PAK CAULDRON: Ethnic killings spark apocalyptic doom in Pakistan's biggest city!

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August 28, 2011 / Reuters, Karachi / DC.

A police officer escorts a suspect during a crackdown operation against target killers and the extortion mafia in Karachi, Pakistan - AP.

Imran Ali's kidnappers jabbed pistols into his sides and led him down a quiet street as fresh ethnic carnage spread fear in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi.

Two other people blindfolded and held with the construction worker had just been shot at point-blank range. It was his turn.

Minutes later he was face down in a ditch filled with sewage, playing dead until the men were satisfied that three bullets had done the job and walked away.

"It feels like people are just being picked off in the streets because of their ethnic background. How can we live like this," Ali, a member of Karachi's Urdu-speaking community, said from a hospital bed.

"Apocalypse is coming to Karachi."

Pakistan's financial capital has a long history of ethnic violence between the dominant Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) - which represents the Mohajirs, descendants of Urdu-speakers who migrated from India after Pakistan's birth in 1947 - and the ethnic-Pashtun Awami National Party (ANP).

Those parties are often accused of using ethnic gangs in a turf war over everything from land-grabbing schemes to extortion rackets to votes, allegations they deny.

But the worst bloodshed since the army was called in to ease street battles in the 1990s has created an unprecedented sense of doom and increased fears over instability in Pakistan, a strategic nuclear-armed U.S. ally.

"The political parties are giving their foot soldiers greater freedom. They seem to be doing whatever they want now," said a senior security official who refers to the violence as "ethnic cleansing."

The latest wave of violence came after the MQM pulled out of a national and provincial coalition with the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

More than 400 people have been killed since July.

Torture chambers, body parts in grain sacks

Torture chambers have emerged. Some people are drilled, burned, carved up and beheaded. Body parts are put in grain sacks and dumped in alleyways in a chilling new dimension to the strife, security officials say.

Rest at,

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/world/asia/ethnic-killings-spark-apocalyptic-doom-pakistans-biggest-city-811

         

Pakistan's commercial capital on the boil!

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Anita Joshua, The Hindu / August 19, 2011.

A woman gestures toward a bullet-riddled wall after security forces took control of a troubled area of Karachi after several days of ethnic violence that killed at least 93 people in July 2011. Photo: AP.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says Karachi is in the grip of a multisided wave of insecurity driven political, ethnic and sectarian polarisation.

Even by Karachi's own standards, the recent spate of ethnopolitical violence has been brutal and prolonged. For well over a month now, Pakistan's largest city and commercial capital has been on the boil, with 318 people killed in July alone. And, according to a body count done by the Human Rights Commission of akistan (HRCP), 1,138 people were killed in the first six months of this year.

The HRCP's count, by its own admission, is usually conservative but with 1,456 people killed and still counting — nearly 40 people including a former member of the National Assembly have been killed since Wednesday evening — violence has become a constant in Karachi this year. To the extent that people, according to Karachi-based civil society activist Zeenia Shaukat, have learnt to adjust themselves to the threat levels. “When vehicles are set on fire in a certain area, people don't step out of their houses; when shops are forcibly shut, people wait for a while and try to find out if the grocery shops are serving back door. Also, if one reads on a TV ticker that there is tension in a certain part of the city, and if one is planning to go out, one will take another route.” When a city remains in the grip of violence for such long stretches and so frequently, staying indoors is a luxury few can afford.

Especially since the brunt of what is described as “organised warfare” has been felt most in the poorer quarters of the city. Some of the affected have openly said Israeli atrocities on Palestinians are not a patch on what Karachi'ites are going through in this seemingly never-ending turf war among the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). Though there was a time when the MQM — representing the Urdu-speaking populace which had migrated to the city and Hyderabad following Partition — was identified with much of the violence, today nobody can quite say who the biggest villain of the piece is, as all are equally culpable.

What is worse is the extent of the ethnic rivalry. Increasingly, there are reports of one community barring people from the other from being treated in hospitals, burying their dead or sending their children to school in its areas. When violence peaks, such is the level of ethnic profiling that an innocent bystander's attire could get him into trouble, with the Urdu-speaker identified by his trousers and the Pashtun by his salwar kameez.

While all major political claimants to the city — which is said to account for 20 per cent of Pakistan's GDP — have their areas of influence, local media reports suggest that the perennial sense of insecurity is leading to ghettoisation which will only deepen the fault lines. Through it all, as per the HRCP's fact-finding mission, the law-enforcing agencies either looked the other way, abandoned their posts, delayed responding to distress calls or just joined hands with the criminals. In fact, there have been reports of the police suggesting violence to victims as a remedy for their misfortune.

