Lakshmi building – Stands tall amid falling historic structures

By Hasan Mansoor
Lakshmi Building, once an enchanting five-storey edifice every Karachian was proud to behold and now a smoke-ridden facade on MA Jinnah Road (Bunder Road), was the tallest structure of the city till partition. It was in the mid-fifties when it lost its stature to Qamar House. It stands tall, nonetheless, at times when most historic structures are succumbing to the builders’ ruthless greed.
Then the city saw many high-rises built and got each other replaced. Qamar House succumbed to the height of Mohammadi House for a while until Habib Bank Plaza’s 311-feet high building literally concluded the race in 1963. The Plaza reigned for around four decades as the largest manmade structure in the country until 27-storey MCB Towers finally eclipsed its height, but, undoubtedly, the white and round building is still the most beautiful post-1947 structure of Karachi.

Lakshmi Building, one of Lakshmi Insurance Company’s properties, was huge news for the inhabitants of a small and beautiful town called Karachi over eight decades ago. Its red bricks were not the big deal for the people because the city’s every second or third building was made of that stuff mostly coming from Jaipur. But, what Karachians admired the most was its height, its state-of-the art clock-tower, its location (then) in the middle of the city and, of course, its iron elevator, which was the rare facility then offered by the city’s skyscrapers.

“It was a great sight to visit Lakshmi Building and people would love it like a property of their own,” octogenarian Mohammad Ali, who still lives in a worn-out apartment house along Outram Road in Mithadar, reminisces.
He has some loving memories about good old history pertaining to Lakshmi Building and the rest of Karachi that now sound as fairytales and

myths. “The city roads used actually to be washed every morning, and the great buildings like Lakshmi Towers and the (City) Courts used to be watered down every year by the hoses of the fire department,” says Ali.

But the municipal authorities have forgotten their old schedules and have not washed these buildings for a very long time, which have actually been the hallmarks of Karachi, for around six decades now.
Despite being subjected to fire several times, the latest was two years ago after a blast on an Ashura procession, Lakshmi Building still gives a great look and stands like a king surrounded by the new and shabby structures that are even not worthy of being called as pawns. Its façade still gives a great look but the interiors have seen huge changes.
Its original colour inside the offices and along the corridors of the five storeys has turned asymmetrical and lost its originality. On the fifth storey one finds the door to the roof locked.
“It remains locked most of the time because there is nothing worth witnessing upstairs except refuse and waste items,” says Karim, a peon at one of the offices situated in the building.
The historic escalator still serves its visitors but most of the time it remains out of order due to lack of maintenance. The old manual bells (shaped like teacups) had been fixed beside the escalator’s door at every floor and one would use it to notify to the lift-operator. Some of these bells could still be used but they have become rusty and lost their grandeur now. In fact, the entire iron escalator-mechanism has become rusty and complains of huge neglect it has been meted out.
But, it still houses dozens of shops selling toys, watches, wholesale items etc and is able to gather a great buzz around despite decades-long apathy towards it. In fact, this structure still offers ample lakshmi (wealth) to many. 

Pakistan’s blind dolphins face hazardous existence

   By Hasan Mansoor

   INDUS RIVER: Nazir Mirani, 47, is the third generation of a humble family committed to saving Pakistan’s blind dolphins, an endangered species swimming against a tide of man-made hazards.

   “I treat them as my children and do everything whenever a dolphin is trapped in shallow waters,” said Mirani, once a fisherman and now among a handful of people officially assigned to protect the dolphins.

   “No one can know them as meticulously as me. I was born in a boat and have been living with these fish ever since,” said the lanky Mirani, his complexion darkened by years under the burning sun and his chest puffed up with pride.

