Innocent Pashtuns Being Massacred in Karachi Once Again

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

More than 25 Pashtuns have died within Karachi in the last three days alone. Most of them were laborers, businessmen and other non-affiliated civilians. In addition to that, countless Pashtun-owned business have been burnt to the ground. The perpetrators behind the attacks, the MQM, are claiming that the current fighting is between "land mafia" groups. Pashtuns come to Karachi from up north after their villages are flattened, they start living in slum communities and are termed as land-grabbers and part of the land mafia by the Urdu-speaking MQM terrorist organization.

It's a free for all in some areas of Karachi. Since Pashtuns are easy to identify, they're easy to kill. To judge the level of apathy to the plight of innocent and defenseless Pashtuns in the country, grab any major daily and notice that they didn't deem these recent killings important enough to feature them on their front page.

The target killing of Pashtuns has intensified in the last six-seven years and to this day, no measures have been taken to end this problem because no one cares. When will Pashtuns wake up?

DAWN.COM | Local | Ten more killed as violence persists in Karachi

DAWN.COM | Metropolitan | Karachi descends into new round of violence

DAWN.COM | Pakistan | Target killings not the only violence: Malik

Pot calling kettle black.

[BLS_1919v2.0]

Wrora what is the motive for killing in Karachi? Is it the same old scam, or are things just heating up?

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

The message is short and clear: STOP COMING TO KARACHI.

This isn't just ethnic rivalry anymore. The Sindis and Mohajirs have joined hands now and want Pashtuns out of their province otherwise they'd face a huge shift in demographics in the coming years. The aim is that when Pashtuns hear about their brethren laborers and small business owners dying in the streets, they'd think twice before coming down here.

You can't even blame the ANP here. MQM is mainly killing civilians, not ANP party-workers. Should Shahi Syed order his men to attack Urdu-speakers here? They're easy targets during the day, not so much at night (/racist).

[BLS_1919v2.0]

The message is short and clear: STOP COMING TO KARACHI.

This isn't just ethnic rivalry anymore. The Sindis and Mohajirs have joined hands now and want Pashtuns out of their province otherwise they'd face a huge shift in demographics in the coming years. The aim is that when Pashtuns hear about their brethren laborers and small business owners dying in the streets, they'd think twice before coming down here.

You can't even blame the ANP here. MQM is mainly killing civilians, not ANP party-workers. Should Shahi Syed order his men to attack Urdu-speakers here? They're easy targets during the day, not so much at night (/racist).

lol@night comment. Peera, basically they are leading Karachi to a Beirut style fighting, no? It is not as if there are 10,000 of them, its 5-7 million. It is not possible.

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

Levane Musafira sent me this article. It's two years old but it explains their mentality. And remember, Mustafa Kamal is their poster boy. If he can say this in public, you can only imagine what the party maggots actually think.

Pashtuns are plotting to take over Karachi, Kamal tells NPR

Daily Times Monitor

KARACHI: City Nazim Mustafa Kamal considers ethnic Pushtun a “threat” to Karachi and believes that they are plotting to take over the city. These opinions came to light in an interview with National Public Radio’s Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep who is in Karachi for their ‘Urban Frontier’ series. Daily Times reproduces the story, ‘Karachi’s Growth Fuels Demand for Illegal Housing’:

Karachi is one of the world’s most populous cities and getting more crowded all the time. New neighborhoods are being built as quickly as people can pour the concrete.

Near the farthest reaches of the Pakistani city, a cement mixer hums and spins in a dusty lot. A workman drops some of the concrete into a wheelbarrow. He then dumps that load into a metal frame and pulls down a handle. A steel mold stamps out eight concrete blocks for one more Karachi home.

Many of these neighborhoods are built illegally on vacant land. Millions of people find homes this way. They generate an entire off-the-books economy.

A few houses are under construction on this barren patch of desert. An Urdu-language banner advertises a model home for the equivalent of $5,000. A look inside one of the houses reveals a two-bedroom home with a tile-floor washroom.

Before long, hundreds of houses likely will squeeze onto this dusty parcel of land in the desert. They’re built of a few simple materials, most of which can be purchased from a single dealer nearby.

You could think of it as a sort of extralegal Home Depot. What it’s called locally is a “thalla,” and the boss is called the “thallawalla.”

The boss of this thalla is named Wahab Khan, and he was dropping off a truckload of concrete blocks from his store.

