Zardari govt failed to restore peace in Karachi: Financial Times report

The Financial Times report said that the un-popular President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari failed to stop violence and failed to restore the peace of Karachi. Pakistani people are confused with the ongoing democracy supported by Pakistan army, adding that they were confused either this journey stabilized the country or divided the country into pieces.

The report said that the killings are the bloody dividends of a long-running struggle between rival political parties with roots in the ethnic Pashtun and Mohajir communities.

This summer, the violence has hit new heights. Shootings and grenade attacks in labyrinthine slums and hillside shanty towns claimed more than 300 lives in July, one of the worst monthly tolls on record. The deaths took the total killed in Karachi this year to more than 800, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a non-governmental organization.

Rehman Malik, the Interior Minister, earned widespread ridicule when he played down the significance of the mayhem by suggesting 70 per cent of the murders were committed by angry girlfriends or wives. In fact, the violence is a warning light for long-term prospects for stability in a country whose fate may have grave security implications for the west.

US and European concerns centre on Pakistan’s murky role in Afghanistan, its army’s ambiguous relationship with Islamist militants and the security of its nuclear arsenal. The risks posed by this volatile mix were highlighted in May when US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda founder, who was hiding less than a mile from Pakistan’s military academy. Karachi’s politically instigated killings may seem parochial by comparison but they are a symptom of deeper conflicts that may ultimately play a greater role in shaping Pakistan’s destiny.

Like no other city, Karachi distils the mix of gun politics, ethnic tensions, sectarian strife, state weakness, militancy and organised crime that makes the whole country so fragile. It is these trends that will determine whether Pakistan’s hesitant journey from military rule to a semblance of democracy will deliver greater stability or deeper fragmentation.
“We are not evolving into nationhood. We’re breaking up into ethnic groupings,” says Amber Alibhai, secretary-general of Shehri, a pressure group that campaigns against rampant land-grabbing in the city. “The social contract between the citizens among themselves and between the state has been destroyed.”

Karachi was born on an unprepossessing mudflat in the Indus river civilization then known as Sindh. Over the centuries, swirling currents of migration have washed in ancestors of virtually every Pakistani community. But it is the explosive demography of the past 50 years that has created today’s pressure cooker. Karachi’s population, 450,000 people at independence in 1947, is now estimated at as many as 18m.

Although it has long bubbled with ethnic and sectarian tension, it has a reputation as one of the country’s more liberal, secular cities. Karachi has, however, suffered its share of militant attacks–including a spectacular raid on a naval base launched in retaliation for bin Laden’s death.

The clearest narrative in the present tangle of troubles is a variant of the age-old struggle between incumbent and challenger. Battle lines in city politics are marked by flags strung from lamp posts and mobile phone masts, staking the contenders’ territory. Fluttering banners in red, white and green belong to the incumbent–the Muttahida Quami Movement, the city’s dominant political force.

The MQM draws the core of its support from the Mohajir, descendants of Urdu-speaking migrants who flooded in from India during Pakistan’s birth pangs and formed the nucleus of an aspiring middle class. The party’s strength is reflected in the Sindh provincial assembly, where it occupies 28 of Karachi’s 33 seats. SANA