Adil Najam
Karachi is at war with itself. Again.
Karachi bleeds, so does all of Pakistan. And Karachi bleeds too often. In a country that seems to be forever falling apart, the falling apart of this, the greatest of its cities, is both a sign and a foreboding. As painful as the daily killings and mayhem in Karachi is the sense that no one has any interest or any idea about what can or should be done. To be honest, I am not sure what I would do myself.
And so, dear readers, I turn to you: What would YOU do if you were made King of Karachi?
What realistic, practicable, and implementable steps would you do to deal with the perennial bouts of panic and death and destruction that this wondrous metropolis seems to be perpetually caught in? What would YOU do: in the short term? In the medium term? In the long term?
This question hit me hard when this morning I was talking over the phone with a rather influential Pakistan. In desperation I lambasted at how no one was doing anything. In equal desperation, he agreed. But then he asked me what could be done? What would I do? It was an honest question, not a cynical one. He was not making an excuse. He was searching for solutions. As am I. I have thought of this question all day and not come up with much. I do have some ideas. But they are vague and I wonder how practicable and realistic?
Hence, I reach out to you, dear readers. What would you do if you were made king of Karachi for a day?
Someone, desperately needs to come up with an answer. And soon. In the very first weeks of this blogs life (back in 2006) we had carried a post about why nobody in Karachi whistles anymore. We desperately need Karachi’s whistling days back!
True, this is a city that has never really been at rest. We have seen all of this, maybe even more, before. But any city – even one as resilient as Karachi – can only take that much restlessness. At some points its nerves have to give up. Distraught and in disarray, it has to scream out in anguish and hit out at itself. One wonders if we might already be beyond that point.
Problems can only be solved if you honestly look at the root cause. The downhill spiral of Karachi into violence coincides with the emergence of MQM. Their leader urged people (publicly) to sell their TVs/VCRs and buy Klashnikovs (guns) instead. Anyone who has lived or is still living in Karachi knows how well-armed MQM is. There is not a single major ethnic or political group that has not been targeted by MQM’s violence. Now does anyone have the courage to handle these thugs? I don’t think so.
@Adnan
Interesting solution Adnan. Would you also agree to propose a similar ban on the right-wing nutjobs of the religious parties given the amount of sectarian hate-mongering, glorification of vigilantism and pious ‘ghundagardi’ of their youth-wing in particular? Just for objectivity’s sake you know…;)
If the problems of a city like Karachi can be fixed by royal decrees, I will be issuing them daily.
Kings live in walled off palaces. They never venture into cities. They cannot fix city so it is bad to ask a king how to fix the city.
“It takes a village to educate a child”…cities are like children, they need a lot of nurturing, time, direction and sometimes tough love. We need to get villagers involved in fixing and nurturing the city. All great cities in the world have local mayors, municipalities, budgets, and police force under them, Karachi needs similar structure to function properly.
There may be some short term measures that can be taken to calm the situation, building and managing a 21th century city will take time.
Simple solution. The root of all evil in Karachi is power and money. Allow political parties to setup a insurance type of scheme. They charge citizens of Karachi a nominal premium for their safeguard. If any of the citizens are harmed, the political party is responsible to monetarily reimburse them. Now the evil will fight evil and rest will sleep peacefully.
Enforce a well paid, superbly trained “bad ass” police force that does the following;
– All MPA’s, Elder leaders and Councilperson to be part of a neighborhood committee.
– Encourage Local Police recruitment. On foot patrolling.
– Obey all traffic rules. Including Parking. Otherwise, break the windows of the offending vehicles or impound them
– No illegal weapons allowed in public. All private security guards need to go through mandatory registration
– Request all armed parties to help police neighborhoods without arms.
– Petty thefts (cellphone, pickpockets) to be transported to a intern training camp where they learn domestic skills (cooking, sewing, driving) under an open sky
– Serious criminals to be prosecuted and jailed
– Do this one area at a time