Nawaz in Karachi

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif descended on Karachi as tensions came to a boil once again. The targeted killing of three MQM workers led to mass boycotts of Sindh Assembly sessions, a citywide strike and a usual promise from Altaf Hussain that he would quit the party leadership – before he retracted the threat. What particularly angered the MQM was the alleged extrajudicial killing of a worker by the police. Altaf claims that the police have now killed 36 of the MQM’s activists in these ‘encounters’. Since the provincial government, and with it key police appointments, are controlled by the PPP it has come under the most fire for these rogue actions. Addressing a meeting at the governor’s house, Nawaz showed just how helpless he and his government are to do anything about the violence in Karachi. He promised an enquiry into the killings, and asked the MQM and PPP to work together to ensure peace and promised justice. None of what he said was objectionable in the least; the problem is that Nawaz and many others have said it countless times and it changes nothing. The Rangers operation launched in Karachi soon after the government came into power has proven to be an abject failure. At best it has allowed for short bursts of peace before normal service is resumed. The police are too politicised, with appointments made on the basis of political allegiance. In trouble spots, the police know that their jobs, and indeed their lives, rest with the powerbrokers in the area. Add to that an outside force in the form of the increasingly menacing militant threat and there seems to be no respite in sight for Karachiites.
Nawaz still felt the need to defend his government’s performance and couldn’t bring himself to criticise the very plan of action he had ordered. Thus at a later speech at the Karachi Stock Exchange he claimed Karachi had seen greater peace thanks to Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah. The prime minister is fooling nobody. The recent killings, added to the regular bouts of violence, show a city constantly on the precipice. The political parties in Karachi act only in their narrow interests and, to compound matters, use gang violence and extortion to maintain their power bases. The police repeated their usual tactic of arresting many people after the target killings but the police themselves are too compromised to tackle the problem at its root. The politicians meanwhile were too busy bickering to even attend the Sindh Assembly session, only adding to the dysfunction in the city and province. Nawaz seems powerless to change this dynamic. Until the political parties themselves come together and admit they are as much the perpetrator as the victim this cycle of violence will continue.