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