Prices take shine off Pakistan weddings

by Hasan Mansoor
   Pakistan’s traditionally lavish weddings have lost their sparkle this matrimonial season thanks to rising prices of gold and festive essentials in a limping economy overshadowed by Taliban attacks.
   The colourful celebrations normally span three to five days and attract 500 to 1,000 guests, pushing the cost for the hard-hit lower middle class to between 300,000 and one million rupees (3,400-11,000 dollars).
   “It has become too expensive. Everything is expensive. Even a simple wedding could break the back of poor people like me,” said Mohammad Aslam, 62, a retired government employee.
    Aslam spent most of his pension on marrying off his elder daughter, forcing him to borrow 200,000 rupees to help fund his second daughter’s wedding.
   A large part of the spending goes on gold jewellery, as in other South Asian countries, but sales are down partly because of rising global gold prices, businessmen say.
   Gold surged to a new record high of 1,780 dollars an ounce during international trading in October 2012.
   “Four years ago there was a demand for 7,700 ounces of gold daily, only for making jewellery in Pakistan. But now it has substantially decreased,” said Haroon Chand, a leading member of the country’s jewellers’ association.
   Imports of gold through Dubai, which was Pakistan’s main source of the metal, have fallen significantly, he said.
   “Affluent and middle class people have halved their spending on jewellery.”
   Poor families usually have their old jewellery redesigned for the weddings of their children, he noted.
   “I tried to skip some of our customs to reduce the cost of my son’s marriage, but I couldn’t because of family pressure,” Ahmed Ali, a car mechanic, said at his son’s wedding in Karachi’s Ranchore Lane.
   “My wife wanted all that because he’s her only son. My son is also a mechanic and we have decided to repay the loans jointly as soon as possible.”
   Pakistani families spend lavishly on gifts for the happy couple, food for guests at wedding events that drag on for days, or on a sumptuous dinner offered by the groom’s family at a wedding hall.
   “What disturbs me most is that my daughters have also reached adulthood and their marriages will only be possible by taking more loans,” said Ali.
   “Like me, the bride’s family has also taken loans for the marriage. We are all prisoners of our customs,” he added.
   Chand blamed deteriorating law and order, increased taxes on gold imports, the weakening purchasing power of ordinary people and higher global gold prices for dealing the business “a big blow”.
   Falling gold sales have seen people like Mohammad Akram, 33, laid off.
   Until recently he worked as an artisan at a leading jewellery shop in an upscale neighbourhood of the teeming financial capital Karachi, a city of 18 million people that sprawls by the Arabian Sea.
   “I am a skilled worker but am forced to ply a rickshaw to support my children,” Akram said.
   But Nauman Ahmed says business has boomed at his costume jewellery shop during this year’s wedding season, between the Muslim feasts of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, because its fashionable designs are “cheap and affordable”.
   Instead of gold, people are increasingly opting to buy silver and costume jewellery, mostly imported from China and India, Chand and shopkeepers said.
   Escalating food prices have multiplied the cost of wedding banquets, with economists blaming Pakistan’s general economic downturn and militant attacks.
   Independent economist A.B. Shahid said such hurdles, including ineffective government policies, may prevent Pakistan from meeting the official 4 percent growth target this fiscal year, which ends June 30.
   Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked extremists have carried out a five-year campaign of attacks that have killed more than 5,000 people in Pakistan, a country of around 170 million people.
   “Terrorism in our country has highly affected our economy. Our people cannot spend much and this situation could persist until we succeed in curbing militancy,” Shahid said.
   Pakistan’s economy grew by two percent last fiscal year, the lowest rate in a decade, but even that level may not be attainable this year, Shahid said.

Private security booms in violent Pakistan

by Hasan Mansoor
   Karachi, Pakistan’s buzzing port city, is a hub of beaches, malls, restaurants — and the odd shooting range where an army of private security guards train to protect the well-heeled.
   As growing insecurity grips the nuclear-armed nation, with the military battling Taliban rebels in swathes of the northwest, deadly bombs hitting key cities and crime on the rise, the security industry in quietly booming.
   Rashid Malik, who owns the firm Security 2000, has his men carry out target practice in the basement of a bungalow in an upscale Karachi neighbourhood, but even with 10,000 employees, he is struggling to keep up with demand.
   “I have to turn down many requests from people and businesses because I still have not enough capacity to provide security to all the people,” said Malik, a retired army brigadier.
   “After the army and police, private security guards are the third largest force in Pakistan — we are just a few years away from outnumbering the police force in the country,” he adds.
   There are 600 security firms in Pakistan, according to figures from the All Pakistan Security Agencies Association (APSAA), with 200 of them operating in Karachi, protecting businesses big and small, as well as the homes of wealthy clients.
   Karachi — Pakistan’s biggest city with a population of about 17 million — was once known as the City of Lights and is the country’s economic engine, but has been plagued by sectarian and ethnic tensions for years.
   Clashes among mafias and ethnic groups left at least  1,200 people this year.
   Now, the threat of terrorism also grips the city, with attacks by Islamist extremists gathering pace after US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime from Afghanistan in late 2001.
   More than 5,000 people in Pakistan have been killed in less than two years in attacks linked to Taliban and other extremist groups, and Karachi has not been spared.
   In January 2002, Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in the city while researching Islamist militancy in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. A video showing him being beheaded was delivered to the US consulate in Karachi nearly a month later.
   The city has also seen a string of other incidents, including suicide attacks on French engineers, the US consulate and a bomb targeting late politician Benazir Bhutto in October 2007 which killed 139 people.
   Series of attacks on naval assets, including a 17-hour seige of its airbase — the country’s nukes were not far-off — by Taliban militants before attack on a top counterterrorism cop are just a few to mention.
   “Our business witnessed huge prospects after the 9/11 attacks,” said Malik, who also heads the APSAA.
   The city is also seeing rising crime, including robberies and kidnappings.
   “There is a serious law and order situation in the whole country, which has left us with no other option but to buy security to secure our lives and our huge investments,” Mohammad Ali, a steel importer, told AFP.
   For 170 million Pakistanis, there is just a 383,000-strong police force. In Sindh that figure is 99,000 police, while there are 100,000 security guards patrolling the streets of Karachi and the rest of the province.
   Most officers are ill-trained, poorly educated and badly paid — a regular constable’s monthly salary is just 100 dollars, and his family receives a lump sum of 6,000 dollars if he is killed in the line of duty.
   “We have hired security guards for our safety because police have failed to stop criminals from robbing and killing people,” said Mohammad Waseem, a resident of the city’s central Gulberg neighbourhood.
   On his street, private security guards man a kiosk at the corner, letting only those living in the area pass through.
   “You can see this arrangement in most areas of Karachi,” Waseem said.
   Malik said one problem was getting trained guards.
   “Most of our guards are ex-military soldiers but that does not meet our increasing demand so we have to go to Punjab and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) where people acquainted with weapons could be found easily,” he said.
   The country’s lawless tribal areas and several other NWFP districts are currently plagued by a Taliban insurgency.
   The Pakistani army is engaged in an operation to quell an uprising across the tribal badlands, and the Taliban have vowed to avenge the onslaught with attacks on major cities.
   Sociologist Fateh Mohammad Burfat said that in uncertain times, residents take comfort from the presence of uniformed security guards standing on street corners of the cosmopolitan city.
   “Insecurity among the people has increased. They obviously need to do something to feel secure,” said Burfat, who teaches at Karachi University.
Little money, risks aplenty!
Abdul Hakim, a 35-year-old man, is one of around 30,000 security guards employed with a security agency operating in Karachi, and gets a paltry 4,200 rupees after exposing himself to dangers for full 30 days.
“I have to support my family of four and this amount is just nothing to run a house,” Hakim says.
He says he is in search of a relatively better job because the earnings are far too little to stick with the business.
“It is a better job for young bachelors, but not for married men who have to support their families,” he says.
Hakim’s wife is good at embroidery and works at a vocational institute as a teacher. Her earnings enable the couple to send their two children to school and ensure a proper living.
Hakim was originally a carpenter but his employer wound up the business and then he started his own business without opening an outlet. He could get some orders in the beginning from his old clients at home, but soon his source of income dried up.
“A time came when I could get an order after many months, and then I realised that I had virtually become jobless,” he says.
Hakim says most people now prefer readymade furniture and do not take the trouble to visit carpenters.
“I did contact some manufacturers for the job, but they offered little money and demanded full day work, which I did not accept,” he says.
Hakim then saw an advertisement of a security agency in a newspaper and got a job there. He spent some time with trainers and then joined his colleagues to roam around and guard one or another client.
“Initially, I thought it would have been too simple a job, but now I realise it gives great tension and pays almost nothing,” he says.
All the security agencies have identical harsh terms and conditions for their employees. The guards have to perform 12-hour duty daily instead of the set standard of eight hours a day.
The owner of a security company insists the agencies pay ‘handsome’ money to their employees.
“We know they do a tough job, but we compensate them by paying them Rs 4,000 or more as monthly salary, which is more than the minimum daily wage as mentioned in the labour laws,” an owner says.
He says the minimum wage set in the labour laws for a worker is Rs 4,000. Besides, security companies also pay overtime equal to the daily wage.
Given a 12-hour daily duty if a guard wants to venture into overtime, he has to perform 36-hour continuous duty to add Rs 130 to his monthly salary.
“It is very difficult and only some young and daring people could brave it,” Hakim says.

