Research reveals ‘no-go areas’ and gangs also exist in other countries but they do not hamper public lives
LAHORE: The claim of Pakistan Rangers regarding the arrest of notorious gangster and Lyari gang war leader Uzair Jan Baloch has surfaced some 13 months after he was handcuffed in Dubai by the Interpol, a peek through print and electronic media archives shows.
Son of a local transporter named Faiz Mohammad alias Faizu Mama, Uzair has been one of the most-feared outlaws who have been operated in Karachi’s Lyari Town for the last 50 years or so. His father Faizu Mama was killed by Mohammad Arshad alias Arshad Pappu’s gang in January 2003.
Son of another infamous drug lord Haji Lalu, Arshad Pappu was basically a rival of Uzair’s first cousin, Sardar Abdul Rehman alias Rehman Dakait, who was killed on August 9, 2009 by the Karachi Police.
Haji Lalu was widely believed to be Rehman Dakait’s godfather in the world of crime.The then Karachi Capital City Police Officer Waseem Ahmed had told newsmen that the killing of the notorious gang-leader was a major achievement for his team. Rehman was reportedly involved in over 80 criminal cases.
Rehman Dakait and Arshad Pappu were involved in a deadly and bitter gang warfare over drugs and land in Lyari.In 1964, Rehman’s father Dad Muhammad alias Dadal had formed a gang with his brother Sheru, who used to work at the Rex Cinema.
The two brothers had soon gained notoriety for selling hashish and were soon locked up in a battle with Karachi’s biggest drug peddler, Kala Nag, who was later killed in a police encounter.
In the 1990’s, Rehman had consolidated his power in Karachi with the support of PPP-backed Khalid Shahanshah, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s top security guard and Security Officer of the Bilawal House. Khalid was killed in July 2008 and his murder was condemned by the Pakistan People’s Party Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari.
The then Sindh Home Minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza had described Khalid’s assassination as target killing. Mirza had stated that it would be premature to say that Khalid was killed for being a witness in Benazir Bhutto`s assassination case, adding the accused were riding a white car when they had intercepted Khalid in Clifton area and gunned him down.
After the 2008 elections, Rehman had vigorously targeted the Arshad Pappu group, which was then headed by Ghaffar Zikri.
While Rehman’s successor was Uzair Baloch, Noor Muhammad alias Baba Ladla had served as his operational commander. Baba Ladla was killed in August 2015 in Balochistan, though this was not the first time that reports of his death had surfaced in media as most Pakistani TV channels had also reported his unnatural demise, along with two of his Iranian friends near Pak-Iran border area of Jeevani, in May 2014.
This Lyari gangster was known for playing football with heads of his opponents.In September 2013, Rehman Dakait’s key aide Zafar Baloch was killed by unknown assailants on motorcycles in Lyari, which was once called “Dirbo,” before being renamed “Kolachi-jo-Goth” after a fisherwoman who had settled in the locality.
Zafar, a central figure of the outlawed Peoples Aman Committee, was returning from the Lyari General Hospital where bodies of three suspected gangsters killed in a shootout with Rangers were shifted. When his vehicle reached near Bizenjo Chowk, several gunmen riding motorcycles had opened fire at it. Zafar Baloch and his guard Muhammad Ali had suffered multiple bullet injuries. They were taken to a private hospital where doctors declared them dead. Later, the body of the slain Baloch was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for a post-mortem examination.
After its chief Uzair Jan Baloch, Zafar was the second most important leader in the Peoples Aman Committee or the Lyari Aman Committee.In March 2013, Arshad Pappu, his brother Yasir Arafat and Jumma Shera Pathan were killed in a shootout. According to police, the bodies of the three were recovered from the Barohi Chowk in Lyari.
Research conducted by the “Jang Group and Geo Television Network” further shows that Karachi is not the only city in the world where crime syndicates and loosely structured street gangs are involved in extortion, corruption, kidnap for ransom, drug trafficking and land-grabbing and real estate frauds etc.
Karachi, of course, is additionally cursed by linguistic hostility, political upheavals,
sectarian violence and politically-backed target killers and extortionists.
Gangs featuring in deadly turf wars also exist in countries like India, South Africa, Hong Kong, Greece, Portugal, Turkey, Mexico, Colombia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary Latvia, Lithuania, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Ethiopia and the sub-Saharan nation of Equatorial Guinea etc are plagued by extortion, even the much more developed nations like the United States, Japan, France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Denmark, Finland, Sweden Austria, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Holland, Ireland and the United Kingdom are also infested with gangs of extortionists.
