Mere 'collateral damage'?

How can women remain indifferent to Karachi's carnage that took place on May 12. takes a look at the recent situation of the city that has taken violence to a level never observed before…
By Lubna Jerar Naqvi

The national political arena is abuzz with the blame game on who is responsible for the deaths of more than 48 people on May 12 as Karachi was assaulted for the umpteenth time. As this debate goes on, and will no doubt continue until the next spate of 'political leverage', deaths become statistics to be mulled over by the media and political players. There are those who actually lost someone in these riots and who will have to deal with the vacuum created in their lives forever. All political parties claim that they have lost people in Karachi on May 12, and they have documents to prove the authenticity of this claim, but is the actual loss really theirs? And as if 48 deaths were not enough, the authorities in Sindh have now given the rangers 'shoot-to-kill' orders that have already resulted in the deaths of non-political people. According to a new report in a newspaper on May 15, three people including a minor were killed in Lyari, apparently due to the order of 'shoot-to-kill'. There is a discrepancy regarding the number of non-political people killed by the rangers, as the area police claims that 'only two people' had been killed in a gang shoot off, while eye witnesses, residents of that area claim that the police and rangers had opened fire on people protesting against the May 12 carnage.

Even if we do accept the police version that 'only two people' killed on Monday were due to a shoot out between the gangs, the fact remains that these young men – Sunny was only 17 years old and Sohail was 27 – had families. Both families have lost a son and no explanation or compensation can bring them back. Let's for one moment believe that both Sunny and Sohail were gangsters, and were killed when their respective gangs clashed, but how can we explain the death of 10-year-old Faizan, son of Abdul Karim, who was killed when the law enforcers opened fire in retaliation to 'opposition, protest and stone pelting'. How can you explain to a grieving mother that her son was shot in cold blood because the government has given trained men with guns a free hand to 'shoot-to-kill'? Will she understand this reasoning? Will collateral damage make sense to her after she buries her beloved son under heaps of earth never to see his face or hear his voice again?

And who will be responsible for the likes of two-year-old Nabil Faisal and his nine-month-old sister Wania, who lost their father Faisal Tariq on May 12 when unknown people shot him in an Edhi ambulance. Faisal and the others were taking Faisal's wounded brother to the hospital when armed men opened fire on the group of about 5000 people. The sole fault of Faisal Tariq was that he had joined the groups going to the airport to welcome the chief justice. Nabil Faisal only two has no means to support his mother and sister, and it will be at least another 15 years before this child will be capable to support what is left of his family Will either the provincial or federal government support such victims of senseless carnage? And by support we don't mean the paltry compensatory amount that the government always promises to the relatives of the victims. Will women like Faisal Tariq's widow be given state support so that they can raise their children honourably with good education and a wholesome life?

What justification can one give of the targeted killing of the sixty-five year old Edhi driver Faiz-ur-Rahman, who was shot three times in the head, neck and abdomen at point blank range? The only reason for Faiz's brutal murder was that he had refused to comply with orders of the armed men to throw out a wounded man from his vehicle. Faiz-ur-Rahman was neither a political activist nor a government servant; he was just a humanitarian working for one of Pakistan's greatest and most revered philanthropically run organisation. And he was just doing his duty of transporting the dead and wounded to a hospital. Ironically, he had volunteered to go into the besieged area where other drivers were wary to go simply because at this time ambulances were also being shot at.

This is a first event for violent Karachi where an ambulance driver has been targeted in riots. Even during the worst times in Karachi, when the city was plagued with pitched battles between rivals, ambulance drivers, especially the Edhi drivers, were allowed to tend to the dead and the wounded and were not besieged. This reveals the brutalism that seems to have become the character of Karachi. It may not be too late for the concerned people – the government, all political parties and the citizens of not only Karachi but of the country – to converge and tend to this ailment that is facing the industrial and financial hub of the country. Karachi has been inflicted with the malaise of social and civil degradation for decades now; no one not even its own citizens pay any heed and drag their existence forward. It is all well and good to hold social events like Humara Karachi basically aimed at the upper social strata of society, giving the city an ersatz facade of being a cultural hub. But that is not the solution to the ground realities facing Karachi in many forms, one that has surfaced many times before May 12 in the form of callous brutality that has become an inherent skin-deep trait. Karachi needs to concentrate on developing a tolerant civil social basis along with infrastructural development, which was also an imperative need for this forsaken city, and investigate areas which need to be developed so that incidents like this do not occur in the future. The people of the city deserve to live a safer life and this can only be obtained if measures are actually taken to provide security to the people in their day-to-day lives. This can only be achieved if those in authority, work alongside the common man and both segments of the society accept their conjoined responsibilities of making Karachi a safe city – they owe this to the safe future of their children.