Ibn-e-Insha, the 20th century Pakistani poet wrote,
"Iss shehar main ji
ko lagana kiya?/Weshi ko sakoon se kiya matlab?" ("Why commit yourself to this
city?/What interest do tyrants have with peace?") Although I was living in Karachi
some 30 years after his burial there, both of these rhetorical questions stayed
with me practically every moment of my time spent in the city. Last month I
returned from Karachi, where I spent the summer researching the demographics behind
the urban violence that has wracked Karachi for years, but picked up again in
earnest.
It is only quite recently that Karachi has
come under serious discussion at the international level, yet the factors
driving violence and killings in the city this year have been present for at
least the past 25 years, and their roots go back even further. And still, there
has not been any notable progress in creating a lasting response. The police
remain weak, the local and national governments still periodically raise the
prospect of "bringing in the army," and leaders of political parties sit
comfortably while an ever-increasing number of their minions meet brutal ends.
And while there is much that ails Pakistan
besides Karachi, what happens in the city is in part a microcosm of what is
tormenting the country as a whole: feeble security, over-population, poor
public transportation and housing, weak law and order, abuse of public services
by the wealthy and powerful, illegal land-grabbing and squatter settlements,
pollution so pervasive that it contaminates food and water for all, ethnic
divisions, sectarian divisions, meager education; in short, institutional inadequacies
on a grand scale.
Yet institutional "failure," is in some ways a
hyperbolic assessment. After all, this is also a city that has provided space
for the smallest, and largest, businesses to prosper; a city that grants unrivalled
port access to everyone from fishermen to NATO ships; a city that is home to
prolific writers, poets, humorists, agriculturalists, entrepreneurs, divine
restaurants, a growing, yet hugely talented, blogosphere, and a history that witnessed
Alexander the Great, Mohammad Bin Qasim (the Umayyad General who set his sights
on the revered Silk Road trade route), and Sir Charles Napier (a British
General who conquered the province of Sindh) uncontrollably drawn to the City
of Lights. And it is in this paradoxical, puzzling, and ambivalent sense that
one must strive to understand Karachi, and beyond it Pakistan, or resign
oneself to understanding neither.
***
Despite Pakistan's heterogeneity, one aspect
of the country that demonstrates some homogeneity is the universal nature of the
"clan-based" system of allegiance that is ingrained in most Pakistanis. This
system has been recognized for some time, and was articulated recently, and
most clearly, by the scholar Anatol Lieven in his book, Pakistan: A Hard
Country. Beyond the traditional clan culture based on local identity that pervades
Pakistan's villages and tribes, one can also view the army as a clan, nationalist
groups as clans, political parties as clans, sects as clans, among countless
others. All promote self-interest and root faith in their clan above other,
ostensibly higher, metaphysical pursuits. The vast number of "clans" results in
a vast number of different perspectives and perceptions of governance and how
the country is -- and should be -- run. There exists no widely accepted social
contract, for instance, between the central (or provincial, for that matter)
authority and its people. As such, one's allegiance -- political, ethnic,
sectarian, socio-economic, linguistic, or other -- will determine one's value
system, which will in turn dictate where one sees the greatest problems
crippling the country. And it is this variation that makes the response to
debilitating political violence that we witness in Karachi difficult to
measure. Many agree that it is ruining the political and social fabric
of Karachi, and to a large extent, Pakistan, but consensus solutions remain
elusive.
Moreover, these conflicts between "clans" take
place in an environment where space is increasingly at a premium. The fight for
space, a basic human need, in Karachi gives rise to the most vicious kind of
violence. Violence is chosen from a set of strategies available to political
actors to assert sovereignty when the threat to their survival is strongest.
There are many indicators to suggest that space in Karachi can no longer spread
out, only up; six-story buildings populate areas reserved for 2-story homes. Earlier this summer such a building collapsed, leading to several
deaths. Ultimately, people have no choice but to stay where they are, quite
literally, and endure the violence as best as they can.
Other reasons pepper the growing fight for space.
During the course of my research, I spoke about the violence in Karachi with a
politically active office clerk who has commuted from the Orangi Town slum (one
of the largest in South Asia) to the upscale Clifton area for over a decade.
His perspective was of interest to me, as he traveled daily from a home
situated in one of the bloodiest parts of the city to one of its safer spaces. Having
seen his cousin killed before his own eyes, and he himself having recovered
from two bullet wounds, why had he not shipped off, and out, of Orangi Town? He
told me about his resolve not to leave an area where he had grown up and where
his family, friends and local political leaders resided. In turn, he asked:
"And anyway, where would I go? This place is exploding at the seams."
Despite such static claims, not all is
laborious or obligatory in Karachi. People stay in this burgeoning city because
it provides an opportunity to earn incomes unequaled in the rest of Pakistan.
