Karachi’s explosive situation has raised serious question as to who will bell the cat. The last two months, including Ramzan, witnessed bloodbath in the streets of Karachi, turning fast Pakistan’s port city from economic hub to murder capital and from mother of the poor to murderer of the poor. Incidents of heinous crimes, in addition to violence and mayhem, have increased manifold. The biggest city’s tremendous potential – over 15,000 industries in five industrial zones, the capacity to generate 67% share for the national exchequer and 35% of the GDP – has come to an almost halt.
The current wave of violence has caused the country an estimated loss of Rs 60bn. Voices are being raised from various quarters of the country urging the army to take the control, launch a ruthless and all-encompassing operation to clear out the mess in Karachi, but at the same time it is being recognised that Karachi’s is a purely political issue that must be solved through political means, because those involved in target killings belong to either one party or another. Though the political cheerleaders acknowledge no involvement in killing and terrorism, yet they often claim the dead to be their own workers. Political moorings do allow pauses between the tides of violence but never an end to the menace. This denotes that the polity not only projects solution but also is a part of the problem.
The already explosive situation was triggered by Dr Zulfiqar Mirza over the month end, when he in his 100-minute press conference at the Karachi Press Club on August 28 came down heavily hard on the MQM chief, Altaf Hussain and his own PPP’s federal interior minister, Rehman Malik, calling them the biggest enemy of the country. With his hand placed on the Holy Quran most of the time, he made startling disclosures including the one that has the potential to mark a turning point in the history of Pakistan that “the United States plans to dismember Pakistan”.
Given that the MQM has refuted his assertions and that the government accepted his resignation from the cabinet instantly, the damage Dr Mirza caused to the PPP-MQM warm-up in one fell swoop cannot be underestimated. It may be unlikely that Dr Mirza’s sensational disclosures are to upset the system and sabotage the erstwhile Sindh ruling coalition’s return to the centre stage, but the questions he posed about its leaders’ patriotism would nonetheless remain.
F Z KHAN
Islamabad