 

Pakistan factory fire highlights risks for workers

by Hasan Mansoor
   KARACHI, Sept 14, 2012 (AFP) - The death of 289 workers in a devastating factory fire has highlighted Pakistan's dismal approach to industrial safety and raised fears for the clothing sector vital to the nation's struggling economy.
   Western companies buying Pakistani garments and textiles are likely to scrutinise their suppliers' working practices more closely after Tuesday's disaster and there have been promises of a clampdown from officials in Karachi.
   But in a fiercely competitive global market, analysts warn factory owners face a difficult dilemma, as higher safety standards means higher production costs.
   Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and commercial heart, has around 10,000 factories on seven industrial estates, according to the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI).
   On top of that, there are at least 50,000 cottage and small industries in the informal sector based in residential areas.
   Fahim Zaman Khan, Karachi's former top administrative official, told AFP that Ali Enterprises, the factory destroyed in Tuesday's blaze, was typical of many units in the city.
   "There is not a single factory in Karachi, which is different in shape and facilities as the one gutted by the fire. Everyone, including our rulers, could see similar factories nearby the gutted one but avoid to take action," he said.
   Police records show Ali Enterprises exported ready-made garments to North America and Western Europe, though it is not clear which brands or chains were supplied.
   Nasir Mansoor of the National Trade Union Federation said safety measures were ignored at the factory.
   "At Ali Enterprises there was only one exit point for more than 500 workers at the time of the emergency, all the windows had iron grills and doorways and stairs were stuffed with finished merchandise," he said.
   Karachi is a vast, seething metropolis home to some 18 million people, but its emergency planning is woefully underprepared, according to Khan -- he said the city had only "a few dozen buildings" with proper emergency exits.
   "We have a fire brigade which has just 35 fire tenders in working condition, but the city has hundreds of thousands of dangerous buildings. Our disaster management is totally inadequate," he said.
   Mohammad Hussain Syed, the city's municipal head agreed that "very few establishments are in Karachi which have been built on proper building plans.
   "Safety exits are duly mentioned in the plans approved by the authorities but the owners got away with it only to save money and extra land thus risking precious lives," he said.
   A crafty two-step of corruption and political manoeuvring allows factory owners to skip around the rules and focus on making money, said analyst Hasan Askari.
   The garment trade is vital to Pakistan's shaky economy, particularly the export sector.
   According to central bank data, the textiles industry contributed 7.4 percent to Pakistan's GDP in 2011 and employed 38 percent of the manufacturing workforce. But it accounted for 55.6 percent of total exports -- around $11 billion.
   Irfan Moton, chairman of the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate, said the Ali Enterprises tragedy would damage Pakistani exports.
   "Anybody who is planning to import something from Pakistan, will now think for a while about our safety standards.
   "He will consider other options like India and Bangladesh and may book an order from such countries even if he is buying it a few cents higher than our price."
   Aziz said it was vital that Pakistan responded to the disaster in the right way.
   "There would be clarion calls from Western buyers for an immediate review of safety systems in units that supply goods to them," he said.
   "A lot of damage control would be required immediately by the owners and more importantly from (the government)."
   But introducing better safety measures -- fire hydrants, sprinkler systems, better escape routes -- means higher costs, giving the factory owners a dilemma.
   "The choice is to make maximum foreign exchange at the risk of workers' lives or to earn less and make their life safe," prominent Pakistani economist Kaiser Bengali said.
   Trade unionist Mansoor said most of the workers at Ali Enterprises were on third party contracts and none had appointment letters, so they were not entitled to social security benefits.
   Workers at Ali Enterprises said they earned between 5,000 and 10,000 rupees ($52 to $104) a month for their labour.
   For the lucky ones who survived Tuesday's inferno, like 33-year-old Mohammad Khan who broke an arm jumping from the burning factory, braving frightening working conditions is just a fact of life.
   "I am the only bread earner for my three children, wife and parents and have no choice. I am going to search for a job in another factory once my arm gets fixed," he said with gloomy smile.
September 2012

Pakistan blighted by Afghan drugs in transit

by Hasan Mansoor

Cheap Pakistani heroin is the curse of Rubina Naz’s life. Her marriage to a violent and abusive addict, during which she had to work to feed their four children, ended when he died of AIDS — but not before he infected her with the HIV virus.
“Such a huge punishment without doing anything wrong crushed me,” said 28-year-old Naz as she sat in a Karachi hospital.
She was 16 years old when her labourer father married her off to Ghulam Punjtan, then an apparently respectable driver for the Pakistani government.
“A few months after the marriage I discovered Ghulam was a heroin user. I tried to help him kick the habit but all I got were beatings and abuse,” she said.
Pakistan has more than four million drug addicts in its population of 170 million, according to figures compiled by the country’s Anti-Narcotics Force, which is responsible for investigating and prosecuting drug offences.
Opium poppy is grown on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a region infamous as a hideout for Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists and branded the most dangerous place in the world for Americans by US President Barack Obama.
Pakistan shares a 2,500-kilometre (1,560-mile) porous border with Afghanistan, which supplies 90 percent of the opium used to make heroin worldwide.
As such, the largely lawless region is the key transit point for heroin, morphine and hashish heading west to Iran, Turkey, the Balkans and Europe, and east to China.
As it passes through what has become the central theatre of the “war on terror,” cheap supplies are left behind for the locals, with one gram costing as little as 80 rupees (one dollar) in Karachi, the southern port on the Arabian Sea and Pakistan’s commercial hub.
Here anyone can afford a hit. And many, like Rubina Naz’s husband, do.
Her life lurched from bad to worse as her husband’s addiction spun out of control. When he lost his job, she took factory work to ensure the family had an income.
“My husband fell seriously ill three years ago. His father took him to a hospital where tests confirmed him HIV positive,” she said.
But her in-laws didn’t tell Rubina about the disease, and she continued to have sex with her husband. Weeks after he died, she fell ill and was diagnosed HIV positive.
Pakistan’s chronically underfunded and crumbling health system offers little help for drug users to conquer addiction — let alone deal with its devastating consequences.
Because of the enormous quantities of drugs that pass through the country, abuse and addiction are on the rise, without the health services and anti-drugs squads needed to adequately combat the scourge.
Pakistan’s understaffed and under-equipped Anti-Narcotics Force has around 2,000 personnel policing the snaking mountainous border with Afghanistan and the 900 kilometres (563 miles) it shares with Iran, the main smuggling routes.
Border control duties are shared with paramilitary troops already struggling with a deadly counter-insurgency campaign in the tribal belt.
“Even though the challenges facing a transit country like Pakistan are increasing with every passing day, the resources available to counter the threat of narcotics continue to remain meager,” the Force said in a report.
The majority of drug users in Pakistan smoke hashish, experts say. Heroin, alcohol, tranquillisers and pain killers are the other most common drugs.
A joint study released last year by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the Paris Pact Initiative, an international partnership to counter trafficking and consumption of Afghan opiates, found that trafficking of Afghan opiates through Pakistan towards lucrative markets abroad is on the rise.
Seizures are also on the rise, it said — but both figures just reflect an increase in the cultivate of poppy in Afghanistan.
“Trafficking of opiates into and through Pakistan increased dramatically during the period 2001-2006 corresponding roughly to the increase in opium production in Afghanistan from 185 metric tons in 2001 to 6,100 metric tons in 2006,” the report said.
In 2005, Pakistan seized 24 tonnes of heroin and morphine, accounting for 27 percent of total seizures worldwide, it said, adding that in 2006, that figure leapt to a record 35 tonnes.
UN experts have said that the easy availability of narcotics is compounded by general ignorance among Pakistanis about the consequences of taking them.
A report earlier this decade found that more than 80 percent of Pakistanis did not believe narcotics to be harmful, and that many addicts were introduced to drugs by friends and relatives.
One of those who learnt the hard way was 25-year-old Shabana.
Introduced to heroin by classmates, she thought it was fantastic, she said.
It quickly took over her life as she graduated from smoking to sniffing and, finally, injecting. She lost weight, dropped out of college, and her family abandoned her.
“I began to take drugs with my friends for fun, but as time passed it became a matter of life and death,” she said, refusing to give her full name.
A photograph of her a few years ago shows a tall girl with fair skin and striking features — barely recognisable as the girl now lying on a bed in a Karachi rehabilitation centre.
“I started smoking heroin-filled cigarettes and found myself in heaven,” she said.
Only an older brother saved her from the hell that addiction can leads to.
“My brother brought me here for rehabilitation. For me he is more than my father. I will not take drugs again, I will not let him down,” she said.