Khan is a newcomer to Karachi. He hails from northern Pakistan, in the tribal areas near the border. Half his family still lives there.

Two years ago, he joined the other half of the family as they moved to the city. Now, he rents a tiny patch of dirt by the road, where he has set up a cement mixer.

Khan’s employees are rural men who came to Karachi just a few months ago. They live under a little thatch roof a few feet from the cement mixer. The concrete blocks cost the equivalent of 14 cents each. A bag of mortar costs about $4.

Throw in some concrete roofing material, hire some workers for about $3 a day, and you’re on your way to building and selling a house.

Because most locals have no money saved, everything is sold on credit. The electricity, at least, is free. Khan demonstrates how nearby power lines are tapped and how those taps are temporarily removed when government officials visit.

When asked about the danger of using hooks to tap into the lines illegally, he says, “What can we do? We have no choice.”

Because the whole system is outside the law, builders here say they also have no choice in another matter. They say that police, who have a way of dropping by, will threaten to tear down an illegal house unless they’re paid a few dollars.

Occasionally, a whole construction crew will be thrown in jail. It takes a couple hundred dollars to get them out.

The provincial police chief, Inspector-General Muhammad Shoaib Suddle, was not surprised to hear the claims that his men take protection money.

“Of course we all understand that without protection, these things cannot prosper,” he says.

The inspector-general says he recently suspended three mid-level officers for their alleged involvement in land deals. It’s widely assumed that corrupt officials play a role in most of these deals.

The illegal housing system in Karachi has its defenders. A leading urban planner says millions of poor people who otherwise might be homeless find shelter this way.

Still, the new settlements have caused some anxiety. Many of Karachi’s new arrivals have come from the north — from the area bordering Afghanistan, a region that supports the Taliban.

Karachi’s mayor, Syed Mustafa Kamal, considers these ethnic Pashtuns a threat. In his eyes, they are plotting to take over the city.

“These Pashtuns means like fundamentalist — religiously fundamentalist, religiously extremist,” Kamal says. “They are coming in. When it comes to ethnicity, when it comes to Islam they all are ... the same.”

The mayor gives a tour of the area, driving past squatter neighborhoods and Islamic schools. He passes the area where the journalist Daniel Pearl was found slain. And he points out the window at a bearded man.

“The man who’s coming in front of you ... look at him, look at his face,” Kamal says.

The mayor says he is convinced that Pashtuns are planning the locations of the illegal housing settlements. He says they are choosing strategic spots that block his own plans for the city.

“It’s a very strategic location, you see?” Kamal asks. “The superhighway is there. They can control the whole highway. ... They had a master plan before me. And they definitely have a master plan.”

Speaking with several residents of the city’s new settlements, it’s clear that not all are Pashtuns. And they seemed to have no master plan beyond their next meal.

Two of the first residents in the desert neighborhood were outside on their knees cutting firewood. They hacked it out of scraggly bushes they’d found.

Shinaz Begum and Razia Begum live side by side with their families. Between them, they have 16 children, none of whom goes to school.

Their husbands are a fisherman and a fruit-drink vendor. Both women work cleaning houses, and they each earn about 2,500 Pakistani rupees per month, equivalent to $37. The monthly installment on each of their houses is 2,000 rupees, or just under $30.

Look at our children’s faces, they say. Don’t you think they’re underfed?

Even so, the women say their precarious existence on this sandy lot in Karachi is better than their past circumstances.

Source: Daily Times

[BLS_1919v2.0]

Levane Musafira sent me this article. It's two years old but it explains their mentality. And remember, Mustafa Kamal is their poster boy. If he can say this in public, you can only imagine what the party maggots actually think.




Source: Daily Times

This is an old article peera, and I remember reading it. The thing fundamentally goes like this, if they engage in an acceleration of armed conflict, well they will ultimately lose the city. They can go of two ways- they either lose their businesses due to extended conflict, or they lose further lives. Either way they are engaging in an un-winnable war. In terms of kicking Pashtuns out, well this is a no-go scenario for both the sindhis and MQM, as they are contending with people in the millions. The might of the third reich didn't achieve it, how will they.

[MeemWawMeemNoon]

Do you think we deserve it? Should we not leave if they don't want us there?

[BLS_1919v2.0]

Do you think we deserve it? Should we not leave if they don't want us there?