   “Look at my eyes,” he said. “Aren’t they shaped like the fish?”
   Indus dolphins — Platanista gangetica minor or “bulhan” in the Sindhi language — are listed as endangered by the World Conservation Union.
   According to local folklore, a lactating woman once refused to give milk to a saint, who cursed her and pushed her into the Indus. The woman turned into a dolphin and the freshwater species was born.
   Females are bigger than males, weighing up to 110 kilograms (243 pounds) and growing up to 2.5 metres (eight foot) long.
   The brownish-pink mammals have lived alongside humans for time immemorial. Their long, pointed snouts thicken at the end, and the upper and lower teeth are visible even when the mouth is closed.
   Their numbers are declining as fishermen deplete their stock of food, pollution worsens, and a network of barrages restricts their movements. Falling water levels due to declining rain and snowfall are another peril.
   The Worldwide Fund For Nature Pakistan estimated in 2006 there were around 1,200 Indus dolphins left — 900 at a sanctuary near Sukkur in the southern province of Sindh and another 300 further upstream in Punjab.
   The dolphin is blind because it lacks eye lenses and so hunts for catfish and shrimp using sophisticated sonar, said Hussain Bux Bhagat, a senior official in the Sindh wildlife department.
   Dolphins swam freely in the Indus until about 100 years ago when engineers under British rule started slicing up the river with irrigation projects in the dry hinterland.
   The barrages pose a critical threat to the dolphins, dividing their natural habitat into five separate segments of the snaking river.
   “This species used to roam across 3,500 kilometres (2,190 miles) of the Indus but are now confined to 900 kilometres (560 miles),” Bhagat said.
   As a result the risk of inbreeding “could lead to infertility and then extinction,” Bhagat added.
   An alarming increase in pollution from untreated sewage dumps, illegal pesticides, and industrial and agricultural waste also threaten their survival.
   The dolphins swim on their sides, trailing a flipper along the river bottom, and can move in water as shallow as 30 centimetres (12 inches).
   But each year up to 50 dolphins get trapped in the thousands of kilometres (miles) of irrigation channels, which are closed and left to dry out.
   Fishermen used to kill them but awareness campaigns have improved to the extent that they now inform wildlife officials who come to their rescue.
   “People were so uneducated they used to shoot the dolphins dead until a few years ago,” said Bhagat.
   The trouble is that wildlife services have limited resources. Rescuers have just one van with a water tub, which they use to keep the dolphins alive for a few hours while they take them back to the river.
   “We have successfully rescued 50 dolphins this season but we could do it more efficiently if we get a helicopter,” Bhagat said.
   Dolphins also stray into narrow channels during monsoon season when sluice gates are opened to maintain the water flow at the barrages.
   Experts who did a 2006 survey for the environment ministry said the needs of Pakistan’s dolphins are the same as its people — both need a clean, reliable source of water to survive.
   Mirani — whose father worked with Swiss specialist Giorgio Pilleri who conducted pioneering research into the mammal — said his family tradition of helping conserve the dolphins will continue.
   “My son Nadir Ali is ready to assist me,” he said, gesturing towards a teenager holding an oar as he steers a boat along the river.
   “After me, he and his six younger brothers will try to protect dolphins,” he said, before cheering loudly as a dolphin emerged to swim alongside their boat.

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.

 