Filed October 2011

Karachi musical makes song and dance of gang wars

by Hasan Mansoor
A hit musical about gangland violence in Pakistan’s largest metropolis is bidding to revive Karachi’s once-rich stage culture while shedding light on its grim addiction to violence.
Fierce sectarian and ethnic conflicts have been responsible for the deaths of more than 1,000 people this year alone and are an all-too-familiar tale to Karachi’s 18 million residents.
But the gritty realism portrayed in “Karachi — The Musical” has nevertheless provoked a huge response, playing to large audiences since it began in October for a month-long run due to finish on November 13.
It tells the story of a rookie boxer from the eastern city of Multan who comes to train at a boxing club in Karachi’s notorious Lyari neighbourhood — better known for its mafias than its sporting talent.
The ambitions of the protagonist, Saif Salaam, spark tensions between his coach and Daud Islam, a mafia don who controls the local gambling, drugs and prostitution rings and wants to thwart the boxer’s success.
With many twists and turns in the story set to a dozen songs, Daud attempts to kill Salaam, just as he had murdered another rising star 20 years earlier.
Mirroring grim realities on Karachi’s streets, the mafioso Daud is only stopped from killing the boy thanks to the intervention of another bad man — a more powerful don whose influence reaches higher into the corridors of power.
“It depicts the situation which we are facing nowadays,” said one theatre-goer, Aleem Akhtar.
“We are infested with mafias and gangs of killers and every mafia is well protected, so we can survive only with the blessings of some good bad men.”
The director of the first original musical to grace the city said that the show represented a defence against the very harshness it was based on.
“Today, art needs more support than ever in Pakistan because it is not only a reflection of the times we live in, but also of a brighter future we can create,” said Nida Butt.
“Theatre is not for the faint-hearted — it’s a labour of love, long hours and hard work that often results in more (money) spent than earned,” she added.
The once-thriving stage scene in Karachi, which was known for its opera before the partition of British India to create Pakistan in 1947, was lost largely due to the growing Islamisation of the country, say artists.
They particularly point the finger at military dictator General Zia-ul Haq, blaming him for worsening the gun and drug culture, encouraging sectarian and ethnic parties and crushing liberal forces during his 1977-1988 rule.
Art began losing its way under Zia’s predecessor Ayub Khan, they say, but it crumbled as culture became an early casualty of Zia’s regime, which nurtured religious fanaticism.
Syed Ahmed Shah, who heads the Karachi Arts Council and whose theatre is staging the production, says his organisation is the only one with a dedicated auditorium for plays and theatrical performances in Pakistan’s biggest city.
“Our resolve is to fully revive the city’s old cultural status so that it is here to stay,” he said.
“Particularly in a situation where fear and anxiety are the order of the day. Culture is the only remedy to rely on,” he said.
Hamza Jafri, who composed the original scores, said that “Karachi – The Musical” drew on the various strands of the city’s musical culture — a mix of rock opera, indigenous beats and big band jazz.
“The music is edgy, contemporary and completely inspired by our research into Lyari and the boxing gangs there. The songs talk about us, about Karachi and our lives in this city today,” he said.
But those living among the conditions depicted on stage complain they cannot see it because they are priced out of the market, with tickets costing 1,500 rupees (18 dollars) each — five times as much as a first-class cinema seat.
“I would love to watch such plays but it is getting too tough to enjoy theatre and cinema nowadays,” said Maula Bakhsh, 35, a fruit vendor in Lyari.
“We hardly feed our families because of price hikes. How can we spare money to spend on that luxury?” said Bakhsh — adding that he had to abandon his own boxing career to support his family.

AFP

NATO attacks fuel American flag business in Pakistan

by Hasan Mansoor
   In Pakistan a row about American attack on the country’s vague and much-trumpeted sovereighnty means booming demand for replica American, Indian and Israeli flags to go up in flames at protest rallies.
   That means one thing for 31-year-old Mamoon ur Rasheed — business — and he is working long into the night to churn out the paraphernalia beloved of Islamic activists taking to the streets.
   “I have nothing to do with any political party, but it is really enjoyable when you see your work on TV screens,” a laughing Rasheed said.
   “I’m busy every day making banners and placards for different religious and political parties, but work gets a boost — especially when international controversy concerning Muslims breaks out,” he said.
   Two years ago, when a Facebook user decided to organise an “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” competition to promote “freedom of expression”, it sparked a major backlash among Islamic activists in the South Asian country of 170 million.
   Islam strictly prohibits the depiction of any prophet as blasphemous and the row sparked comparison with protests across the Muslim world over the publication of satirical cartoons of Mohammed in European newspapers in 2006.
   Several hundreds Pakistanis have taken to the streets at the behest of right-wing religious groups, who turn to Rasheed when they need flags to burn and banners to write.
   “Generally, we receive orders for banners for a couple of demonstrations a day, but due to the NATO attacks on Pakistani soldiers and blasphemous drawings issue, which causes spark time to time, the number of orders for flags and banners increases manifold a day,” said Rasheed.
   “Flags are made for burning. They symbolise what our clients want to express and we are paid for it, so I’m happy to see our work go up in flames.”
   Rasheed owns a workshop where he employs four craftsmen to paint flags and write calligraphy, and a small printing press.
   “We have received continuous orders for American and Israeli flags. Normally we paint them but when demand surges into the hundreds we print these flags to get them to our clients in time,” he said.
In the wake of the controversy caused by the NATO attack inside Pakistan, have blocked supplies for NATO forces to Afghanistan through its territory and mulls over to expel Americans from its Shamsi airbase.
   Although none of the protests has mobilised the masses, sporadic demonstrators have continued to vent anger in Karachi and other cities.
   Rasheed runs his business on times of stress. Different periods mean demand for the flags of India — Pakistan’s deepest rival with whom the country has fought three wars — Norway and Sweden, and former colonial ruler Britain.
   Five years ago, widespread protests broke out in the conservative Muslim nation over satirical cartoons of Mohammed that were published by a Danish newspaper and then reprinted in other European countries.
   Then in 2008, thousands of Pakistani Islamists rallied against an anti-Koran film made by a far-right Dutch lawmaker. Another focal point for anger has been Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who etched a blasphemous caricature.
   Whenever elections approach or protests start, wholesalers stock huge quantities of cheap cloth and reap handsome rewards.
   “We are getting bigger orders from scores of painters and printers nowadays,” cloth merchant Mohammad Siddique said.
   “Pakistan is the country of protests and for this Karachi is undoubtedly its capital and our business gets a boost in such circumstances,” Siddique said.
   Waqar Ahmed, owner of a printing press in Karachi’s southern neighbourhood Pakistan Chowk, says orders are flooding in for posters, pamphlets and placards, temporarily overtaking his main business in books and wedding cards.
   “I get orders for pamphlets and posters in the event of controversies or elections,” Waqar says.
   “I have got some orders to print flags of United States – in hundreds – during the ongoing rallies. We have also sold many American and Swedish flags during the protests against Facebook,” Ahmed said.

