Ethnic violence

The month of Ramadan as a time of fasting and piety is not the peaceful season it should be for the people of Karachi as their city reels under the impact of ethnic, political and criminal gang violence.

Recent Pakistani media reports have quoted a senior police official as saying that 92 people have been killed since the spate of violence began last Wednesday.

On Tuesday, representatives of the two leading political parties in the region, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Awami National Party (ANP), expressed their disappointment at the inability of the police and paramilitary forces to take control of the situation and demanded that the army be brought in to restore peace and security. The MQM has called for a strike to protest the violence, following which life in the city has nearly come to a standstill.

Crime and politics

"Target killings," as they are known, have become common in Karachi with security officials reporting bodies of kidnapped victims stuffed into sacks and left on the streets. These incidents are usually blamed on the city’s dominant street thugs and crime gangs, which are arranged and patronized by political parties, according to Irfan Husain, columnist with prominent Pakistani newspaper, Dawn.

The MQM derives its support from people who migrated to Pakistan after it separated from India in 1947, whereas the ANP draws support from the ethnic Pashtuns. According to Husain, each of these parties is fighting for influence: "What they are fighting over is control of the areas where they get protection money."

In addition, Karachi’s ethnic composition is also undergoing a change, says Husain. "In the last couple of years, the ethnic balance of Karachi has shifted, because there have been a number of Pashtuns who have come down from the fighting in the northwest. Also, after the floods, lot of Sindhis came into Karachi. So the MQM, which represents the ethnic group that migrated from India and their descendants, feels threatened that their control over Karachi might come to an end."

Meanwhile, says Husain, the Pashtun population feels underrepresented, because for a population of nearly three million Pashtuns in Karachi, they have only two seats in the assembly of Sindh. The MQM, in comparison, claims 28 of the 33 seats in Sindh’s provincial assembly.

An administrative failure

For Husain, "the government has failed completely." He says that it lacks the political will to take on these gangs because it does not want to disturb the coalition made up of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the MQM and the ANP. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari recently called on the MQM to join the federal coalition, which has raised hopes for a quick solution to the crisis in Pakistan’s financial capital.

In the 1990s, the army carried out an operation in Karachi following a similar spate of violence, primarily against the MQM, which was accused for instigating violence at the time. Although the ruling PPP is convinced that civilian authorities can bring the situation back to normal, political parties in Karachi believe an army deployment is the only way of ensuring peace for now.

Pakistan’s military chief Ashfaq Kayani has meanwhile expressed "grave concern" over the worsening security situation in Karachi and says the army would be "ready, if the government called on it, to control the situation in Karachi."

But Husain believes that army deployment will only be a short-term solution: "It will help in the short run; it will pacify them as no one will try to take on the army. The army will disband them and these people will probably go underground." However, he says, the real solution for lasting peace is addressing and resolving the political situation.

Author: Manasi Gopalakrishnan
Editor: Sarah Berning