Rains kill at least 40 people in Sindh

By Hasan Mansoor
   The latest widespread rains have badly devastated the northern districts of Sindh - killed people, perished cash crops and destroyed houses and other establishments.
   The provincial disaster management authority (PDMA) is too shy to unveil the actual figures of the losses of human lives and infrastructure, yet it confirms the number of deaths is not less than 40.
   "At least 40 people have died, according to the figures our PDMA (provincial disaster management authority of Sindh) has compiled so far," Sindh minister Muzaffar Shujrah, who heads the PDMA, says.
   "The number of the dead could be more once the rains stop permitting us a fully-fledged survey of the losses."
   He said the rains "have destroyed hundreds of houses or even more. We are compiling the figures."
   According to him, at least 3,000 people have left their homes in the northern Sindh so far and got shelter in the relief camps "we have set up in the government buildings."
   The advisor to the Sindh chief minister for relief, Haleem Adil Shaikh, however, is too vocal about narrating the facts.
   "We are in the field to assess the losses and provide relief to the people. I have seen immense destruction in both northern and southern districts of Sindh. Sindh is facing another natural calamity third year running," he told me.
   Shaikh said the number of deaths could not be less than 70.
   "We had reports of 50 deaths on Monday and by now the number of people died because of electrocution, falling roofs and drowning is more than 70," he said.
   A senior PDMA official said the fresh details of deaths and infrastructure and agricultural losses have been sent to Islamabad, where the government was preparing for a national strategy to cope with the situation.
   The rain-related incidents and localised floods have affected many parts of the South Asian nuclear-armed country, from Himalyan north down to Thatta, the southern most coastal district.
   The federal government puts the number of deaths less than 100 across the country, which is in sharp contrast to what the independent sources and local media say.
   Expressing "deep concern" over the havoc caused across the country by the recent rains, President Asif Ali Zardari has directed national and provincial disaster management authorities to gear up their efforts in providing relief to the affected people.
   Weather officials predict heavy rain in the next 24 hours in southern Sindh and Balochistan provinces and rescue teams are closely monitoring the situation, officials said.
   "It is not comparable to what we saw last year. We hope the current spell will end over the next two days and water will start receding in affected areas," said an official.
   Last summer's floods killed more than 340 people and affected almost six million, killing livestock, destroying crops, homes and infrastructure as the nation struggled to recover from record inundations the previous year.
   In 2010, unprecedented monsoon rainfall triggered catastrophic flooding across the country, killing almost 1800 people and affecting 21 million.
September 2012

Pakistan frees 48 Indian prisoners as 'goodwill gesture'

By Hasan Mansoor, Karachi
Pakistan on Monday released 48 Indian fishermen, 10 of them teenagers, as a "goodwill gesture" following a visit by the Indian foreign minister S. M. Krishna.
    In a sign of thawing relations, Krishna and his Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar last week inked an historic agreement to ease visa restrictions between the two countries.
   The release of fishermen is part of an understanding between the nuclear-armed rivals to free citizens who mistakenly stray into each other's waters.
   "We have released 48 Indian fishermen from Malir jail in Karachi as a goodwill gesture," deputy inspector-general prisons of southern Sindh province, Nusrat Mangan, told AFP.
   He said 32 Indian fishermen were still in Pakistani prisons."They will also be released after our authorities receive a clearance from the Indian government," he said.
   Nazeer Husain Shah, superintendent of the jail, said the released prisoners included 10 teenage boys.
   The Indians were presented with flowers and gifts, then bussed to the eastern city of Lahore, from where they would cross the Wagah border.
   Officials said they expect India would reciprocate the Pakistani gesture by releasing more than 200 Pakistani fishermen languishing in Indian jails.
   "We expect our neighbours will show the similar spirit and release the Pakistani prisoners from their jails," Ayaz Soomro, law minister of the Sindh province said.
   Pakistan and India frequently seize each other's fishermen, accusing them of violating their respective maritime boundaries in the Arabian Sea.
   India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided by a heavily militarised Line of Control and which both countries claim in full.
   Last year they resumed their tentative peace process, which collapsed after Islamist gunmen from Pakistan killed 166 people in Mumbai in November 2008.
AFP September, 2012

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.

 

Sindh’s secularism fights for survival!

by Hasan Mansoor

   Sindh is rich in minerals, energy resources, forests, desert and sea, having a few high altitude places offering chilling temperatures. All these treasures merit a greedy stare from the suppressing centre, yet they are merely appendages – there re
mains a prized asset!