Ends

Pakistan’s shunned HIV victims fight pariah status

by Hasan Mansoor
KARACHI, Dec 1, 2011 (AFP) – Shunned by their families and society, Rubina and Iqbal are a Pakistani couple who have struggled for years to win their lives back and spread a message of respect for fellow victims of HIV/AIDS.
Rubina Naz, 33, one of 12 children born to a labourer, was diagnosed with HIV four years ago, a year after her drug-addicted husband passed away.
“I didn’t know what it was until I was tested positive. I was afflicted with this horrible disease by my first husband, who was an AIDS victim,” said Rubina.
They married when she was 16 years old and had two daughters and two sons together, but Rubina was unaware of her husband’s illness until she read his medical tests after his death and friends advised her to take her own.
Finding out she was HIV positive ruined her life.
“My in-laws threw me out and took my kids. Even most of my own family treated me like a sinner and stayed away when I was desperate to be helped. Those days were horrible,” she said.
Pakistan, the second-largest country in South Asia, stands a few steps behind India and Nepal in terms of the extent of the HIV epidemic.
The National AIDS Control Programme says Pakistan is a “low prevalence, high risk” country, with low rates of the virus across the general population but a high concentration among risk groups such as injecting drug users.
UN figures from 2009 show that there are an estimated 97,400 cases of HIV/AIDS in Pakistan.
Rubina’s meals were always served separately to the rest of her family, who were fearful of contracting the disease, but with her mother’s support she says she has overcome prejudice.
She now works as a kitchen assistant at charity Pakistan Society, dedicated to helping HIV positive people, which is where she met her new husband Mohammad Iqbal, 35, who is HIV positive and recovering from drug addiction.
Iqbal was a tailor in his teens when he was introduced to heroin by friends. He contracted the virus 10 years ago by sharing needles to inject the drug.
“My addiction shocked my parents, who both died early, then my brothers threw me out of home and I was forced to live on the streets,” he said.
A charity gave him the tests that led to his diagnosis. But it was another three years before he decided to get well.
“Continuous hatred towards me wore me out. I decided to live a meaningful life or end it. I opted to live and agreed to get rehabilitated,” he said.
Rubina and Iqbal found each other in the kitchen, which serves food to patients and visitors at the charity’s medical centre.
The charity also goes into communities to help drug addicts across the southern city of Karachi and the wider Sindh province, where it spreads the message that HIV victims can live a normal life and should not be cast out.
“Now I don’t hesitate to see myself in the mirror. I am regaining my lost respect in the world,” Iqbal said.
Rubina’s in-laws have agreed to allow her children to see her regularly and Iqbal’s brothers have permitted him to rejoin the family.
Anti-retroviral drugs that treat the illness are provided free of charge at state-run hospitals, clinics and health centres across Pakistan, meaning that those diagnosed have the chance of a relatively normal life.
So long as Rubina and Iqbal continue to take their daily medication and maintain a healthy lifestyle, Pakistan Society head Saleem Azam said their prognosis is good and their life expectancy should not be affected.
Azam said that women are the least documented victims.
The 2009 survey revealed that 15 percent of wives of injecting drug users in just one district, Larkana, where Pakistan’s political dynasty the Bhuttos have their ancestral seat, are HIV sufferers.
But Azam said the actual incidence may be much higher as many cases go undetected and there could be many women “who die of the disease without even knowing what happened to them.”
“In our male dominant society women have fewer choices to save themselves from their HIV positive husbands. The majority have not heard of the disease and if they do they cannot stop their husbands from afflicting them.”
Rubina and Iqbal have taught their families to respect HIV-positive people but say they will continue their quest to educate the rest.
“It is not over yet as the rest of society is still there to be educated,” said Rubina.

