Resuscitating a City Let No One Write Karachi Epitaph
The last fortnight has witnessed a focussing of national priorities with the very visible personal intervention of the PM in coming to grips with the ever-increasing problems of this vast metropolitan port city. Present in Karachi because of a family tragedy, Ms Benazir herself also became a victim of the massive blackout that hit the Province of Sindh and the city of Karachi. The miseries of rain-induced power shortage were further accentuated by a series of mysterious fires in power houses and grid stations. It would have taken an extremely insulated ruler, or a callous one perhaps, to remain impervious to the rapidly declining state of this leaderless city. Galvanized into action, the PM phased her approach to first providing immediate succour and relief, succeeding in instilling some urgency into the efforts of the Administration and the public sector utilities responsible for the bad state of affairs in the first place. Very visibly she did not show much confidence in the Provincial Government politicos or functionaries. However, in adopting a narrow political approach instead of a pragmatic and logical course as a democratically elected leader of bringing the city’s elected representatives into the solution mainstream in trying to keep the city going down the tube, she cast doubt on the credibility of the whole exercise.
This city is running on sheer momentum. Operation Clean Up had driven the urban political cadres underground, creating a leadership vacuum exactly when such a leadership was desperately needed at the grassroots level. The major factor contributing to the present socio-political crisis has been the indifferent, inefficient and almost non-existent civil administration of this metropolis. A city management that has no commitment to the people can never succeed. Without central direction and bereft of its elected representatives at the grass-roots level, the city’s infra-structure has gone to seed, the peace of earlier years has now been compounded by ethnic and sectarian clashes, further complicated by the lawless who have taken advantage of the uncertain environment with a spate of dacoities, kidnappings for ransom, etc. Well directed in the rural areas, in the urban areas Operation Clean Up separated into two parallel operations, one directed by uniformed personnel, the other by the shadowy men in mufti, badly compromising the integrity of the original mission whose prime targets were to be dacoits and kidnappers. Certainly there were militants in the MQM who had gone way past the pale of the law and needed to be brought to heel but insincerity in the intent and objectives of the men in mufti in contrast to the overall strategic plan as laid out to the then political government ensured that the Army found itself in sole confrontation with the MQM in deviation from its original objectives. The MQM hierarchy compounded the situation by abandoning their responsibility to the masses lock, stock and barrel and going underground. In the resulting leadership vacuum, a new breed of militants surfaced providing enemy agencies such as RAW with a gleeful opportunity to create mayhem. Writing in THE NATION, we had advised the immediate closure of the Indian Consulate General in Karachi (A DEN OF EVIL, June 28, 1994), one hopes that after the SAARC Foreign Ministers Conference in Dhaka (which has just ended) this will be done without further delay. RAW agents from this well of snakes are spreading poison in Karachi’s bloodstream. On Sunday, August 31, 1994 a Swiss national, Mr Fritz Jasser, was shot dead by two motorcyclists while driving a diplomatic vehicle, such is the state of lawlessness.