Holi celebrations in Sindh

   Unlike other assets this one is something that the right-wing establishment religiously despises and reckons as Sindh’s greatest sin and calls its inhabitants infidels and Indian agents.
   Sindh has seen little calm and rare self-rule on its soil since time immemorial, but it has been resilient enough so far to protect its most enviable treasure trove – something widely defined as secularism, the art of peaceful co-existence.
   Unlike the most of Pakistan, Sindh is still largely a pluralistic, secular and liberal society. People here too kill others on trivial reasons but at least politically aware Sindhis are not yet convinced to kill each other on religious grounds.
   That tradition goes on; but will it continue hopping like it did in the past centuries? There are serious doubts and concerns as well-laid grand plans are there to create smaller Taliban havens in parts of this land of Sufis – if not possible to fully convert it.
   The planners – well entrenched in the country’s ruling machine and their spare parts in apparently non-state junk – have particularly targeted Sindh’s upper districts, infested with tribal customs largely forced by the migrants from neighbouring provinces, the victims of blatant corruption and negligence by the parties they vote for and abject poverty which is increasingly reaching the tipping point.
   Past events show a disturbing increase in the migration of Sindh’s Hindus to India and elsewhere because of their systematic kidnapping for ransom and abductions and forced conversions of their girls by influential mullahs and feudal lords who blatantly preside over hordes of gangs of robbers in the region.
   Rights activists say hundreds of cases of kidnappings and forced conversions of Hindus and their girls have been committed in the past four years in the northern districts of Sindh, most of which have gone unreported and attracted little attention from the so-called national media, which itself boasted to be centre-right and custodian of the country’s ambiguous ideological borders.
   The events have forced Hindus to migrate in flocks from their soil, a further dent in Sindh’s pluralistic society, which had already suffered a great deal because of migration of its entire middle class – happened to be Hindus – to India in 1947 after the partition of the Subcontinent.
   The dilemma of Sindhi Hindus is that they are often ignored by the world in the times of distress. Pakistani Christians suffer religious indiscrimination and persecution as well, but fortunately the Mighty West follows the same faith and often raises voice for their rights. Our Hindus are already labeled by the patriots in the establishment and media as the Indian agents, thus find no brotherly support from anywhere except for sporadic faint voices from rights organisations and individuals having little influence in bigger arena to change their fate.
   The killing of three Hindu men in the town of Chak in Shikarpur district is considered as the worst incident in decades. Media reports splash several contradictory facts, ranging from personal enmity to the possibility of a victim’s affair with a girl of an influential tribe, but the fact remains that it is bound to accelerate Hindus’ migration. The fact is that this migration will further erode Sindh’s claim to be the country’s only hope for minorities; the land which has always soft spot for minority faiths.
   Whatever the reasons are claimed to have caused the tragedy; the ultimate beneficiaries will remain right-wing mullahs and feudal hypocrites – in terms of their influence and the booty they would ultimately own and share as they did during the mass migration of Hindus 64 years ago.
   These killings should be taken in line with several attacks on NATO trucks in the same district – Shikarpur – as was a suicide blast on Ashura at a Shiite mosque there last year, which fortunately killed just the attacker.
   Being optimistic helps lessening the intensity but pain remains until it is fully cured. The reaction against the Shikarpur killings shows a distinct majority still sides with Sindh’s pluralistic history with intentions to safeguard it. Several demonstrations in scores of towns against the killings are because people don’t want the land to be deprived of its habit to remain peaceful.
   But fear still remains inward as being liberal is something that deep state has little desire to let it go. Pakistan is the land where designs often mirror opposite to the desire of majority; where a tiny minority decides about the national interests and everyone has to follow the suit to remain a patriot – thus alive!

