Afghan scavengers in Karachi crosshairs

by Hasan Mansoor

Barkat Khan was shot dead as he slept, curled up in the muck in one of the roughest parts of Karachi. He was a dirt-poor 13-year-old Afghan who never went to school and never dared to dream of a better life.
   Friends say he was an innocent victim of an increasingly vicious cycle of ethnic violence in Pakistan's largest city, a battleground between economic migrants from the northwest and Afghanistan, and original settlers from India.
   Barkat was one of more than 20,000 children -- the vast majority of them Afghans -- who work for $2 a day, collecting rubbish dumped by the 18 million residents of Karachi.
   They toil from dawn to night, braving the punishing summer climate and health dangers posed by toxic waste. Without passports and legal status, they have little protection.
   And now they are caught up in one of Pakistan's most under-reported wars: the violence that tears neighbourhoods of the country's richest city to shreds, trampling underfoot the unknown and the defenceless.
   "Karachi has become too dangerous. People are being killed indiscriminately, among them, my friend," said a mournful 12-year-old Jamali, picking up a soggy piece of cardboard.
   He and Barkat came to Pakistan as babies when their parents fled the southern city of Kandahar when US-led troops invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.
   Like tens of thousands of Afghans, the family eventually moved to Karachi in search of work, abandoning their first port of call, the southwestern city of Quetta where Taliban and their families are said to have settled.
   "Barkat started collecting garbage right after arriving in Karachi, along with his father. Our families lived together for some time," said Jamali.
   Five years later, Barkat was dead, shot in May at point blank range as he slept outside a food stall that offers free dinners to Karachi's poorest. His parents are devastated by the loss of their only child.
   "Barkat was a lovable boy, very hardworking, who wanted to earn a lot of money to see his parents happy, especially his mother who is shattered after his death," said his cousin, Mohammad Mukhtar, 19, who also collects rubbish.
   "Relatives told me that she hasn't yet recovered from the shock."

                        -- Rising death toll --
                        -----------------------
   Police say Barkat was an unwitting victim of ethnic and political violence that has reached record levels in Karachi, Pakistan's economic powerhouse, which accounts for 42 percent of GDP.
   The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says more than 1,100 people have been killed so far this year -- the vast majority without any political affiliation whatsoever.
   If the killings continue at the same pace, 2012 will top the 1,715 who perished last year, itself the worst death toll in 16 years.
   The troubles are blamed on Mohajirs, Urdu speakers who migrated from India after partition and who dominate the city, and an influx of Pashtuns from Afghanistan and Pakistan's northwest.
   Migration and population growth have put enormous pressure on resources in the Arabian Sea port city, where the economy has been under serious pressure since 9/11.
   The Mohajirs are represented by the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), led by Altaf Hussain, who exiled himself to Britain in 1992 over threats to his life.
   It has 52 seats in the Sindh provincial assembly, while the secular Awami National Party (ANP), the leading Pashtun representation in Karachi, has two seats.
   According to official figures, there are 500,000 Afghans in the city, 80 percent registered as refugees and the rest undocumented or illegal economic migrants.
   The vast majority of them live in poverty, like Jamali who lives in Koochi, one of three ghettos reserved for Afghans in the city.
   His family live near the neighbourhood where a UN doctor from Ghana was shot while working on a polio vaccination programme that had been condemned by the Taliban.
   But the rag-pickers live at around 400 compounds dotted around the city, divided by bamboo into dozens of cubicles shaded from the sun by polythene sheets.
   Each cubicle is shared by two to three, who pile up plastic bags stuffed with waste to snatch a few hours' sleep, before rising at dawn to start again.
              -- "Nobody knows when a bullet will hit" --
              -------------------------------------------
   Karachi produces around 12,000 tons of waste a day and has no proper solid waste disposal system. Much of it goes into the drains or is dumped along roads or across the city.
   Part of it ends up at government designated landfill sites, which seldom handle waste disposal on any scientific basis.
   Contractors pay money to their parents every week, based on the weight of the rubbish they collect, and the children eat at restaurants and charities offering free meals, in order to save as much of their salaries as possible for their families.
   The refuse is sold onto middlemen, who sell it to recycling factories -- paper, cardboard, copper, iron, animal bones and other discarded articles are all in high demand.
   Officials say rag-pickers do a valuable job, but that there are risks involved.
   Rana Asif Habib, head of Initiator, a charity working for underprivileged children, says they handle hospital waste without the necessary protection kits, leading to contractions of diseases such as hepatitis and scabies.
   "They also get infected by eating food from the garbage. They can't afford to see a doctor. If they want to, no state-run hospitals treat them well."
   Afghans are particularly vulnerable, he added.
   "They are often antagonised by police and their employers, but they can't complain because they are not Pakistanis."
   Despite the dangers, Jamali still thinks Karachi is better than Afghanistan.
   "Karachi is very dangerous. Nobody knows when a bullet will hit, yet we have a lot more opportunities here. We are not going anywhere now."
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.

