Hope Becomes a Victim in Pakistani City

This city’s long slide into anarchy has left its people too exhausted to even pity the dead.

At the Jinnah Medical Center, the burned and mutilated corpses that arrive many nights prompt little more than the lighting of a cigarette.

“In the beginning, it affected me,” Shahab Junejo, an emergency room physician, said between puffs. “Not now. You get used to it. Not even the families cry anymore.”

This South Asian seaport of 14 million people is engulfed by a wave of violence that has left more than 800 people dead this year--with many victims hideously disfigured. Although most of the killing is rooted in the tangled politics of Karachi’s slums, the violence has begun to reach into the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

After the slaying of a prominent philanthropist in late October, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif dismissed the provincial assembly and imposed emergency rule.

Sharif ordered the army to take over the courts and heavily armed rangers to sweep the streets in armored cars. Dozens of people have been arrested, many without charges, and criminal suspects have died in police custody. Dozens more have been killed in murky circumstances referred to by the police as “encounters.”

Although the harsh measures have slowed the pace of killing, few people here believe that the calm will continue for long.

Confidence in Leaders Collapses

Karachi suffered through similar rampages in 1992 and 1995. But this time, Karachi residents say, there is a widespread collapse of confidence in Pakistan’s leaders--some of whom have been implicated in the violence and corruption they have pledged to end.

With the nation’s economy in shambles and Islamic fundamentalists on the march, many Pakistanis fear that the country’s 10-year-old experiment with democracy--hard won after years of dictatorship--is coming to an end. A public mood once sustained by measured hope has sunk to cold despair.

“We fought so hard to bring democracy to this country,” said Ghazi Salahuddin, a newspaper columnist harassed during the military regime of Gen. Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s. “We did not know that there would be a time when we no longer believed in the future.”

Every day offers fresh evidence that the rule of law has disintegrated. When a team of Colombian anti-terrorism experts embarked on a tour of the city, their armored car came under machine-gun fire and had to retreat. After the police announced a string of arrests in the slaying of Hakim Saeed, the philanthropist, two of the suspects died in police custody. In November, two members of the provincial assembly were arrested on charges of hoarding illegal weapons.

Newsline, a respected magazine, has taken to running a monthly feature called “Death File,” which tallies the number of people slain in the city. Early this month, after another death was added to the total and eight people were wounded in ethnic strife, police swept through the city and arrested 25 suspected militants.

People do not feel safe even with the police.

“When this happens to you, you are no longer a man,” said Mohammed Zubair, who said his genitals were damaged during a police interrogation. Zubair, a 27-year-old government driver, said he was picked up in October on suspicion of terrorist-related activities and released without charges after his family coughed up a bribe of about $150.

Security Forces in Midst of Battle

At the center of the violence is a battle between government security forces and the Mohajir National Movement, or MQM. The MQM is the party of the Muslim immigrants who fled India after Britain abandoned the subcontinent in 1947.

Most of the Mohajirs migrated to Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and its commercial heart. Because they were often better educated than the city’s native residents, resentment against the Mohajirs grew, and they have remained largely isolated from Pakistani society.

MQM leaders say the Mohajirs of Karachi have never gained acceptance because their urban party undermines the feudal land barons who have long exercised dominance in Pakistan. “We are outsiders here,” said Farooq Sattar, vice chairman of the MQM. “The oligarchy is threatened by us.”

In the late 1980s, the conflict between the Mohajirs and other Pakistani groups became bloody, and since then the police and military have periodically orchestrated vicious crackdowns. In 1995--the worst year--2,000 people were slain in Karachi.

The MQM began as a political party and has helped rule the country and the province of Sindh, of which Karachi is the capital. Yet as it was drawn into the street violence, the party developed a criminal wing specializing in extortion, say human rights workers and diplomats. Some of its leaders, including members of the Sindh assembly and the MQM’s exiled leader, Altaf Hussain, have been charged with murder.

“Each and every businessman in this area pays protection money to MQM thugs,” said Mohammed Hussain, a textile producer in the city’s manufacturing district who used a pseudonym to protect himself. “If you refuse, they will shoot you.”

In October, Prime Minister Sharif accused the MQM of involvement in the slaying of philanthropist Saeed--and the MQM responded by pulling out of the Sharif-backed coalition government in Sindh province.

The next day, Sharif imposed direct rule.

Much of the recent violence stems from shootouts between the MQM and a breakaway faction known as Haqiqi--”the original.”

According to diplomats and human rights groups, the government security forces helped create Haqiqi as a counterweight to the MQM. Gangs loyal to the MQM and the Haqiqi shoot it out in Karachi’s neighborhoods almost every night.

The tragedy for Karachi residents is that corruption and violence only begin with the MQM and Haqiqi.

‘Why Should I Call the Police?’

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan People’s Party is suspected of stealing millions of dollars in public money and is under indictment on corruption charges. Sharif, leader of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, recently has been accused of spiriting millions abroad. As for the police, many Karachi residents regard them as brutal, inept and corrupt.

“Why should I call the police?” asked Javed, a Karachi businessman who spoke on the condition that his surname would not be revealed. Javed, whose business sits in the heart of the city’s commercial district, said he pays bribes regularly to MQM thugs and sometimes to the police.

“If I call the police, they will just come in here and demand money,” he said.

The epidemic of extortion and killings has sparked a panic among the middle class.

“If I am five minutes late coming home from work, my wife is in a panic; she has called the police and is convinced I have been killed,” said Syed Jawed Iftikhar, the controller for examinations for the Karachi Board of Education.

“I tell my wife: ‘You have to prepare for it. One of these nights I may not come home,’ ” Iftikhar said.

In August, Iftikhar’s boss, Board of Education Chairman Ismail Memon, was slain by gunmen while being driven home from work. Police suspect that behind the killing was a group that had been demanding protection money.

Although the big-name killings have grabbed headlines, most of those slain have been low-level party workers for the MQM or civilians caught in the cross-fire.

Mohammed Ejaz, 28, was at the wheel of Memon’s car when the assassins struck. Ejaz, who belonged to no political party and lived amid the sprawling slums of northern Karachi, was shot three times. He died alongside his boss.

Three months after Ejaz’s death, his wife, Naghma Begum, was still observing the Muslim ritual of iddah, which requires a widow to stay indoors for several weeks. When she recently agreed to see a visitor, she sat facing a wall, covered in a head-to-toe garment called a burka. Her back heaved with her sobs.

“I don’t want to ever leave here because this was my husband’s home,” Begum said.

The suffering seems to have stripped Karachi of hope. In a city used to muddling through the worst of times, even the most determined believers have begun to give up.

“Karachi,” columnist Salahuddin said, “is a city without love.”