Karachi, a port city of 14 million on the Pakistani coast, where the Pab mountain range and the Sindh Desert gather into a brick-and dust-hued urban sprawl before tumbling into the Arabian Sea, is the battlefield in which an assassin like M.R. thrives. In Karachi you have ethnic feuds: Mohajir versus the Pathans, Baluchis and Sindhis; you have extremists from rival Sunni and Shi'ite sects battling each other (lately, radical Sunnis are gunning down Shi'ite doctors and lawyers at random); and, of course, there are the radical Islamic groups that shelter al-Qaeda fugitives and are, according to Karachi police officers, helping them plan their next terrorist strikes. In April, a Yemeni national Waleed Mohammed bin Attash and several Pakistanis were caught during various raids in Karachi with more than 600 kilos of explosives. "This place is under siege," says Anwer Mooraj, a Pakistani writer.
Breaking that siege is almost impossible in the face of endemic and systemic corruption. A few sordid examples: in certain colleges, teachers demand payoffs from students wanting to pass exams; some cops earn extra money by selling their bullets; and gangs, operating under the auspices of crooked bureaucrats, police and army-ranger elements, siphon off water before it reaches the taps of most Karachi apartment buildings and sell it in the city from tanker trucks, according to municipal workers. An industrialist who says he refused to bribe health inspectors saw his tiremaking plant shut down when they invoked a little-observed 19th century British law requiring factory walls to be whitewashed. On the Karachi Stock Exchange, insider trading is commonplace and conflict of interest is rife. Some of the exchange's board members are also leading brokers, and they are able to change regulations overnight to bankrupt an outsider trying to deal in a company's shares. Brokers sometimes vanish with their investors' portfolios, and no investor has ever won a case against a crooked dealer.
In the courts, it is common for a defense lawyer to pay off witnesses, the judge and even the prosecutor to obtain a favorable verdict for his client. In the end, some would-be litigants find it is cheaper, and more effective, simply to hire a hit man. "Karachi today," says Tariq Amin, a fashion stylist and prominent social commentator, "is like Chicago in the days of Al Capone mixed in with the Middle Ages."
In other words, it's a dangerous mess. And with terrorism breeding in enclaves across the city, Karachi has the potential to spread its menace not only throughout Pakistan but far beyond its frontiers. Karachi is a city of predators?
www.time.com