65 killed in Karachi violence

by Hasan Mansoor   
Ethnic and criminal violence blamed on gangs has killed 65 people in Pakistan's financial capital of Karachi, with police the latest victims shot dead in a brazen ambush, officials said Saturday.    The government has been left struggling for solutions to the worst wave of unrest to sweep the city in 16 years as extra deployments of police and paramilitary officers appear unable to stem the troubles.    Spiralling unrest is a major source of concern in Pakistan's biggest city, which is used by NATO to ship the bulk of its supplies to troops fighting in Afghanistan and which accounts for around a fifth of the country's GDP.    The violence has been linked to ethnic 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).    Gunmen ambushed police late on Friday, sparking gunbattles in which four officers were killed and more than 30 others wounded, officials said, bringing the death toll to 65 since Wednesday morning.    The police commandos, dressed in plain clothes, were targeted in the eastern neighbourhood of Korangi, which had previously been immune from the troubles.    "These policemen were in a van going on a raid on a tip-off when they were intercepted by armed men who started firing, injuring many policemen," senior police official Shaukat Hussain told AFP.    "The police returned fire and at least one attacker has been killed."    Television footage showed injured policemen being carried by their comrades and local residents into ambulances and private vehicles heading to hospital.    "Our hospital has received 32 injured policemen, four of whom are critically injured. They all have gunshot wounds," said Seemin Jamali, spokeswoman for the Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre.    Karachi city police chief Saud Mirza told AFP that four policemen were killed.    Speaking after the funerals of the dead policeman on Saturday, provincial police chief Wajid Durrani said two of the attackers who fired at the police van were arrested.    "We have caught two attackers and we are interrogating them about others," Durrani said, adding that 18 people who were kidnapped on Friday had been retrieved by police.    Provincial home minister Manzoor Wasan said he could not give details about which parties or ethnic groups were involved in the violence, but said that "some 100 suspects had been arrested so far".    Witnesses in Korangi said there were pockets of intense gunfire between armed groups with ordinary people too frightened to leave home. Dominated by Urdu speakers, the area also has Pashtun, Baluch and Sindhi populations.    Karachi, currently a city of 18 million inhabitants and the country's economic powerhouse, has seen its population explode since independence in 1947.    Its neighbourhoods have been swollen by a huge influx of migrants from across the country, but particularly the deprived Pashtun northwest, looking for jobs and more recently to escape Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked violence.    Speaking off the record because they were not authorised to release the information to the media, two security officials confirmed that 65 people had now died in violence in Karachi since Wednesday morning.    The city's worst-affected areas are impoverished and heavily populated neighbourhoods where most of the criminal gangs are believed to be hiding.    Independent economist A.B. Shahid estimated that 20 percent of the city's business was shut down on Thursday with markets closed in southern neighbourhoods to protest against extortion money demanded by criminal gangs.    Underlining the brutality of the violence, one security official said bodies of those kidnapped and killed had been stuffed in sacks before being dumped in various parts of the city.    He said the bullet-riddled bodies of four young men who worked for a mobile phone company had been found in a van with their hands and feet trussed in the impoverished Shershah neighbourhood.    "At least 20 killed on Thursday were kidnapped and tortured by armed gangsters. Their bodies were later stuffed in sacks and thrown away in different areas," the security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.    Notes had been left inside the pockets of clothes worn by some of the victims that read "Want more bodies?", the official said.    The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 800 people have been killed in Karachi so far this year, compared with 748 in 2010.

TV accused of fanning Pakistan political instability

by Hasan Mansoor
Pakistan's television networks are heaping political pressure on an increasingly unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari with critical and influential programming that pretend to offer a voice to the poor. In the decade since military ruler Pervez Musharraf issued licences and softened state control on media after seizing power, more than 50 channels have mushroomed in the country, with around half dedicated to news broadcasts. The channels have become campaigners against the leadership, have whipped up fervour for and against the Taliban, have embarrassed the security services and sown fear with 24-seven coverage of attacks beamed into living rooms. "The government is under constant pressure from the media," Mutahir Sheikh, head of international relations at Karachi University, says. A Gallup survey claimed that more than half of Pakistanis -- 57 percent of those polled -- blame the media for stirring up political instability in the country, which has known regular periods of military rule.    There are dozens of private satellite channels based in Pakistan and abroad that present every possible political opinion, pumping out news and debate in Urdu, English and provincial languages to the country's 170 million people. Owned by newspaper groups, wealthy businessmen and private individuals, critics accuse them of sensationalism and peddling conspiracy theories, particularly about perceived interference from India and the United States. Renowned author Ahmed Rashid accused talk show hosts of "demonising the elected government, trying to convince viewers of global conspiracies against Pakistan led by India and the United States or insisting that the recent campaign of suicide bomb blasts... is being orchestrated by foreigners. "The campaign waged by some politicians and parts of the media -- with underlying pressure from the army -- is all about trying to build public opinion to make Mr Zardari's tenure untenable," he had written on the BBC website. authorities banned a Dubai-based show presented by an outspoken critic of the government on Pakistan's most influential private channel, Geo. "The government is unnerved and uneasy over the independent criticism it faces in our unbiased programmes. But instead of countering argument with argument it goes for tactics which bring more embarrassment," said Azhar Abbas, Geo's managing director. In 2009, the authorities cut live footage broadcast by some TV channels of a deeply embarrassing 20-hour siege on the Pakistani army's headquarters. Television channels were seen as having influenced a government decision to publish a list of officials, including Zardari, who have benefited from an amnesty on graft accusations. Now, they extensively propagate every case in the Supreme Court, which could embarrass the authorities. Many say the media play a vital role in shaping public opinion in a country where nearly half the population are illiterate. "Independent media has empowered the underprivileged people to express themselves, which is itself a revolutionary change," said Fateh Muhammad Burfat, a sociology professor at Karachi University. "But, at the same time, it carries along its own agenda and influence people to buy it." The channels supported a movement to restore ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in 2009, siding with opposition leader Nawaz Sharif until Zardari's government caved in, reinstating him to avert violence in the capital. Television executives believe their news helps inculcate democracy and gives a voice to the disenfranchised, who get little assistance from the state. "We adopt very democratic methods. Here you find people from both sides," said Talat Hussain, a top official and anchorperson at Dawn News. "The impression that we create chaos in society is not true," said Hussain. "In Pakistan people have utmost faith in two institutions -- judiciary and media. Our people pin their hopes on us and we do whatever we can to make ours a better society," said Hussain.