Ends

Illegal lives: Karachi’s two million immigrants face a government crackdown

by Hasan Mansoor
My 2002 report for Himal South Asian Magazine
When Pakistan launched its National Alien Registration Authority (NARA) in January 2002 to address the perceived problem of illegal immigration, an estimated 3.3 million non-citizens were residing unlawfully in the country, close to two million in the southern city of Karachi alone. NARA received a mandate of three years to document illegal residents in Pakistan, specifically those in Karachi, and to issue work permits to non-citizens “who will get themselves registered”. But, perhaps not surprisingly, 18 months into its mission and halfway to its deadline of December 2004, NARA has registered only 35,000 people, just one percent of the estimated total.
The reasons for NARA’s poor performance to date are numerous, though many relate to difficulties inherent in differentiating ‘real’ Pakistanis from non-citizen ‘impostors’. Immigrants and their children have blended into Karachi’s bustling urban life, and many have secured government-issued National Identity Cards (NICs), often with the help of other non-citizens elected (illegally) to local administrative bodies. More broadly, they have created their own patronage networks and ensconced themselves into Karachi’s existing ones, gaining access to jobs, political connections and social services that make them as much residents of the city as any native-born citizen.
Owing to the scale and diversity of the immigrant population, estimates of its size and composition remain rough. In Karachi, the largest segment – about 1.3 million – hails from Bangladesh, while totals from Africa, Burma and India reach into the hundreds of thousands. Most Bangladeshi migrants travel overland to Pakistan via India, where they are sometimes able to make arrangements in advance for work in Karachi, where supposedly pays are higher than anywhere else in South Asia. Karachi is also home to 80,000 Afghans, who are counted as refugees rather than as aliens on the assumption that they will return to their native country once conditions improve.
In a sprawling city of 12 million-plus people, Karachi’s non-citizen residents represent about 15 percent of the total population, and because many of them have secured voting rights, they constitute a significant electoral block. A report prepared by NARA’s Karachi office states that at least 80 unnaturalised immigrants have been elected to a cluster of 20 union councils in the city, six of which are led by non-citizens, though local government officials put the number of elected immigrants at closer to 130. Another three dozen such candidates are believed to have gained office in
the interior of Sindh. And while about half of the non-citizen population in Karachi is concentrated in the city’s western district, it has spread effectively throughout the entire metropolis, often in small squatter settlements, making identification of ‘illegals’ all the more difficult.
On the whole, NARA officials’ efforts to register immigrants appear thwarted at nearly every turn, sometimes violently. Non-citizen residents in the Karachi localities of Machchar colony, Ibrahim Hyderi and Mauripur recently turned back visiting NARA officials with force, and NARA’s efforts outside of the metropolis enjoy no greater success. Attempts to register international migrants in the southern cities of Nooriabad and Thatta, in Sindh, and Hub, in Balochistan, have failed, casualties of patronage networks and organised resistance to the campaign. “The problem is that aliens have got powers to resist and help their other fellows to become Pakistanis”, an officer explains, noting that he and his colleagues are ill-equipped to overcome such tactics. NARA also suffers from more banal organisational woes, in particular cash shortage that prevents it from acquiring a fleet of vehicles or expanding its staff beyond its present four-dozen employees.
Patronage politics
Owing to its size and uncertain legal status, Karachi’s non-citizen community has enmeshed itself in the patronage networks of politicians and political parties, trading votes for political protection. The millions of non-citizen residents living in Karachi have proven to be a valuable vote bank for political parties, particularly for those with weak roots in the metropolis.
Mazhar Shaikh, an additional director general of NARA, expresses dismay at the nearly impossible task of registering non-citizen residents, the fault for which he says rests in large measure with their political connections. “A number of them have become elected nazims [mayors] and councillors, who stop their community members from getting registered”. He says that once elected, these officials push through NIC applications for other non-citizens to help them evade detection by NARA. Shaikh says that he has notified the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA), which issues NICs, about the difficulties NARA faces with identity card evasion tactics. A solution is yet to be found. “A joint line of action is under consideration”, says Shaikh, adding that the powers of some councillors to attest NIC applications may be suspended while discreet investigations are carried out. For its part, NADRA says that it is reviewing candidate filings in an attempt to root out politicians who lack citizenship.
Ejaz Shafi, a former MP who lost an election last year standing from Karachi as a candidate of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), has championed the cause of Bangladeshi migrants for more than a decade. In return he has received support from the thousands of immigrants for whom he has helped secure NICs and space on voter rolls. Though he lost last year’s race to a candidate of the religious parties alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, Shafi received strong support from the estimated 20,000 Bangla-speakers in his constituency. As a strong supporter of the community, he refuses to use to the term ‘alien’ to designate persons of Bangladeshi origin living in Pakistan. “They are Pakistanis in all respects, by all conditions universally accepted for citizenship”, he says.
Other parties, such as cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, Allama Tahir-ul-Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehrik, and former president Farooq Leghari’s Millat Party, have made concerted attempts to
cultivate Bangla speaking voters. Many political aspirants seek support from residents of Machchar colony, a squatter settlement inhabited by 50,000 Bangla-speakers on land owned by the Karachi Port Trust (KPT). The KPT has made several attempts to evict residents, but each time influential politicians come to the aid of the slum-dwellers. “When I was an MP from this area, I did not allow the KPT to evacuate them”, Shafi says, adding that he suggested instead that the port reclaim land from the upscale Clifton locality.
However, not all political parties cultivate the foreign-born vote – indeed, some doubt the calculations on immigrant electoral strength, and others have tapped into local resentment of the large Bengali community to mobilise support. A leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), an offshoot of a partition-era north Indian organisation of Urdu-speakers, argues that patronage networks have not worked to the advantage of immigrants, as despite being included on voter rolls, the government “cautiously sliced them out of Karachi’s population” when it came to distributing resources.
However, this has not stopped parties from pandering to non-citizens at election time, he says, and he accuses several of illegally registering non-citizens as voters. “Even rightwing Jamaat-i-Islami activists have put many Afghan voters on rolls in the city’s central district to harm the MQM”, he says. Another political mobiliser, this one from the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), perhaps the most powerful political force in Sindh, says that his group does not register non-citizens, as doing so would harm the interests of Pakistanis.
Controversy surrounding immigrants extends to the job market, where local resentment is perhaps more acute than in the field of politics. For non-citizens who find work, it is typically as domestic servants, as low-wage employees in the garment or fishing industries, or in jobs such as sugarcane pressing. Because they are usually willing to work for less pay
than native-born Pakistanis, they attract the ire of locals as well as muffled praise from employers, who tend to be exploitative.
Many ethnic and nationalist political organisations, as well as labor groups, regularly carry out campaigns against immigrant employment on the ground that recent arrivals damage the economic prospects of the native-born. Along with the MQM, the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) opposes the growing presence of non-citizen workers in Sindh’s economy. The parties’ election manifestoes accuse immigrants of depressing local wages, and promise improved job prospects for native-born (Urdu-speaking) Pakistanis once they are able to prevent migrants from participating in the economy. “These aliens are a burden on Sindh”, JSQM chairman Bashir Qureshi says, adding that it is the government’s responsibility to solve the problem.
Searching for ‘solutions’
The MQM’s Kunwar Khalid Younus argues that the government should settle the illegal immigration problem once and for all. “What we need is just the political will to do that”, he says. As far back as 1993, intelligence agencies considered competing proposals to ‘solve’ the problem, one being a massive repatriation scheme, primarily of Bangladeshis. This was deemed impractical, however, as for its part, Pakistan refuses to take in the ‘Biharis’ – the nearly 300,000 Urdu-speakers who have languished in 66 Bangladeshi urban refugee camps since the early 1970s. In any event, the ‘exporting’ countries are unlikely to cooperate with Islamabad’s repatriation schemes; in August 1996, Dhaka refused to accept 70 Bangladeshis deported from Karachi because they carried Pakistani NICs and passports.
What ‘solutions’, if any, can be found to the non-citizen resident question is a matter of pressing concern in Islamabad. In addition to launching NARA and debating the repatriation scheme, Islamabad has investigated other methods of regulating immigrants’ existence and bringing them within the scope of the law. There is a process by which non-citizens can secure legal residence and work status, but its costs are prohibitively expensive for most immigrants: until recently, PKR 10,000 (USD 180) and PKR 1000, respectively, for registration and work permit cards. Even after reductions to PKR 2500 and PKR 500, most non-citizens lack the finances to take advantage of these options, particularly when becoming ‘legal’ is not viewed as a pressing concern. “We often spend much less than this to get [forged] Pakistani documents”, a Bangladeshi migrant living in Federal B Area explains. For citizens of Bangladesh and Burma, there is also the option of formally applying for Pakistani citizenship under Rule 13/A of the Citizenship Act, though Islamabad has approved less than 1000 of such naturalisation applications till now.
Another idea is to provide migrants with transit back to their countries of origin on non-citizen Pakistani passports. A committee convened by the federal government, which included two Bangla speakers as ex-officio members, recommended the issuing of so-called ‘white passports’ to migrants from Bangladesh and Burma so that they may visit their countries of origin and migrate back, if so inclined. But to receive a white passport, migrants would first have to register with NARA and fill out Form E-I under the Citizenship Act, a step most non-citizen residents are hesitant to take. However, this plan possesses the advantage of offering an avenue for migrants to return to their birth countries, if they so desire, and some NGOs have expressed interest in facilitating such a process and providing financial support to
returnees.
While many Bangla speakers in Pakistan arrived relatively recently, there is also the challenge of adjudicating the citizenship claims of Bengalis whose residence dates to the 24 years between the 1947 partition and Bangladeshi
independence. The same federal committee that issued the recommendation about white passports also proposed granting Pakistani citizenship to Bengalis – not Bangladeshis – living in (West) Pakistan before the Bengali nationalist capture of Dhaka on 16 December 1971. After Bangladesh’s war of independence, fewer than 25,000 Bengalis opted to remain in Pakistan, according to NARA director general Shaikh, while most of the rest migrated to the former eastern wing. A 1978 amendment to the Citizenship Act nullified the Pakistani citizenship of those domiciled in erstwhile East
Pakistan. Bengalis remaining in Pakistan were required to submit a Form E-I to the home department of their province of residence and apply for citizenship, although according to the Sindh home department, no Bengalis submitted such forms in that province after the war. Many of these people have led a precarious legal existence for the past three decades.
The government committee also held meetings with Bengali community representatives and, in response to concerns that they lack documentary proof of residence, proposed that local police officials be empowered to recommend the granting of citizenship after verification. Critics, however, say that this proposal would only lead to massive corruption among police officers. Another widely shared concern among non-citizen residents is the suspicion that the entire government registration process is merely a plot to launch deportation proceedings once particulars are known to authorities. Interior ministry officials dismiss this claim, and note that none of the 35,000 migrants registered to date have been deported. “On the contrary, we are trying to resolve their civic and social problems, including extending
them educational, health and other facilities”, says one official. He also discloses that the government committee has been asked to review other countries’ immigration and citizenship policies in order to suggest improvements in Pakistan’s system.
13 kg of bad publicity
Debates about the role of ethnic-minority non-citizens in Pakistani society and politics, and the proposed methods of dealing with the concerns of and about them, are also coloured by anxieties about the supposedly dangerous and illegal practices of some elements of the immigrant population. Statements from Pakistan’s interior ministry indicate that there is increased official concern about non-citizen residents’ involvement with religious schools accused of fueling sectarian hatred, and with criminal activities ranging from burglaries and murder to international drug trafficking. A recent interior ministry socio-economic survey showed that non-citizens are concentrated in 22 localities of Karachi, many in ‘sensitive’ places near sea, oil and power installations and army cantonments, prompting the police to recommend mass evictions in these areas.
Concerns about links to religious violence are heightened given Karachi’s experience with sectarian violence. NARA research shows that the migrant community is making concentrated use of 29 government schools and nine hospitals, and operates 44 madrasas, about five percent of the city’s 869 Islamic schools. Regarding those schools, authorities say that, despite it being a small proportion of the city’s total, they are nevertheless worried about an influx of students into these largely unregulated institutions.
Today, most foreign students in the madrasas come from Afghan, Burmese or Bangladeshi backgrounds, although until two years ago there were also large numbers of African and Southeast Asian students. With the opening of the US military campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001, however, overseas enrolment in Karachi’s madrasas plummeted, and now foreign-born students represent only four percent of the 264,169 madrasa student total for Sindh, 85 percent of which is concentrated in Karachi, according to a recent police report.
The already precarious position of foreign-born residents in Karachi vis-à-vis the police is further complicated by military and law enforcement efforts associated with the US ‘war on terror’. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), with the help of Pakistani authorities, is closely monitoring mobile phone conversations in Pakistan, and has arrested hundreds of foreigners suspected of links to Al Qaeda and other militant outfits. The FBI conducts operations in the country with the blessings and assistance of Pakistani officials, who have toed the US line since September 2001. Among the several thousand people arrested to date in these operations, officials say that about 700 are non-Pakistanis, mostly Afghans and Arabs, but there are also some Africans, Bangladeshis and Burmese.
The police also highlight migrants’ participation in local crime, in particular their connections to robbery, kidnapping, narcotics smuggling, human trafficking and murder. “We have evidence of their involvement in serious offences, and we have recommended that the government take the issue seriously”, the inspector general of Sindh police, Syed Kamal Shah, alleges. According to a police report, non-citizens are implicated in a widespread network of trafficking girls from Bangladesh and Pakistan to the United Arab Emirates. Police also suspect that immigrants have worked as hired killers
in Karachi’s recent spate of high-profile murders.
These concerns came to the surface in late spring with the high-profile arrests of three Bengali drug smugglers. On 21 May, Bangladeshi airport authorities arrested three women traveling on Pakistani passports for possession of 13 kilograms of heroin valued at USD 2.25 million, one of the largest drug hauls ever in Dhaka. Pakistani authorities had tipped off their Bangladeshi counterparts, who discovered the contraband in paste tubes hidden in the women’s luggage. A preliminary investigation into the case by Pakistani officials uncovered that the traffickers were Karachi-based
Bengalis who had bribed officials to receive documents attesting Pakistani citizenship. According to Pakistani authorities, travel on forged or falsely issued Pakistani documents is quite common, though it is ‘real’ Pakistani citizens who receive a bad reputation for such practices. Several Afghans have also been caught committing similar crimes, though Bengalis are believed to be more frequent offenders.
The Dhaka drug bust, extensively covered in the Pakistani media, led to hand wringing and accusation-leveling in Karachi. An official of the PPP cites the heroin arrests as evidence of the negative consequences of migrants participating in the political process. Others point to the implications of the incident for the entire bureaucracy. A thorough investigation into the Dhaka case, if and when it occurs, could raise troubling questions about the efficiency and integrity of NARA, which issues NICs and prepares voting registers, as well as other departments in the internal affairs ministry, such as the passport-issuing authority. Precisely how long corrupt practices have been occurring, and the extent to which bribery permeates the system, are difficult to assess, although anecdotal evidence paints a worrying
picture.
The heroin arrests prompted great interest at least in part because they touched on another widely held concern about non-citizen residents – their alleged widespread drug use. According to a United Nations Development Programme report, drug abuse among immigrants in Pakistan is rampant, and because of needle-sharing authorities suspect that HIV is on the rise in the community. Even so, such drug use is both a cause of concern and a symptom of their perilous condition, as many take up the expensive indulgence to alleviate the psychological stress and general frustration of leading a quasi-legal existence.
Yet, whether it concerns illegal activities or dangerous habits, official and popular scrutiny of Bangla speakers is greater than that of native-born, Urdu-speaking Pakistanis, and there are concerns that allegations of criminal activity are being exaggerated to malign the community. An October 2001 report in the Dawn of Karachi on immigrants in Pakistan states, quoting police sources, that “the over-all involvement of Bengalis in crime is negligible”, and that “contrary to a general perception”, at most 200 Bengalis are involved in crime in Karachi. This appears to contradict some of NARA’s positions, such as the claim that non-citizen residents are “adding to the crime rate”. Given that persons who lack clear legal status will likely seek to avoid activities provoking the interest of law enforcement officials, there appear to be grounds for doubting some of NARA’ s more sweeping charges of mass criminality in the migrant community.

