always proven our loyalty towards the PPP but, in return, we have received bodies in gunny sacks and been stereotyped as gangsters,” he told The News.
The PPP-Lyari connection
Lyari is also politically important as it has two national and three provincial assembly constituencies.
Ever since the 1970 general elections, Lyari has been an unbending vote bank of the PPP. The party has won every national and provincial election that it has contested in Lyari from 1970 right up till the 2013 elections. “The credit for this goes to PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his party’s original socialist manifesto that resonated successfully with the people of Lyari,” said Arif Baloch, a veteran journalist.
“Before the PPP, the Lyari was the stronghold of progressive nationalist parties, especially the National Awami Party, and Mir Ghous Baksh Bizenjo won the election for a national assembly seat in the area.”
Lyari witnessed a number of violent protests against the Zia dictatorship throughout the 1980s, when local PPP activists and left-wing parties participated in the movement. On her return from exile in 1986, the first major rally that Benazir Bhutto held in Karachi was in Lyari. Her marriage to Asif Ali Zardari also took place in the Kakri Ground of Lyari in 1987.
Arif Baloch said the PPP had completed several development projects in Lyari, especially the establishment of a medical university and academic institutions, but badly failed to control the law and order situation in the area.
“It is a key factor behind the declining popularity of the PPP in the area,” he told The News.
Gang violence
Lyari, one of Karachi’s oldest towns, has become the epicentre of gang warfare that has claimed hundreds of lives.
The town has a history of gang wars, clashes between drug pushers in the beginning, and now between powerful criminal groups.
The law and order situation started worsening when political parties started supporting the gangs in a proxy war for control over Lyari.
“This has often caused Baloch-Mohajir and Baloch-Kuthchi clashes despite the fact that the gang leaders operating in Lyari belong to different ethnicities,” said a college teacher living in Lyari.
Also, a split in the banned People’s Aman Committee (PAC), a key gang operating in Lyari, also caused more killings in the area.
Many gang commanders aligned with Uzair Jan Baloch, the head of the PAC, while some announced their affiliation with Noor Muhammad alias Baba Ladla, who was previously the PAC’s chief operational commander.
Interviews with the law enforcement agencies suggest that the networks of gangsters have been shattered in the ongoing crackdown against them.
Many gangsters have been killed while others have either fled or were arrested.
“As the PPP-led Sindh government supports the ongoing crackdown against criminal syndicates in Lyari, the gangsters have turned their weapons towards the PPP,” said a senior leader of the PPP.
MNA Shah Jahan Baloch and two MPAS Sania Naz and Javed Nagori were elected from Lyari with the PAC’s support.
However, insiders say that the PPP leadership has advised its parliamentarians to shun their association with the PAC.
“These parliamentarians as well as Nadia Gabol, the chief minister’s adviser, have been given task to make the April 26 gathering successful,” the PPP leader said.