Full Story at,

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2370349.ece?homepage=true

KARACHI RIOTS: 154 alleged target killers held for Karachi violence!

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• July 22, 2011 
• IANS 
• Islamabad / DC.

About 154 alleged target killers have been arrested in Karachi city, Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said.

Out of the arrested individuals, nine people who were affiliated with certain political parties, have been bailed out due to insufficient evidence, he said on Thursday.

Spiralling violence in Karachi, which began on July 5, has left over 100 people dead.

Participating in a debate in the Senate on the situation in Karachi, Malik called for national unity and rising above politics to send a clear message to the enemies that the Pakistanis were united, the Geo News reported on Friday.

Commenting on the killings in Karachi's Kati Pahari area, Malik said Pakistan Rangers cleared the area after facing stiff resistance as the criminals, equipped with sophisticated weapons, were holed up in houses there.

Full Story at,

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/world/asia/154-alleged-target-killers-held-karachi-violence-191

PAK CAULDRON: At least 65 killed in Pakistan as political violence erupts!

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July 9, 2011 / http://www.smh.com.au.

Fires burn in a Karachi street following a surge of angry clashes. Photo: AFP.
 

A thousand troops of the Frontier Constabulary have been sent into Karachi with orders to shoot to kill after three days and nights of political violence claimed at least 65 lives in Pakistan's biggest city.

The violence has been blamed on loyalists of former coalition partners, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Awami National Party (ANP).

The MQM represents Urdu speakers known as mohajirs - the Urdu word for migrants - whose families moved to Pakistan from India during partition in 1947, while ANP supporters are Pashto speakers, who come from north-west Pakistan.

Violence between the two groups has claimed hundreds of lives in Karachi since the mid-'80s.

''At least 65 people have been killed in the violence since Tuesday. The number of injured is around 100,'' Sharjeel Memon, the information minister in the southern province of Sindh, said. Other reports put the death toll as high as 81.

Full Story at,

http://www.smh.com.au/world/at-least-65-killed-in-pakistan-as-political-violence-erupts-20110708-1h6ur.html

WIKILEAKS - Pak Cables, DAWN: ‘Armed gangs outnumber police in Karachi’!

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By Idrees Bakhtiar | From the Newspaper.

 Photo by Reuters (Thumbnail illustration by Faraz Aamer Khan/Dawn.com).

KARACHI:  “The police are only one of several armed groups and probably not the most numerous or best equipped,” according to a secret assessment of the ‘The Gangs of Karachi’ by then US consul general Stephen Fakan in April 2009.


The assessment focuses on the Pakistan People’s Party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Awami National Party, Muhajir Qaumi Movement (H), Sunni Tehreek and “Pashtun terrorists”, besides some armed gangs operating in Lyari and other parts of this megapolis. It states that “the PPP’s decision to include MQM in coalition governments in Sindh and at the centre has helped preclude a return to the PPP-MQM violence of the 1990s. But the potential for MQM-ANP conflict is growing as Pashtuns challenge Muhajir political dominance and vie for control of key economic interests, such as the lucrative trucking industry.


“Any sign that political violence is returning to Karachi, especially if it is related to the growing strength of conservative Pashtun ‘Taliban’, will send extremely negative shockwaves through the society and likely accelerate the flight from Pakistan of the business and intellectual elite of the society,” the report says.

Full report at,

http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/23/armed-gangs-outnumber-police-in-karachi.html

Indian Defense Minister, A.K. Antony: Karachi attack a matter of concern for India!

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May 25, 2011 14:17 IST


India on Wednesday said the terror attack on a naval base in Karachi was a cause of serious concern, particularly with regards to the safety of nuclear arsenal in Pakistan, but it does not want to overreact.


"Naturally it (nuclear arsenal) is a concern not only for us but for everybody," Defence minister A K Antony told mediapersons after addressing a Naval Commander's Conference in New Delhi.

Antony was asked if India was worried about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal in the wake of the attack. "Our services are taking all precautions and are ready round-the-clock. But at the same time we don't want to overreact," he said.

Yes, if it cannot protect its Naval bases, can it protect its Nuclear Assets, especially with the suspected insider support?

Full story at,

http://www.rediff.com/news/report/karachi-attack-a-matter-of-concern-antony/20110525.htm