Ends

Children on frontline of Pakistan economic crisis

by Hasan Mansoor
 Abdus Sattar Edhi remembers a tearful mother who agonised over whether or not to abandon her three-year-old son to charity after her husband lost his job.    "Three years ago, we used to receive a couple of kids across the country a day, but the number is rising mainly because our people's economic situation is weakening," said Edhi, who heads the charitable Edhi Foundation.    "Now we receive one or two kids every day just in Karachi, and across the country five or six," he said.    On the porch outside the charity's head office in Pakistan's depressed economic capital of Karachi, metal cradles hang from chains beneath a sign that reads: "Do not kill, lay them here."    Parents lay up to 40 children a month in the cradles -- a heartbreaking indication of just how tough it has become to feed and clothe families in a country where the economic situation is worsening almost daily.    Already reeling from years of constant bomb attacks, regional insurgencies, and battles between government troops and Islamist extremists in the northwest, Pakistani economy has little positives to offer to its 170 million population.    Food prices have soared and overall inflation is rising again after a brief decline from all-time high 25 percent in 2009.    In November 2009, the International Monetary Fund approved a 7.6 billion-dollar bail-out package to stabilise Pakistan's economy and avoid a balance of payments crisis and defaults on foreign loans.    Pakistan's crippling energy shortages have been blamed on corruption, short-sightedness, debts, a creaking distribution system and a lack of money or refusal to invest public funds in renewable energy as demand grows.    Pakistan produces only around 80 percent of its electricity needs and each year as temperatures rise towards 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), furious crowds riot across the country, heaping pressure on the unpopular government.    White-collar jobs are also disappearing as managers struggle to keep businesses afloat.    According to Edhi, this was the undoing of Jehan Ara, who in floods of tears lay her toddler in a crib as she could no longer to afford to care for him.    "She said 'I'm leaving him until we have the means to raise him. His father is a labourer who has lost his job in a mill and my earnings are not enough to feed him and my two older kids'," Edhi remembered.    The foundation runs 18 centres across the country, housing more than 2,000 children at any one time. In Karachi, there are about 200.    The children live in dormitories, attend school classes, share a communal play area and go on monthly outings.    Sometimes, Edhi said, the children ask where their parents are.    "Someone threw me in the cradle and I've been here ever since. It is now my family," says Mohsin, who is nicknamed Kaka, meaning little boy.    Anwer Kazmi, an official at Edhi's foundation, said there are 320 cradles outside Edhi offices nationwide, including 40 in Karachi.    -- As times getting tougher, more children are left --    Pakistan has suffered from crushing poverty since it was created almost 64 years ago when a century of British rule ended. Today it is number 125 on the UN's human development index of 169 countries.    Pakistan's gross domestic product (GDP) has plunged to 2 percent in the current fiscal year, which was six percent at its peak in 2008.    "If people stop leaving their children at my doorstep it would show Pakistan is on the path of prosperity," said Edhi. "But since cradles are continuously filling at my centres, I don't see it happening in near future."    On the pavement outside a nearby restaurant, kitchen staff set down lentil soup and bread -- charity for the children.    Kaiser Bengali, an economist and former member of the government's economic council, said 40 percent of Pakistan's population live on one dollar a day or less. The government puts the figure at 33 percent.    Food prices that have increased manifold since 2005 only made the poor poorer, Bengali said.    Imran Ali, 32, worked in a knitwear factory in Karachi's slum neighbourhood of Korangi, where he earned 200-300 rupees (2.5 to 3.6 dollars) a day depending on how many shirts he stitched, until his services were terminated.    "I am a father of four and can't afford to live without working. It's impossible to find a job anywhere now and people like me don't have the savings to start working independently," he said.    With little hope of finding another job, he says his family depends on what his 14-year-old son earns selling flowers at traffic lights to supplement his wife's salary as a maid.    "Their earnings are too little to buy bread for all and keep the other kids in school," he said.    Pakistan, which has watched arch rival India embark on the path to prosperity and regional superpower status, was slapped with heavy sanctions after going nuclear in 1998, further suffocating economic development.    Former president Pervez Musharraf's decision within hours of the September 11, 2001 attacks to back the US-led "war on terror" saw Washington pump in 10 billion dollars of aid money and cancel billions more in foreign debt.    Economists warn against a vicious cycle, saying mounting economic problems boost civil disturbances and fan the flames of militancy.    The government has blamed the economic woes on the fight against terrorism, but many ordinary people accuse the authorities of squandering aid money.