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

Pakistani Hindus seek safety in India

by Hasan Mansoor

Preetam Das is a good doctor with a hospital job and a thriving private clinic, yet all he thinks about is leaving Pakistan, terrified about a rise in killings and kidnappings targeting Hindus.
   A successful professional, he lives in megacity Karachi with his wife and two children, but comes from Kashmore, a district in the north of Pakistan's southern province of Sindh.
   His family has lived there for centuries and in 1947 when the sub-continent split between India, a majority Hindu state, and Pakistan, a homeland for Muslims, Das' grandparents chose to stay with the Muslims.
   They fervently believed the promise of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah that religious minorities would be protected. Sixty years later, their grandson says life in Kashmore has become unbearable.
   "The situation is getting worse every day," he says.
   Two of his uncles have been kidnapped and affluent Hindus are at particular risk from abduction gangs looking for ransom, he says.
   Rights activists say the climate is indicative of progressive Islamisation over the last 30 years that has fuelled an increasing lack of tolerance to religious minorities, too often considered second class citizens.
   Das says the only thing keeping him in Pakistan is his mother.
   "She has flatly refused to migrate, which hinders my plans. I can't go without her," he said.
   Hindus make up 2.5 percent of the 174 million people living in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation. Over 90 percent live in Sindh, where they are generally wealthy and enterprising, making them easy prey for criminal gangs.
   An official at the ministry of external affairs in New Delhi who declined to be named said: "Every month about eight to 10 Hindu families migrate from Pakistan. Most of them are well-off."
   He had no comment on whether the number was on the rise, but Hindu community groups in Pakistan say more people are leaving because of kidnappings, killings and even forced conversions of girls to Islam.
   "Two of my brothers have migrated to India and an uncle to the UAE," said Jay Ram, a farmer in Sindh's northern district of Ghotki.
   "It's becoming too difficult to live here. Sindhis are the most tolerant community in the country vis-a-vis religious harmony, but deteriorating law and order is forcing them to move unwillingly," he added.
   Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council and a former lawmaker for Sindh province, said Hindus are picked on by kidnappers and that their daughters are subject to forced conversions to Islam.
   "Every now and then we get reports of families migrating. It's getting worse now. People are extremely harassed and are forced to leave their homeland but our rulers are shamelessly idle," he told AFP.
   Rights activists also say Hindus in Sindh are discriminated against.
   "Recently 37 members of five Hindu families migrated to India from Thul town owing to discrimination while three Hindus, including a doctor, were murdered in Shikarpur district," said Rubab Jafri, who heads Sindh's Human Rights Forum.
   "Lots of violent incidents are happening daily. Most go unreported, which shows vested interests are trying to force Hindus to leave Pakistan."
   According to the Pakistan Hindu Seva, a community welfare organisation, at least 10 families have migrated from Sindh every month since 2008, mostly to India, but in the last 10 months, 400 families have left.
   Another survey last year by the local Scheduled Caste Rights Movement said more than 80 percent of Hindu families complained that Muslims discriminated against them by using different utensils when serving them at food stalls.
   "Hindu migration is a brain-drain for Pakistan as most of them are doctors, engineers, agriculturists, businessmen and intellectuals," Jafri said.
   But the provincial authorities are reluctant to recognise a problem.
   "I do admit that law and order in some districts of Sindh is quite bad, but it is bad for everyone and not just my community, the Hindus," Mukesh Kumar Chawla, provincial minister for excise and taxation, told AFP.
   "Hindus do not migrate in flocks as has been claimed and those who migrate are going abroad for a better fortune," he said.
Ends

They dance in Sindh to capture Punjab!

By Hasan Mansoor

(Written in November 2011)

Shah Mehmood Qureshi can conveniently be regarded as the greatest of all hypocrites and power-hungry individuals who are jumping on Imran Khan’s bandwagon.
   His hypocrisy is evident from the religious allegories he had associated in his speech in Ghotki, where he finally ended his role as the fence-sitter and joined Imran’s Tehrik-e-Insaaf.
   A show in Ghotki can never be applied on the whole Sindh. Ghotki is the smallest of Sindh’s border districts, taken hostage by the influential tribes, whose chiefs are as opportunist and corrupt as elsewhere. They boast on honour killing of women and harbour and nurture criminals to keep people in distress and manipulate election results to their own advantage.
   Local people confirm that majority of the participants of Qureshi’s rally were unknown to them. They had been transported in trucks and lorries from the bordering southern Punjab’s towns.
   “Some of the participants were provided by the influential Mahers of the district, while the rest might form the total supporters of Qureshi who revere him because of his being a gaddi-nasheen of a shrine,” a local political observer told me.
   This rally cannot be regarded as something, which reflects a change in the mood of Sindhis. Both Qureshi and Imran Khan stick to their guns against the government. They spoke of the so-called corrupt practices being committed by Zardari’s government, bragged about their being the clean entities and hit hard against the Sharifs.
   Actually, they discussed Punjab’s politics in Sindh. Both the PTI leaders have stakes in Punjab and they see little prospects in Sindh, the question remains why they chose a place elsewhere to fight for Punjab? Qureshi wanted to show his popularity on trans-provincial scale while Imran was keen to see his bag gets fully stuffed.
   But, none of them spoke about the worst miseries of Sindh caused by the floods the second year running. They talked about the ambiguous NRO controversy, war on terror, United States, Pakistan’s vague sovereignty and Afghanistan and Iraq but deemed it inappropriate to talk on the real problems of Sindh.
   Qureshi, on the occasion, went on to the religious allegories in his speech, which hardly impress Sindhis’ secular minds. Spectacular of all was when he put himself in the shoes of Central Asian warrior Mehmood Ghaznavi by saying he would attack on Somnaath’s temple. He said his rally’s day coincided with the advent of the holy Islamic month of Muharram which, according to him, was a good omen to the country’s secured fate.
   Qureshi received an immediate bashing from across the southern province’s intelligentsia who condemn him for his desire to attack a temple no matter that was a clichéd symbolic notion.
   “Sindhis have always respected the worship places of all faiths and cannot tolerate or appreciate such clichés, which have been created and safeguarded by the powerful establishment,” said one of several statements published in the Sindhi newspapers.
   Sindhis have the history not to support the religious bigots. They still keep their religion and routine life separate despite the deep state’s repeated attempts to corrupt it through the kidnapping and persecution of minority Hindus and their girls’ forced conversion by the mullahs whose sanctuaries are being expanded systematically.
   Imran might take time to keep his finger on the pulse of Sindh, but why Qureshi went so aggressive in his panegyric to his brand-new leader, though he is well accustomed to the Sindhi environs. He is in the process of changing his posture that suits his new party’s right-wing propensities. He wants the people to forget his popular images with Secretary Hillary Clinton showing him sharing broad smiles with his then counterpart whom now he strategically despises.

