever-tightening grip of violence and the residents tend to lose their hope of things getting better anytime soon. So if for nothing else the MQM's call has at least succeeded in shaking the federal government out of its slumber of nonchalance over this colossal governance failure of a provincial government under the pretext that law and order is essentially and constitutionally a provincial matter. Constitution is replete with dictates that the federal government is inherently tasked to act as the defender of citizens' basic rights to life and liberty in general and to intervene for the purpose of "preventing any grave menace to the peace or tranquility or economic life of Pakistan or any part [read Karachi] thereof". If Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has finally decided to cross his wrongly conceived 'Rubican' and called for what he calls a targeted operation in Karachi let it be so. But only as the last chance - for time is no more on the side of wishful thinking that short of a drastic action it's possible to uproot and destroy the deeply-entrenched criminal gangs and mafias. Also at the moment we would desist from debating whether or not the involvement of army to check and eradicate violence and lawlessness in Karachi that has acquired the dimensions of an existential threat to our national independence is democratic. But we do know that the interior minister has set for himself a huge challenge by undertaking the responsibility to prepare ground for a 'targeted' operation in Karachi. Nisar's plan for a 'targeted' operation that is expected to be approved by the Federal Cabinet next week, envisages three major thrusts: that the chief minister Sindh will act as 'captain' of the team tasked to conduct the operation; the police and Rangers would be given free hand to go after criminals and all consensus of all the stakeholders to political power in Karachi would be clinched on the point that none of them would seek exemptions from arrest of their 'affiliates'. One would wish best of luck to this rather ambitious scheme, given that all of it more or less has been tried before and failed. Some two years back the Supreme Court had given its verdict on the Karachi situation and recommended remedial measures which were ignored contemptuously by the government, a failure that made the Chief Justice to observe during a hearing on Wednesday that had court's verdict been implemented 'different demands' - an apparent reference to the MQM call - 'would not have been made'. And two years on the situation in Karachi is even worse. Violence continues to bedevil the public life in Karachi. For a change, let there be a political miracle, in that all concerned parties and groups across the board join the interior minister on the table and agree on a joint action to restore peace and tranquillity in Karachi. But mind you, time is the essence - not a day passes without a dozen or so innocent citizens falling to the bullets of target killers.