Child misery behind Pakistan's festive bangles

by Hasan Mansoor
Ten-year-old Mohammad Adnan leans towards the blazing furnace, moulding bangles for up to 12 hours a day to earn 18 cents to help feed his Pakistani family. "I'm just starting and can make six to seven tora (300 bangles) a day and earn 14 to 15 rupees," said Adnan, a smile on his tired face in Pakistan's southern city of Hyderabad. Adnan is just one of thousands of Pakistani children toiling to manufacture the popular glass bracelets that adorn the arms of practically every woman who can afford them in the south Asian nation of 170 million.    The jewellery is particularly popular on festive occasions such as this week's Eid al-Fitr celebration that marks the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In the build-up to Eid, Pakistani artisans work overtime, hunched for hours over fires to churn out bangles in every possible colour, exerting maximum effort for least reward at the bottom of a high-earning industry. Mohammad Kaleem, Adnan's father, is one of the best paid, earning 3,000 rupees (36 dollars) a month for carving names and designs onto the thin glass. "I inherited this art from my father and now I am transferring it to my son," Kaleem said. Pakistan's bangle industry started on the banks of the Indus river in 1947 when a large number of artisans migrated to Hyderabad as British colonialists partitioned the Indian sub-continent, creating two independent nations. But for every bangle given as a present in wealthy homes this Eid, lies a disturbing tale of child labour, poverty and Dickensian misery. A 2004 survey commissioned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) found that 10,000 children aged five to 17 -- 1,000 of them younger than 10 and 29 percent of them girls -- were working in the bangle industry in Hyderabad. Most of them come from poor homes with illiterate parents, dropping out of school because of poverty. "I couldn't go to school after fourth grade because the whole family has to work to survive and our jobs coincide with school time," said 14-year-old Mohammad Kamran. Pakistan's last national child labour survey in 1996 said 3.3 million children were at work. Since then, the overall population has risen by 30 million and charities say the figures are much higher. "We believe these official figures are unrealistically low," says Pakistan's Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child. "With at least 23 million children of school-going age not attending school, the actual number of child laborers must be higher," its website says. The ILO survey said 86 percent of the children worked full-time and that nearly 58 percent spoke of sickness or injury. The children suffer from fever, skin disease, cuts, wounds, headaches and backache due to heavy loads. The study highlighted the risks of working for hours at a time near the furnaces used for moulding and joining, and also from toxic chemicals used in coating and painting. In a closed room of a Hyderabad slum, Fatima Ali, 35, cuts a cylinder of glass into batches of 300, then starts to smooth the bangles over a flame. "I work along with my husband, three sons and two daughters (who are aged eight to 15) all day, yet we earn little more than 6,000 rupees (75 dollars) a month -- not enough to live a better life," she said. Fatima said she wore a bangle just once -- at her wedding 18 years ago. "I can't wear it now, because I feel no attraction in its colours and glitter like other women," she said.

Floods rupture Pakistani feudal ties

by Hasan Mansoor
SUKKUR: Bakhsh Ali Lashari has spent the last year living in a tent since floods devastated a third of Pakistan. His home is no longer under water, but death threats mean he's never going back.

The monsoon-triggered floods -- the worst in Pakistani history -- affected up to 21 million people, killed another 1,750 and ran up losses of $10 billion; a year later a shattered economy has barely recovered.
Lashari's part of southern Pakistan was one of the worst hit areas, submerged in gushing waters that took months to recede. But the disaster gave him a chance to break free from centuries of oppression.

He is one of thousands who prefer life in rotting camps to returning to feudal estates where debts and marriages can end in death.

Lashari had a steady income as a labourer in Jacobabad, 375 kilometres (234 miles) north of Karachi, but said life became unbearable when an influential tribe took against one of their women marrying one of his relatives.

"The couple suddenly disappeared and the influential tribe threatened all of us with death," said Lashari, wearing just baggy shalwar trousers and standing in a tent city on the fringes of Sukkur city.

"We couldn't have moved away in normal circumstances. Then the floods came and we fled. It was a blessing in disguise. We are not going back now."

His camp, lying under a bridge, was one of scores set up by foreign aid groups, the United Nations and local charities in August 2010.

But as waters have receded, many relief organisations abandoned the camps, dismantling education programmes and leaving behind uncomfortable, sagging tents where thousands have remained, either unable or unwilling to go home.

"They have nothing to lose if they don't go home," said Jaffer Memon, who edits a newspaper in the southern city of Hyderabad and who worked as a volunteer during the floods.

"In fact they'll get rid of feuds, burgeoning debts and lethal customs that force them to marry off minor daughters to elderly men to settle feuds, and kill their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters in the name of honour," said Memon.

Deedar Ali Jatoi, an ailing grandfather from the town of Garhi Khero, whose entire family has moved into tents, couldn't agree more. His community was locked in a feud with a rival tribe that killed dozens of loved ones on both sides.

"We've decided never to return. We don't want to put our lives in danger again," he told AFP in the same tent city on the edge of Sukkur, where women cook on makeshift wooden stoves and younger children play naked outside.

"We are poor peasants but as members of a tribe we're bound to follow our chieftains and fight against rivals. But I don't want to see any of my children killed in such feuds."

"We have started earning now and can support our families. We're not going anywhere. We want homes here, not there," Jatoi said.

In Hyderabad, hundreds of flood survivors are camped out in the corridors of buildings of a new fruit market. Most found the wages double what they were earning back home -- up to $4.50 a day for menial jobs.

Those who returned home have tales of woe. "Our houses have been under water for months and are too dangerous to live in," said Virsingh Patel, 34, a peasant from a Hindu village near Hyderabad.

"We were given just a few bricks to construct our homes. We have no money to purchase cement and extra bricks to make our homes safe," said Patel.