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 children rescued from ‘madrassa’ chains

by Hasan Mansoor
KARACHI, Dec 13, 2011 (AFP) - Pakistani police said Tuesday they had rescued 53 students, including children as young as seven, who had been chained in the basement of a madrassa raided by security forces in the port city of Karachi.

Former students including an eight-year-old told AFP they were regularly beaten at the school, which was equipped with chains, hooks and a warren of basement rooms. The head of an education federation called it a "torture cell".

Police said 21 teenagers were among those found during the raid on the self-styled seminary in Pakistan's biggest city, used by the United States to ship supplies to troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Two children aged seven and another aged about eight were among those rescued, Naeem Akram, deputy inspector general of Karachi police, told AFP.

Madrassas, which provide the poorest families with the only education they can afford, are not tightly regulated in Pakistan and have served as recruitment grounds for the Taliban and other Al-Qaeda-linked terror groups.

Police said the students were chained up because they were drug addicts whom the madrassa "wanted to rehabilitate", but many details remain unclear.

The three-storey building is in northern Karachi, isolated from the city's congested and densely populated areas, meaning there were no neighbours who could corrobate details of the police raid or the conditions inside.

The basement was a maze of rooms, according to an AFP photographer, while an AFP reporter saw chains and hooks.Accounts given to AFP by students and relatives indicated that impoverished families believed the madrassa could offer treatment to drug addicts and a religious education to the youngest boys.

Azmat Ulla, a 17-year-old student, said his father sent him there because he suffered fits and could be violent.

"My father took me to several spiritual healers who said I was a victim of black magic," Ullah said."Three months ago I was admitted here," he told AFP.

"My father pays 3,000 rupees (34 dollars) per month to the madrassa as a fee to make me a normal person, but I still suffer from fits and despite that they kept me chained and beat me with sticks ruthlessly," Ullah added.

Mohammad Ashraf said he had sent his eight-year-old son Mushtaq Ahmed to the madrassa believing he would receive a religious education.

"I didn't know the madrassa management would beat him so mercilessly. I will no longer keep my son in this madrassa," he said.

His son, Mushraq, said the teachers beat the students daily. "I don't know why they kept young children with adults here," he added.

Police official Akram Khan told AFP it was a "complex situation" and there would be "no clear picture until police collect all the evidence".

"Relatives of the elder boys and men say they had sent them for drug addiction rehabilitation, while younger children's relatives say they were sent for religious studies," he told AFP.

Hanif Jullandhri, head of a federation of Pakistani madrassas, told Express television that the premises was not registered.

"We strongly condemn this and urge the government to take the harshest possible action against its owners. The government should investigate how such torture cells are established and operated," he said.

At least 15,148 seminaries in Pakistan educate more than two million students -- around five percent of the 34 million children in formal education -- according to official statistics.

But officials suspect thousands more go unregistered, providing sons of Pakistan's poverty-stricken majority with the only education they can afford.