Planet Karachi

At a time when Pakistan is drowning and millions are going hungry, some elements still see it fit to settle personal scores on the streets of Karachi.
Everyone in the country is either worrying about the devastation wreaked by record floods or is aiding the relief operation in one capacity or another. Beyond our borders, the world too is helping out and monitoring the situation with growing concern. From the UN and international lending agencies to the United States and the Arab League, a number of influential global players have made urgent appeals for aid to Pakistan. The misery engulfing the country has made headline news across the world and some foreigners who travelled to the flood zone came back looking genuinely distressed.
All this is lost on those who are, incredibly enough, still focused on eliminating their rivals. It seems they couldn’t care less about the hundreds who have died, those who are dying a slow death and the millions whose lives have been destroyed, perhaps forever. The mindset of such people simply beggars belief: at a time of grave crisis all that matters to them are their political, sectarian and ethnic vendettas. Killers obviously have no heart to begin with but it was hoped that their minders higher up in the hierarchy would rein them in for the time being. Instead, someone somewhere clearly issued orders for an assassination that was bound to spark another cycle of violence.
While Pakistan drowns, Karachi burns yet again. The city has been turned into a parallel universe in which chaos rules and lives are cheap. It is high time the state woke up to the alarming disconnect between Karachi and the rest of the country. The Sindh government is clearly incapable of dousing the fire and as such the response must come from somewhere else. No solution may be in sight right now but one must be found sooner than later.
Is Karachi located on a different planet? Does it operate within some dreadful other-world dimension that is simply impossible to comprehend?
On Thursday the city again descended into anarchy after the murder of a senior leader of the ANP’s Karachi chapter. Several people lost their lives, vehicles were torched, tyres were burnt and, given the level of intimidation, shopkeepers had no option but to pull down their shutters. True, Karachi is no stranger to such mayhem and its residents have tragically come to expect that violence will flare up from time to time. But this latest round of murder and arson needs to be seen in an entirely different context .