   One should admire Zardari for his prudent decision in 2008 not to select Qureshi as party’s nominee for the country’s next prime minister. Zardari must have foreseen Qureshi’s hypocoristic leanings that many critics did not.
   But, haven’t Imran started sipping hypocrisy when he gives a clean chit as the foreign minister to Qureshi in Ghotki, an individual whom he had criticised him in his book “Pakistan A Personal History”.
   He writes: “These loans, along with US and European aid money, are like bribes to the Pakistani political elite to keep fighting America’s war for them. This was painfully evident when in October 2010 Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the European parliament: ‘If you want to help us fight extremism and terrorism, one way of doing that is making Pakistan economically stable.’ Pakistan’s ruling elite threatens the West with fears about Islamic militancy to extract more money out of them.”
   We should still admire Imran Khan, after all, he is the saviour we the poor souls have been waiting for the salvation!
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 sexually abused on Pakistan's streets

by Hasan Mansoor   
Nadeem knows first hand the misery of life on the streets. Sexually assaulted as a child, he became a pimp of young boys -- the only way he knew how to survive as a member of Pakistan's underclass.    He says he was 12 years old when he was attacked. Since then, he has been dragged into a vicious cycle of horrifying abuse allegedly aided and abetted by police and which few are willing to confront in the Muslim country.    "It was just the third night I slept on a street when a policeman picked me up and did bad things to me. I cried a lot but no one came to help me," Nadeem, now 17, told AFP.    He was sexually assaulted for a second time by the leader of a street gang, who then forced Nadeem to join the 17 other children in his gang.    By 14 he was a full-time sex worker. His pimp gave him a mobile phone to keep in contact with clients.    According to charities which work to protect street children in Pakistan, up to 90 percent are sexually abused on the first night that they sleep rough and 60 percent accuse police of sexually abusing them.    "Children on the street are beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted, and sometimes killed," said Rana Asif Habib, head of the Initiator Human Development Foundation (IHDF).    "Police (should) protect people. When policemen are themselves involved in molesting children, who will protect them?" he asks.    "What we have gathered in our research is that policemen make up more than 60 percent of those who physically torment, sexually harass street children," said Anwer Kazmi of the Edhi Foundation, the country's largest charity.    Karachi is home to Pakistan’s biggest community of street children -- tens of thousands of victims of domestic violence and broken homes, drugs and crime, in the steamy port city.    More than 170,000 street children live on the streets across the country.    Illiterate, uneducated and most without family, the children can grow into seasoned criminals, drug addicts or fall prey to Islamist militancy.    When Nadeem turned 16, he tried to escape. He received counselling from a charity and was taught photography. He tried to make it his profession.    "I was happy with my work, but a year ago, a policeman put me in the lockup on a false charge, confiscated my camera and abused me sexually," he said.    The experience turned him against the world.    "I decided to become stronger. Now I have my own gang and many influential people are my clients. No one can touch me now."    Nadeem says he acts as a pimp to 10 teenage sex workers aged 14-18, taking a sizeable cut of whatever the boys in earn.    "Half an hour after finishing with one client I get another call and I forget all about wanting a respectable life."    Nadeem lives on a street in the downtown Saddar neighbourhood, but rents a room in a cheap hotel when he has surplus cash. He confesses that he too sexually assaulted a child.    "He insulted me and my family so I told him he had it coming. So I grabbed him and gave it to him. I still remember that night. I haven't done that to anyone else since then and I don't want to."    Rizwan is a fisherman's son. He insists he is 12, but he looks much younger. He left home three years ago because his family beat him and says he was abused by police. IHDF fears he too will be dragged into the sex industry.    "The police tried to make me do bad things six or seven times but I managed to get away," he said.    "But one day, one policeman took me by force, put a cloth over my mouth and took me to a place where he did bad things."    Shaukat Hussain, head of police in Karachi's southern district where many street children live, said any officers found guilty would be punished, but denied the force was anything like as culpable as reported.    "There are black sheep in our department who are involved in such acts. But we punish anyone whose crime comes to surface and is proved," he told AFP.    "The number of policemen who are involved in such acts is far less than what is being claimed by the media and NGOs," he added.    Pakistan offers little protection to vulnerable children.    "A draft bill for child protection has been pending with the interior ministry for two years," a senior official of the human rights ministry told AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to the media.    The bill is designed to tighten the laws protecting children, bringing them in line with international conventions, doing more to help children in difficulty and bringing police and other offenders to book for abusing minors.    "There is a visible lack of interest on the part of the government on this issue... despite our constant pursuits," said the ministry official.    One former police official told AFP that he organised seminars to sensitise police on how to treat street children four years ago, but that the programme was abruptly abandoned when he retired. August 2011

Ramadan misery for Pakistan flood victims

BADIN: The holy month of Ramadan brought nothing but misery for over a million Pakistanis who fled for their lives when the recent rain-triggered floods washed away their homes, villages and livelihoods.    "How can we break the fast, when we have nothing to eat," asks Khateeja Khatoon, a mother of seven camped out under open skies.    The displaced and hungry people who watched flood waters swallow up their homes and crops wake up hungry everyday during the dawn-to-dusk fasting month in Pakistan.    Khatoon fled her village of Bhanbhaki in the southern province of Sindh, after flood that aid officials say has made more than a million people dependent on humanitarian aid for survival.    "We have nothing to eat, nothing to live in. We've been starving for days, so the start of Ramadan doesn't bring any joy.    "We used to celebrate Ramadan in a big way in our village, but my children and I are already starving. We need food, so we're already fasting in a way."    Last year's worst floods in the history put 21 million people facing direct or indirect harm. This time round too, officials warn that children are among the most vulnerable victims, with diarrhoea the biggest health threat.    "Our village drowned. Our homes and crops are ruined by floods. We are fighting a war of survival," said Amb, 50.    Living in the open in Khoski, Amb is desperate for his ten grandchildren who need urgent food assistance.    "It will be a great day when our children get food.    "I used to grow fruit and vegetables on my farm in a nearby village but now nobody is offering any help. Ramadan is a month of blessing, but no one is there to let us enjoy these blessings," he said with tears in his eyes. "All my memories seem to have been swept away by floods."    Authorities promised to provide cooked meals to flood victims during Ramadan and compensate families of those killed, but few on the ground said they had received assistance.    Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which features on a UN terrorism blacklist and whose involvement in relief has raised concerns in the United States, has also promised to provide iftar meals to the victims.    "We are helping out people in distress with all means available," said a Dawa relief worker.    Mohammad Hussain, 25, a labourer, says people feel betrayed by the government when they most need help.    "I never dreamt I'd be in such circumstances in the holy month. I fast for Allah during Ramadan but we're starving. The government is doing nothing to save our children from starvation."    Children also feel no excitement ahead of Eid-ul Fitr, the festival at the end of Ramadan traditionally celebrated with feasting, new clothes and cash gifts.    "We never celebrated with much joy because we're poor and can't afford expensive food, but at least we had food, shelter and water during Ramadan in the past," said 12-year-old Gul Mohammad.    "My father would bring us new clothes and shoes at Eid but not now. We left all of our belongings behind when our village flooded. It's difficult to survive, let alone celebrate."    "We're hungry and thirsty. My father and I tried to pick up labour but there are thousands like us on the streets hoping to earn something."    Devastating rains have triggered floods in southern Pakistan, affecting at least 1,200,000 people and forcing 100,000 from their homes, officials said.   Villages have been flooded and crops destroyed in Pakistan’s bread basket of Sindh province, one of the worst-hit areas in the unprecedented floods of 2010 that affected 21 million people and caused losses of $10 billion.    Tens of thousands of people are still living in emergency camps after last year’s floods and British charity Oxfam has accused Pakistan of failing to invest in prevention measures, making it vulnerable to further disaster.    Pakistan’s weak civilian government came under enormous criticism last year from victims of the floods who said ministers did little to help.

