KARACHI: Despite the fact that authorities at both the federal and provincial levels have time and again hinted at launching a massive campaign to make Karachi a weapon-free city, no serious efforts have been made so far to implement this step.
Illegal weapons are available in abundance and terrorists, political activists, land mafia groups and even petty criminals faced no difficulties in gaining possession of sophisticated arms. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the Pakistan People’s Party and the Awami National Party were reluctant to rid the city of weapons and it did not take an inquisition to gauge their lack of political will towards this end.
In 2009, the Sindh government had announced that it would purge Karachi of all arms, and the chief minister issued a 15-day ultimatum to the people to surrender their illegal weapons at the nearest police stations. The Sindh Home Department had also urged the public through newspaper advertisements to surrender their illegal arms.
But neither did anyone come forward to surrender weapons, nor did the law enforcement agencies take any action against the criminals.
Go soft: According to sources, a coalition partner in the Sindh government expressed reservations on the decision to carry out door-to-door checking to recover illegal arms, compelling the government to ‘go soft’ during the operation.
Eventually, the drive to make the city a weapon-free zone failed.
The public outcry, demanding the de-weaponising of Karachi has been made almost every time a wave of violence terrorizes the city. The ‘weapon-rich’ environment that Karachi had to offer provided just the boost that militants and anti-social elements needed to increase their criminal activities and create anarchy.
In the wake of the current spate of violence in the city, wherein more than 70 people have been killed in just five days, Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah and Interior Minister Rehman Malik pledged to make Karachi a weapon-free city and mete out strict punishments to the criminals.
Bloodshed: However, a statement by Sindh Home Minister Zulfikar Mirza suggested that de-weaponising the city would not be possible without the deployment of army personnel.
The presence of a large number of sophisticated arms in city forecasted more bloodshed in days to come, but the provincial government was reluctant to do anything about it because it felt that such an operation might further deteriorate the situation in the violence-marred city.