Nusrat Bhutto: From Wife of a dictator’s apprentice to mother of democracy

by Hasan Mansoor

How many Iranians one knows who are revered religiously in Pakistan without having any religious reasons! Begum Nusrat Bhutto is the only person whose name comes in the minds of all and sundry.
She was a dashing and gorgeous women whom people saw with utter admiration in sarees and modern outfits until her husband was hanged by General Zia, the sorcerer of darkness.
Zia’s policies to convert a pluralistic and tolerant society into a mob of fanatics forced the Bhutto ladies as well to compromise on their liberal outlook to stay with the people, the nest where party’s Phoenix is to be reborn.
That was the first sacrifice the Bhutto ladies rendered — the smallest of all, which started with Bhutto’s hanging and continued with the murders of Shahnawaz and Murtaza.
Benazir had to sacrifice her own life later, so miseries for Nusrat remained unbound and never stopping. Even, now when she has breathed her last, her death has further divided the estranged royal family.
Nusrat Ispahani was an Iranian from Kurdistan Province, daughter of a businessman who settled in Karachi, British India before its partition. Nusrat met Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Karachi where she became his second wife – in fact second to none as the events unfolded later proved.
A loving mother and perfect host had to enter the practical politics when her husband was opposed to Ayub Khan. He was jailed and persecuted that brought the first test of his wife’s skill to play as a capable alternative. This was her first stint as a politician, which most chroniclers forget.
She became the most powerful and charming First Lady till mid-1970s but that was just the beginning of a Shakespearian tragedy.
A tragedy allows one to find the strength within. She found it after General Zia’s coup, which was bloodless at the outset but proved to be the bloodiest of all dictatorial rules Pakistan was inflicted with by the men with the long boots.
She saw her husband tortured to death in a dark and filthy cell before being herself jailed along with daughter Benazir.

She received a head injury in the baton charge by Zia’s cronies at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore . That wound was not timely treated and most party elders said its lasting injurious effect on her gradually disabled her.

Young Shahnawaz Bhutto was found dead in an apartment in France, the reason of whose death is still a mystery.
She wanted to make elder son Murtaza Bhutto, the male heir of Bhutto dynasty, his husband’s political successor while Benazir was already the party’s co-chairperson, the party’s de facto chief.
The later events showed Murtaza’s political acumen was in huge contradistinction to his elder sister. Besides, Benazir had shown herself a national popular leader, while Murtaza had been unaware of how Pakistani politics had changed its nomenclature.
Quite spectacularly, the male-dominant Pakistani society loved Benazir the most, although Murtaza was Bhutto’s son – a man who is supposed to take charge of family affairs in this conservative Muslim country.
Nusrat Bhutto had proved herself a loving wife, a great political leader when the husband was judicially murdered, but now when the things had eased out a bit she turned herself what she originally was — a mother, who wanted to see her son touching the heights of glory.
She was the emotional force, besides other well known factors, which brought Mir Murtaza to Pakistan after 18 years of exile. Murtaza remained estranged to his sister after the homecoming and formed his own Peoples Party.
He hardly secured a seat for himself from Larkana, which, most voters and party cadres said, was a gift from his mother, who in person had gone all out to beg votes for him.
On Murtaza’s first visit to his father’s grave, she escaped a firing incident near Bhutto’s house in Larkana, Al-Murtaza, as Shahid Rind, a party jiyala, sustained bullets while covering her and died on the spot.
Nusrat Bhutto was pronounced physically dead on October 23, but she was emotionally and clinically dead on September 20, 1996, when Murtaza had been gunned down in a police encounter staged by the deep state. She lost everything she loved; her consciousness was the last asset she got deprived of. Alzheimer preyed on her in predetory proportions till she breathed her last.
Murtaza’s family blamed Benazir and then her spouse President Zardari of taking the old lady hostage — a blame the accused have always denied.
Insiders said even a known rights activist had tried to mediate between the two sides to allow Nusrat to live with the whole family, but to no avail.

Nusrat Bhutto was the last of Bhuttos who will be remembered for her close liaison with enthusiastic party workers, labourers, peasants and other poor segments of society. On many occasions she escaped narrowly from rains of bullets while taking part in workers’ rallies.

Workers of Musawat and Hilal-e-Pakistan newspapers — the former an Urdu and the latter a Sindhi newspaper and party’s erstwhile mouth organs — still recall fond memories of her who never rejected a demand made by the workers.
“The Bhuttos had always helped the poor and workers. They had always saved the institutions that benefited the poor,” a worker said.
She lived a vibrant life and died a passive death. Her death in remote environs, for sure, has enlivened the forgotten tracts that made a dictator’s apprentice the people’s darling and his grave the ultimate headquarters for the rulers to come.

October 2011