Nadeem Ahmed, who was chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority during the floods, acknowledged the shortcomings, which he attributed to a lack of donation pledges -- in sharp contrast with the response after the 2005 earthquake.

"Now where things have really gone wrong is the reconstruction," he told reporters in Islamabad on Thursday.

"Out of those $10 billion required for reconstruction, I think hardly $1 billion or $1.5 billion have been committed so far. So there is a huge gap towards rebuilding or reconstruction."

In Patel's village, Radha Kolhi, 50, pointed to a picture of her dead husband hanging on a cracked wall and clothes and utensils lumped in a corner.

"Even if we can rebuild our house, we'll never live without fear. "The flood washed away the hurdles between us and the river, so now even a smaller flood can send us in camps," she said.
July 2011

Pakistan's poor dying in Karachi violence

by Hasan Mansoor

KARACHI: Life stopped for Pakistani cab driver Ghulam Mohammed when his seven-year-old daughter was shot dead on her way home from school, a victim of senseless political and ethnic violence sweeping Karachi.

Shumaila was Mohammed's only child, born after he and his wife struggled for 12 years to have a baby. It took two stray bullets to bury all the hopes and dreams they had for the future.

"She was the one who gave meaning to our life. Now we have no reason to live," said the tearful 36-year-old, a resident of Qasba Colony, one of a series of troubled neighbourhoods in western Karachi turned into a battlefield.

Shumaila was one of 300 people whom the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) says died in political and ethnically linked shootings in Karachi last month and one of the 1,000 killed since the start of this year.

She was carrying her books when the bullets pierced her abdomen and splintered a rib. Seriously wounded, she was eventually picked up by an ambulance after medics struggled to access the street under gunfire.

"Someone told me my daughter had been shot and I rushed to hospital despite all the risks, only to find her dead in the morgue," Mohammed said.

Many link the killings to rising tensions between the Mohajirs, the Urdu-speaking majority represented by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and Pashtun migrants affiliated to the Awami National Party (ANP).

The native Baloch and Sindhis also blame MQM for attacks and vice versa. Karachi is Pakistan's financial capital and, with a population of around 18 million, its largest city.

Helped by its Arabian Sea port, industry in Karachi is thought to account for around a fifth of the country's GDP. But authorities appear powerless to stop the bloodshed, human rights activists say, pointing out that most of the victims are innocent civilians.

"People have been killed because of their political affiliations, but it seems most are killed because of their ethnic background," Zohra Yusuf, chairwoman of the HRCP, told AFP.

"The majority of them are poor and destitute."

Shumaila was Pashtun. Her father arrived in Karachi from the northwest 20 years ago looking for work and then settled down and got married.

Today the northwest is on the frontline of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked bomb attacks and the migrant flow to Karachi is even greater.

Shumaila's bereaved parents live on a congested street in a neighbourhood of Urdu and Pashtun speakers, where trigger-happy gunmen from both sides can quickly reduce the area into a battlefield.

HRCP says Karachi suffers political, ethnic and sectarian "polarisation". But the government blames vague mafias involved in land grabbing and drug pushing for the killings, and for creating "misunderstandings" among political parties and ethnic hatred.

"It should not be called ethnic violence," said Sharfuddin Memon, an official in the home ministry of the southern province Sindh, of which Karachi is the capital.

"The mafias are killing people in such a manner that rival communities and parties are left with the impression of an ethnic war which is not there. The mafias do this to get stronger and weaken the writ of the state."

The Urdu-speaking family of Anwer Ali, 22, say he was walking to work when unknown gunmen shot him dead.

"He was the only bread earner for his mother and two sisters," said his cousin Mohsin Ali. The family rent a one-room house in a squatter settlement near the area of Katti Pahari, a flashpoint for the most recent violence, and are deeply frightened about the future.

It is not just shootings. People have seen everything they own go up in smoke, with their houses, buildings and vehicles set alight by arsonists. Despite the deployment of extra police and paramilitary forces, residents complain that the security personnel do nothing to help.

Leaders in the MQM and ANP have blamed each other.

"Mafias are involved in the killings, but armed wings of political parties have played a big role in creating the mess," said Tauseef Ahmed Khan, who teaches mass communications at Urdu University.

The armed wings work to maintain party influence, prevent rival groups from infiltrating their territories and force people to remain loyal, he said.

"There are killings on ethnic grounds while most of the victims are poor people who don't know the reason why they are being killed," Khan said.
August 2011

Pakistan sex workers on AIDS frontline

by Hasan Mansoor
A prostitute born and brought up in Karachi's Napier Road red-light district, Shumaila never heard about HIV and AIDS until recently. Today, she carries condoms but clients refuse to wear them.

"None of us were aware about the danger of AIDS looming over us for years but now we all know and can avoid it," said the tall 29-year-old who lives in a Victorian-style building in the heart of the neighbourhood.

Shumaila's awareness -- rare among Pakistan sex workers -- is thanks to the Gender and Reproductive Health Forum, a local charity that runs a UN-funded programme in Napier Road teaching prostitutes about the perils of HIV/AIDS.
"So far we have provided hundreds of thousands of condoms to sex workers in the last two years, which have saved them from being infected with the lethal virus," said Mirza Aleem Baig, who runs the forum.

Karachi, Pakistan's largest metropolis and one of the biggest Muslim cities in the world, has up to 100,000 female sex workers, according to data gathered by Pakistan Society, a local welfare organisation.

"This is 20 percent of their overall population in Pakistan. Lahore comes next with 75,000 sex workers," Saleem Azam, head of the charity, told AFP.

Prostitution may be illegal but it has prospered in an increasingly Islamised Pakistan, where an economic downturn and widening poverty have forced women and men onto the streets to meet the rising cost of living.

Shaheena, 38, is a home-based sex worker. She is a skilled paramedic but seldom finds a permanent job.

"So I opted to enter this business on the side," she told AFP, veiling her face to hide her identity.

"I have sibblings, cousins, nephews and nieces who don't know about my second profession. So I don't want to identify myself to embarass them.

"But it's a question of survival as none of my relatives support me with money. They are all too stretched themselves," she said.

Azam says more than 60 percent of Pakistan's prostitutes work from homes or ply the streets, while the elite serve wealthy clients from kothikhanas (houses or rooms) in plush neighbourhoods.

This year's annual UN report on AIDS said while the epidemic in Asia appears to be stable overall, HIV prevalence is increasing in some parts of the region, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan.

A survey published in the report said 60 percent of female sex workers and 45 percent of their male clients in Karachi and Lahore do not know that condoms can prevent transmission of HIV. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afp9PQNMM00]
Of those that do, few protect themselves. "The number of our clients who agree to wear a condom is very small. Female condoms are not available, which can save us more effectively," said Nasreen, another prostitute in Napier Road.

"I can't carry condoms in my purse on the street as we're vulnerable to the police and could be arrested if they find them," said Afshan, 29, who walks the city's busy streets looking for clients.

The most recent survey conducted by Pakistan's state-run National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) in 2006 said only 18 percent of sex workers reported always using condoms.

The UN report estimates that around 97,000 people, or 0.1 percent of the population, live with HIV in Pakistan. The government says only 5,000 people are infected.

NACP says the disease is spreading among high-risk groups, especially drug users, who mostly inject and use dirty needles, raising fears the virus could spread quickly from addicts to prostitutes.

In 2006, Pakistan said HIV/AIDS prevalence among female sex workers was around 0.02 percent, but independent bodies put it much higher.

"It is at least 15 percent," said Azam. "They are totally at the mercy of their clients. Most of their clients refuse to wear condoms," he said.

"In Pakistan, this business is illegal, thus there is no law to seriously tackle the issue and save precious lives. Yet a way-out is desperately needed on humanitarian grounds."

Baig said he had identified an HIV-positive sex worker a few months ago and tried to help her with treatment and a new job but she left because her colleagues considered her a blot on their business.

"Now, no one knows where she is and what she is doing," he said.