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.

 

Seperate prisons for jihadis

by Hasan Mansoor
Experts involved in operations against Islamist militants and sectarian terrorists have suggested that the government should set up a separate jail for hardcore militants of banned outfits. They want to establish at least one prison in each of the four provinces where such elements could be kept under the watch of professional jailers.
“We need to make special arrangements to keep these elements separate from other inmates,” one of the few investigating officers in the Sindh Police, who has been attacked a number of times by militants of the banned organisations, told me.
He says jihadi and sectarian militants have long memories and carry out revenge killings whenever they find an opportunity and that “our normal jails offer such opportunities in abundance.”
There are many instances in the recent past in which these prisoners attacked jailers while their comrades outside the jail made numerous attempts to get their arrested colleagues released by attacking custody vans on the way to or from the courts.
“It is time to establish a high-security prison for such hardened elements,” ex-chief of the prisons in the Sindh province, Nisar Maher, had suggested during his tenure years ago.
Maher had said his department did not have sufficient funds to establish a detention centre exclusively for jihadi and sectarian militants but was of the opinion that the government should do something in this regard. “At least we should have some place where these inmates could be kept separate from other prisoners,” he had then told me in an interview.
Sources in the interior ministry in Islamabad say due to certain ‘disturbing facts’ the central government is seriously contemplating the matter. American FBI officials had also suggested separate detention centres for Islamist militants after its experiences in Pakistan.
During an operation to track down Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan when the War on Terror became a rage, FBI and CIA officials while monitoring and scanning air and satellite signals detected some unusual signals from a Pakistani city. After intercepting the message, the cell started tracking down the place from where the coded call had been made via a satellite phone. The Americans passed on the information to their Pakistani counterparts who found that the signals were emanating from a prison. The prison authorities discovered that some jihadis were using a phone in their barracks.
According to sources, using a mobile or satellite phone inside a Pakistani jail is not a big deal. “It is a routine matter. I have raided various jails in my province and each time we recovered mobile phones from one prisoner or the other,” a senior prison official says. However, he would not specify whether these prisoners included jihadi militants or not.
“We are living in an era of communication technology and it is easy to get hold of such devices inside the jail because of corrupt officials,” he says adding that his department has planned to introduce ‘public call offices’ inside every major prison in Sindh.
“It is a two-pronged project,” he says, “we will be providing our inmates an opportunity to remain in touch with their families and at the same time leaving those who claim that they keep phones secretly to stay in touch with friends and families outside with no excuse to do so.”
Experts in the investigation wing of the police department, however, are not satisfied with such plans. “Introducing public call offices sounds like a good idea and would certainly benefit ordinary prisoners but it is not going to tame the hardened elements or control their present activities,” a senior investigator says.
“It is not possible to restrict their activities inside the barracks and isolate such terrorists from their comrades until they are placed in special detention centres supervised by reasonably paid professionals whose chances of succumbing to bribery would be minimal,” he says.
Corruption is a major problem in jails. There have been various incidents in which imprisoned hardened criminals were caught with weapons and liquor in their possession. In one of the ugliest incidents that has come to light so far, imprisoned criminals were found with 50 juvenile prisoners in Hyderabed jail. The children had been provided to the inmates with the connivance of the prison caretakers.
According to sources, the presence of corrupt jailers does not preclude such incidents from being repeated. What is to prevent something similar to the Sialkot incident, in which four judges were kidnapped and killed by armed prisoners, from taking place again? “Those were ordinary criminals. If these rogue elements are treated like the ordinary prisoners, the result could be catastrophic,” another investigator says.
Sources say the investigators have found clues leading them to believe that sectarian killings were masterminded by hardcore terrorists in the custody of the authorities. Insiders say the jihadis and sectarian militants have arranged to be held in one barracks where they hold meetings that are out of bounds for jail officials. “In such a situation everything is possible because the jail supervisors are not professionals,” a source said.
I have also learnt that the government has ordered that jail officials be thoroughly checked to ensure that they do not have any past or present links with sectarian or religious outfits. These orders have been issued after it came to light that authorities busted some law enforcement officials with connections to jihadi organisations.
The provincial governments of the Punjab and Sindh are reluctant to take custody of many ‘blacklisted’ prisoners from Haripur jail despite reminders from the NWFP government. According to senior officials, they are wary of taking custody of these prisoners due to security concerns. “Such prisoners are fit to be confined in places where they have no access to corrupt officials or those who have links with religious outfits. We have proposed that the government establish such places,” an official said.

 

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

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.

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