The population of the city increased 176 percent between 1941-1951 (due mostly
to partition), and then by 217 percent between 1951-1972. Such increases have
fueled over-population, but they also demonstrate the opportunity Pakistanis,
and others, see in the city. People continue to arrive from around the country
to settle in Karachi, a city that boasts the famous saying, "the streets are
littered with gold; all you have to do is pick it up." Therefore, a thread
begins to emerge here, weaving together tensions over space, clan, and party
for reasons historically rooted in economic opportunity. This, of course, lends
itself to the idea that solutions to some of the city's problems may lay in
expanding industry, and improving urban environments, in other parts of the
country. However, it appears that this will only place a plaster, albeit an
attractive one, over a hemorrhage.
My interviews with Karachiites also suggest that
fewer people are now beginning to migrate for conventional economic opportunity
in comparison with past years, as competition for business, jobs, and trade today
is immense, and high operating costs have crowded out small businesses. One
consequence of this shift has been the expansion of the black market economies,
and more illicit activity including bribes, kidnapping, and looting to satiate
the economic need that drives thousands of people to arrive in Karachi. As
such, as more people arrive in the city and are subsumed by existing political
groups as workers or mureeds (followers), the above-mentioned clan structures
begin to consolidate, resembling a state within a state. These clans tend to be
hyper-politicized, a dynamic that often leads down a dangerous path. Here, violent
methods used by politicized factions, including parties themselves, become
institutionalized in the absence of a civil society that is in its nascent
stages, and where state institutions remain volatile. And there is little
evidence to suggest that such methods would dissipate if space in Karachi were
to be expanded out (as is mooted in many circles in the city) or if industry
were to be built in other parts of the country to create jobs. These ills would
migrate wherever clans went.
Indeed, some contend that Karachi's woes continue
to arrive from the outside, be it international capital and the process of
globalization, or migrants coming in from other parts of the country or region.
This, of course, is untrue. Living as part of the elite slice of Karachi's
society, many of the city's educated and wealthy inhabitants recall the Karachi
of the pre-Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq era, where they would explore their youth in the
city's discotheques and clubs, and never have to worry about guns firing at
night. Theirs was a Karachi of peace and prosperity. Today as then, they have
the luxury of living in plush homes guarded by private security guards and
surrounded by amenities that any inhabitant of Georgetown or Kensington would
blush to look at. Indeed, theirs is also a clan that does not, and for security
concerns cannot, busy itself with what happens in Qasba Colony or Banaras Chowk.
A blasé outlook, one might suggest, but one that affords this community the
ability to look away, albeit, at times, uncomfortably. Still, in looking away,
they help abet the turmoil, as it is from within their clan structures that
politicos and politicized industrialists are born who in turn send out men with
guns to wreak havoc in the streets and settle political scores.
What options does this leave not for the
incoming migrant or elite businessman, but for the average person in Karachi? Why
is it that they, who cannot hide behind the umbrella of ideology or wealth,
remain resilient? Indeed, it is because of them that Karachi is populated with
a silent, but growing middle-class -- an entire generation that has lived with this
violence. Their resilience comes from a sense of not knowing anything different.
"This will all boil over, the politicians will compromise, and things will
return to normal," are things I heard regularly in my time among them in the
city. Policymakers in Pakistan talk about "cleanup operations" to rid the city
of "miscreants" and gangsters -- but did such operations work the last time
they were tried, in the 1990s, when the government made the Muttahida Qaumi
Movement (MQM) and their Muhajir following their target? Or, did it work
in the 1980s, when Sohrab Ghot and its surrounding areas were bulldozed to
clean up the drug mafias and the largely Pashtun slums? The people of
Karachi have been enduring and accepting witnesses to each of these "operations."
The short memories of some may help perpetuate the city's problems, but it also
affords many others a strange immunity, allowing them to live and work,
day-by-day.
Insha continued in the aforementioned poem, "jis
jholi main saw chayd hoay, uss jholi ka phaylana kiya?" (Metaphorically
translated, "the hands you spread for blessings are so battered: what is the
point now in raising them?"). The reality of Karachi remains grounded in the collective
will of its inhabitants to persevere through the city's mess, rooted in their countless
distinct experiences, aggregating to infuse the city with some semblance of
order. Their immunity, though, also breeds resignation to any meaningful change.
Though one cannot term it disinterest, a certain sense of despondency pervades
the city. Most people living in Karachi want an end to the violence; history
and context compel them to believe it won't end. And who can blame them? They
are ruled by tyrants who have no interest in peace.
Bilal Baloch is a graduate sudent at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, where he concentrates on comparative politics and South Asia.