   by Hasan Mansoor    

Calls for army grow as Karachi week toll hits 101

   by Hasan Mansoor   
Pakistani politicians, industrialists and citizens stepped up calls Tuesday for the army to intervene to quell violence destabilising Karachi, where more than 100 have been killed in a week.    "We demand the armed forces take over the city, restore law and order and ensure safety to innocent people's lives," Khalid Tawab, vice president of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), told AFP.    "Business activity has been disrupted because of incessant killing. People don't want to go to market because of risks to life," he said.    Ethnic and criminal violence blamed on gangs has killed 101 people in the last week, the latest bout in the worst criminal and ethnic violence to hit Pakistan's largest city and financial capital for 16 years.    "At least nine people were killed since Monday evening, so far 101 people have been killed since Wednesday morning," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to media.    Security officials said they had found the bodies of victims who had been kidnapped and tortured, stuffed into sacks and thrown on the streets with notes warning of more violence.    A government official working in the health department confirmed the casualties.    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).    On Tuesday, markets were closed, streets deserted and attendance at offices thin after the MQM called for a "day of mourning" against the killings.    Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Monday flew to Karachi and asked the provincial government to restore peace as quickly as possible.    Sharjeel Memon, Sindh provincial information minister, said a "surgical operation" was planned to end the violence.    The main ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), which was elected in 2008 after nine years of military rule, insists that civilian authorities are capable of controlling the situation.    But members of other political parties are increasingly calling for army intervention, a sensitive issue in a country that has been ruled for more than half its existence by the military.    "We want to see law and order in Karachi improve. Anyone, including the army, who can get results and improve the situation should take control," Wasay Jaleel, a spokesman for MQM, told AFP.    "We demand the army across the board to restore peace here," ANP's provincial chief Shahi Syed told AFP on Tuesday.    People on the streets also expressed dissatisfaction with the ability of the police and the paramilitaries, technically answerable to the interior ministry, to control the situation.    "The armed forces should be deployed in Karachi, because police and paramilitaries have failed to save our lives," said Khalid Ali, 45, a shopkeeper in the main downtown market area that has seen some violence.    "We feel no enthusiasm for the coming Eid (religious festival). Please, soldiers take the city in their hands and return smiles to our children," Noshaba Hameed, 37, a schoolteacher, told AFP by telephone from the east.    Independent analysts said army's deployment would affect Pakistan's war on Taliban in its northwest and aggravate the situation further.    "Army is already engaged in the war on militants in the northwest and its involvement in Karachi will weaken the war," Tauseef Ahmed Khan, a columnist, who teaches mass media in Urdu University, told AFP.    "Only the police could restore law. The government should give a free hand to operate. That could make wonders," he said.