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By Irfan Ghauri
Published: July 9, 2011
Bodies of victims from the fourth day of violence in Karachi lie at Abbasi Shaheed Hospital morgue. PHOTO: EXPRESS/ATHAR KHAN
ISLAMABAD:
As the death toll exceeded 100 after four days of violence in Karachi, the federal and Sindh governments have decided to respond not just with 1,000 extra paramilitary troops but also fundamental changes in the way the city is governed.
At a meeting held at the Presidency in Islamabad on Friday night, senior officials from both the federation and Sindh – including President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah – convened to discuss the situation in Karachi and agreed upon a series of steps to help stem the violence.
The government has decided to change the way the country’s largest city is governed by bringing in a local government system that will be a hybrid between the one dominated by elected officials (introduced in 2001) and the one dominated by unelected federal civil servants (the system that had been in place between 1979 and 2001), according to sources familiar with the matter. The president’s spokesperson, Farhatullah Babar, said that it has been left to the Sindh government to decide on whether to proceed with the changes through legislation in the provincial assembly or through an ordinance promulgated by the governor.
However, according to sources familiar with the matter, the government appears to have decided to consult both the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Awami National Party (ANP), the two parties with strong political bases in Karachi, before finalising its decision.
The restoration of an elected local government system has been a long-standing demand of the MQM, which ran the last such government in Karachi and Hyderabad between 2005 and 2009. The Pakistan Peoples Party, which is in office in both the federal and Sindh governments, has been dragging its feet on the restoration of the system, even though it has at least formally committed to elected local governments.
The difference stances of the two parties are reflected in the differing advantages of the two systems. The pre-2001 system was dominated by district commissioners who were federal civil servants from the powerful district management group. The only elected officials who had any sway over local governments then were the provincial and national legislators, which suits the PPP since it has traditionally been able to dominate the Sindh legislature.
The MQM, meanwhile, prefers the system that gave power to elected local officials. While the party has never won a majority in the Sindh Assembly, it can dominate Karachi and Hyderabad, allowing it to serve its constituents directly without having to rely on the largess of the PPP as a senior coalition partner.
The elected local government system was introduced by the Musharraf administration in 2001 and expired in 2009, following which it could have been revived (with or without modification) by the provincial assemblies, none of which has thus far chosen to do so.
Meanwhile, the government has also decided to improve its own ability to prosecute those most directly responsible for the violence in Karachi by filling vacant judges’ positions on anti-terrorism courts and by increasing the staff of the public prosecutor’s office.
Controversially, the government may also decided to bring back former Sindh Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza, who had been removed from his position after strong pressure from the MQM. It is not yet clear what capacity Mirza will be returning in, though it appears that he may not get the home ministry back. .
Several reports on Friday night suggested that Manzoor Wassan of the PPP might be brought in as Sindh home minister but government officials refused to confirm or deny these reports.
“The provincial government will announce these administrative changes,” said the president’s spokesperson.
(With additional reporting by Hafeez Tunio in Karachi)
Published in The Express Tribune, July 9th, 2011.
===
PAKISTAN: Violence rocks Karachi
11 Jul 2011 12:24
Source: Content partner // IRIN
KARACHI, 11 July 2011 (IRIN) - The wave of ethnic and political tension in the Pakistani city of Karachi which left 90 people dead [ http://tribune.com.pk/story/205202/karachi-violence-live-updates/ ] within four days last week has raised fresh fears that some minority groups could be the target.
�My two sons are not going to their tuition classes or to the martial arts club they regularly attend, and my wife calls me in fear if I am even five minutes late getting home from work,� said Haider Ali, 40, a Pukhtoon, and a member of the minority Shia Muslim sect, who have been repeatedly targeted.
�I feel especially vulnerable due to both these factors, but we have nowhere else to go," he added. "My family moved here three generations ago; I have a good job here and this is the only home I know.�
The government of Sindh Province (in which Karachi is located) issued shoot-on-sight orders to law enforcers in a bid to control the situation, but the killings continued.
�I am running out of the packaged cereals my nine-month-old baby eats, and also out of sufficient milk for the two older children [but] it is too risky to even walk to the corner shop,� said Asiya Khan, 27, a mother of three. The family is ethnically Pukhtoon, hailing from the northern province of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, and this puts them at risk amid tensions between Pukhtoons and Mohajirs - a group of people who migrated to Pakistan at the time of the partition of the sub-continent in 1947.
Tensions are stoked by the affiliation of the two groups to rival political factions. Karachi, the country�s largest city, is made up of many diverse ethnic groups [ http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91685 ] who have migrated to the metropolis mainly in search of jobs. In the past, violence has broken out between these ethnic groups. [ http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91685 ]
There have also been repeated incidents of sectarian killings. [ http://archives.dawn.com/archives/156721 ] According to the autonomous Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), 490 people were killed in Karachi because of ethnic, sectarian or political reasons in the first six months of 2011. [ http://www.dawn.com/2011/07/06/targeted-killing-claimed-490-lives-in-six-months-hrcp.html ]
Some 748 people died in similar killings in 2010, while 272 died in 2009, according to HRCP.
�Terrible fear among children�
�Another cycle of the now familiar violence has erupted in Karachi," Zohra Yusuf, the HRCP chairperson, said in a statement. [ http://www.hrcp-web.org/showprel.asp?id=218 ] "Karachi is no stranger to violence or the absence of law and order. However, it is scandalous that the alarm and indignation that such a heavy toll on human lives should evoke, is absent."
Sharfuddin Memon, a spokesperson for the Sindh interior ministry, told IRIN that some suspects had been detained and "police and paramilitary troops are patrolling troubled areas to control things.�
By the weekend, barricades and checkpoints set up by security forces could be seen along many streets, with people being stopped regularly for questioning. �The fact, however, is that when there are gunmen roaming streets and shooting at random, or ambushing vehicles, there is very little we can actually do to protect people. The criminals are better armed than us in many cases,� said a policeman who asked not to be named.
Ahsan Maqbool, a primary school teacher, warned that the situation could create distrust and hatred among children belonging to different ethnic groups and could result in �more violence as children grow up in such an environment�.
�This situation has created terrible fear among children," he added. "Some of them have seen bodies lying on the streets - and their sense of trauma is reflected in their writings and drawings.�
kh/eo/cb
� IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org
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