MeemWawMeemNoon, the issue is that Pashtuns moved there as labourers (mostly) since the 40s (and I believe from before). So this isn't as if we dropped from Mars and landed on Karachi. True Sindhis have the right to be angry that their one major city is now inhabited by non-Sindhis, however it is now a long way out. Unless Sindhis plan to assimilate everyone or fight off every non-Sindhi, then it is a lost cause. Either way, we can use the same logic to them. If their top brass didn't ruin Afghanistan and Pashtunkhwa, now those same Pashtun labourers would be in Kabul, Peshawar, Jalalabad or Qandahar working there. That logic works both ways.

[MeemWawMeemNoon]

MeemWawMeemNoon, the issue is that Pashtuns moved there as labourers (mostly) since the 40s (and I believe from before). So this isn't as if we dropped from Mars and landed on Karachi. True Sindhis have the right to be angry that their one major city is now inhabited by non-Sindhis, however it is now a long way out. Unless Sindhis plan to assimilate everyone or fight off every non-Sindhi, then it is a lost cause. Either way, we can use the same logic to them. If their top brass didn't ruin Afghanistan and Pashtunkhwa, now those same Pashtun labourers would be in Kabul, Peshawar, Jalalabad or Qandahar working there. That logic works both ways.

Dear brother, whichever way you slice the cake, the land belongs to the Sindhis. What other ways might there be to get rid of us?

[BLS_1919v2.0]

Dear brother, whichever way you slice the cake, the land belongs to the Sindhis. What other ways might there be to get rid of us?

I agree it is their land, and I never said otherwise. However if they are under the impression that they can nullify 5-7 million Pashtuns or millions of other non-Sindhis, then they are sorely mistaken. You have to understand that Pashtuns there are not interested in making a micro-state out of Karachi...they acknowledge they are a diaspora community there. However, that doesn't mean they should be targeted and killed. It also does not mean that they should be forcefully pushed out (especially since it is done by refugees who came from India). That is ironic.

[MeemWawMeemNoon]

That is how things work when there is no fear of God inculcated in society.

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

Do you think we deserve it? Should we not leave if they don't want us there?

When your village is razed to the ground by the F-16s of the Islamic Fort of the World and when there's only underdevelopment and poverty in your own provincial capitals, you will naturally have to find some means to feed your family.

The truth is that Pashtuns are honest and hard-working and Mohajir businessmen employ only Pashtuns especially when it comes to the protection of their honor and dignity - they employ Pashtun guards at home because they don't trust their own kind even for a second. Therefore, the biggest Mohajir grievance is that Pashtuns are going to take over their jobs. Pashtuns are also busy building Karachi's infrastructure in temperatures of 40C or thereabouts. Contractors here only employ Pashtun laborers.

Furthermore, the constitution of Pakistan gives any citizen the right to live wherever he or she wishes. If Pakistanis want Pashtuns to live with them in their state, they will have to, at the very least, honor their own constitution and let Pashtuns practice their Jinnah-given-rights.

This is an old article peera, and I remember reading it. The thing fundamentally goes like this, if they engage in an acceleration of armed conflict, well they will ultimately lose the city. They can go of two ways- they either lose their businesses due to extended conflict, or they lose further lives. Either way they are engaging in an un-winnable war. In terms of kicking Pashtuns out, well this is a no-go scenario for both the sindhis and MQM, as they are contending with people in the millions. The might of the third reich didn't achieve it, how will they.

I would say it's in damage control mode right now. They don't want more to come. The ones that are here, as it is, find it hard to get residency certificates or Karachi-issued ID cards so they can't vote here anyway.

[MazloomYarMasud]

Levanaye Zalmaye after knowing how poorly treated Pashtuns are in Pakistan how come we still have these "Patriotic Pakistani Pashtuns"

The treatment of Pashtuns in Karachi by Kwatanyun is no different than the treatment of Pashtuns by Tajiks and Farsiwans.

We can only respond to such people by a gun as they only beleive in violence.

kala Pashtin wee pa Karachi shay, aow dagh khur ragshavai wee, aow dagh pira family pa kwatanyunay pa luss banay mra shavee dee, yu option putay dai, yu tapak pa mu luss shay wee aow pira shpa pa kwatanyunay banay sha deeeeer dasoona pachar wee.

Kind Regards

[Zarawar]

Thanks for sharing Lewanai wrora,