Similarly, as it has been the case with Lyari, PIB Colony, Sohrab Goth, Kala Kot, Chakiwara, South Karachi, Pirabad and many other crime-ridden localities in Karachi and the main cities of other Pakistani provinces, “No-GO Areas” have been officially recognised and dubbed as such in countries like Zimbabwe, Northern Ireland and South Africa too.
However, we all know about the soaring gun and knife crime in London and a few of its unsafe areas. Name any famous city in the world and it has got “No-Go Areas,” but they do not hamper lives or pose serious challenges for the governments in charge — as is the case in Pakistan!
The term “No-GO Areas” has actually had a historic military origin and was first officially used in the context of the Rhodesian Bush War or the Zimbabwean War of Liberation, which was fought from July 1964 to December 1979.
Three forces —- the army of the predominantly white minority Rhodesian government, the military wing of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union and the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army —- were pitted against each other in this Bush War.
The black African nationalist leaders had remained infuriated for decades over the fact that while the Europeans owned most of their fertile lands, the poor Africans were crowded on barren areas.
This inequality and apathy had then paved way for the Soviet Union and China to support rival factions that were not only pitched against each other, but were also simultaneously fighting against the white Rhodesian security forces.
Rhodesia had comprised the region now known as Zimbabwe between 1965 and 1979, the year which had marked an end to the white minority rule in Rhodesia, which was consequently renamed Zimbabwe Rhodesia under a black majority government through an internal settlement.
The country returned temporarily to British control and new elections were held under the British and Commonwealth supervision in March 1980. A pact (the Lancaster House Agreement) in this context was earlier inked between the Zimbabwean War of Liberation and the British government at London’s Lancaster House in December 1979. Prior to this accord, the incumbent white Rhodesian government had enjoyed support of both South Africa and Portugal, which governed Mozambique.
The white Rhodesian regime was propagating that it was defending Western values, Christianity, the rule of law and democracy by fighting Communists, though it paid no heed to the social inequalities and the developing tumour.
By 1978 all white males up to the age of 60 were periodically called in to serve the state army. During this era, uprisings were also going on in Kenya, Angola, Mozambique and Congo.
As a result of these Britain-supervised 1980 elections, Robert Mugabe became the first Prime Minister of Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980, when the country had achieved internationally-recognised independence.
The term “No-Go Areas” was also used in South Africa. During the Black Power Movement in South Africa, the country was plagued by these unsafe localities, though it had a much larger army and massive white population to reduce the impact of the charged militants to some extent.
In South Africa, the term “No-Go Areas” was primarily used to describe localities that were perilous for white civilians, and where even the local police used to go in heavy contingents.
The South African cities of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town are still notorious for their high crime rates, surging homicide incidents, mugging and robberies.
Major international travel sites and even Western governments often bar their citizens through advisories, from going to the unsafe areas in the three afore-mentioned South African cities.
Between 1969 and 1972, the term “No-Go Areas” was also used officially in Northern Ireland to describe barricaded areas in Irish cities of Belfast and Derry etc. There were times when even the police and the British Army were prevented from entering these cities by their militant residents.
The areas had thus challenged the authority of the British government in Northern Ireland for many years, but on July 31, 1972, the Army had demolished the barricades and re-established control.
The day-to-day policing within these areas was generally controlled by paramilitary organisations, notably the Irish Republican Army throughout the 1990s —- something that should give a lot of inspiration to the ruling Nawaz Sharif government.
Research further reveals that much like Karachi, nearly every major city in the developed and underdeveloped world houses certain unsafe “No-Go Areas” where drug peddlers, hard core criminals, kidnappers, extortionists and terrorists etc co-exist and live with each other’s support.
However, as stated in this story, Karachi’s case is a lot different from other world cities because law-enforcement agencies and political masters have surely patronised blood-thirsty criminals and their gangs here.
In other parts of the world, only isolated incidents of such “official” support and patronage are reported. We have all heard about the “No-Go Areas” of New York, Chicago, New Orleans, London, Rome, Amsterdam and Paris etc, but a peek into the histories and prevalent situations in these famous metropolitans shows that at certain odd hours of the day, they can be as unsafe as various Latin/Central America’s notoriously violent nations like Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras and Brazil etc.
A few years ago, some senior British police officers had reacted with dismay after Professor Hamid Ghodse, President of the United Nation’s International Narcotics Control Board, had opined that parts of Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool were “No-Go Areas” similar to various crime-ridden Latin America’s towns.
Professor Hamid Ghodse of the United Nations had asserted that communities across the world, including those in the United Kingdom, were locked in a “downward spiral” caused by growing poverty, crime, alienation and hopelessness.