KARACHI – Some might remember the early 90s when people were shocked to watch videos of bomb blasts, mass killings and curfews on the streets of Baghdad, Iraq on the state-run TV channel’s ‘Khabarnama’, however, the same have become a routine matter in Karachi.
The once famous city of lights has witnessed the worst form of violence in the recent past. From bodies found in gunny bags and ethnic killings, which are now called ‘targeted killings’, the situation is becoming worse with each passing day. The citizens of the commercial hub of Pakistan are now mentally prepared for any unpleasant incident any time.
Most analysts believe that ‘targeted killings’ are just because of affiliations with political parties struggling to take control of the city or some religious, ethnic or class-based outfits, but a recent incident in which a passenger bus was targeted has rejected all such assumptions.
New reasons, apart from sectarian and ethnic divisions, have cropped up in the city behind such incidents. Struggling for political and economic control of the city, the alleged drug and land mafias, suppliers of arms and ammunitions, extortion groups and personal enmities are stated to be behind the increasing incidents of target killings. But is this true?
The three major political parties in the city blame each other for these incidents. Sindh Home Minister Dr Zulfikar Mirza holds the political parties, and ethnic and sectarian groups, responsible for such incidents, while Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik blames foreign hands.
Every now and then, a wave of targeted killings hits the city and dozens of people including political leaders, office-bearers of different sectarian and political outfits, common citizens, labourers, shopkeepers, drivers or passengers are killed in violence. Each time the government announces an operation, deploys law enforcers in the worst-hit areas but nothing happens and the targeted killings continue unabated.
It seems that one day the Foreign Policy magazine would name Karachi as the ‘murder capital of the world,’ a title which is held by the Venezuelan city of Caracas for the massive killings on its streets.
Karachi lies on a major fault line and the government has installed seismometers to gauge earthquakes but the authorities concerned are yet to install a ‘crimometer’ to record the jolts of the increasing targeted killings and find out the epicentre of these incidents.
Despite being located in the tsunami zone, the majority of Karachi residents believe Sufi saint Abdullah Shah Ghazi would stop any tsunami or tropical cyclone to ever hit the city, but is there a saint who can stop the increasing tsunamic waves of targeted killings?
