Karachi Kills VICE - By Suroosh Alvi
Interviewing a “target killer” in Karachi was probably the scariest thing I’ve done in my 17 years at VICE. His gun sat between my feet in the backseat of our car as we drove in circles around his neighborhood. After our chat about killing people for a living, I felt like vomiting for three hours. I’ve been around my share of guns and violence, but sitting next to someone who has murdered 35 people (for between $550 and $1,100 per head) made me feel not so good.
So who hires these people? According to the hit man I interviewed, politicians contract about 80 percent of the assassinations in the region and the other 20 percent are related to organized crime. Twenty years ago, he said, there were a total of six guys in his profession. Today, there are more than 600 active target killers operating in Karachi. Indeed, many locals speculate that the famous Raymond Davis case—in which a CIA agent took out two armed men in Lahore last year and subsequently strained US-Pakistan diplomacy—was a failed target killing, not some random kids on motorcycles trying to rob him.
On the outskirts of Karachi, children search for scraps in one of the largest garbage dumps in the world, which is next door to what is rumored to be one of the mafia’s favorite hiding spots for its kidnap victims, Surjani Town.I have visited Pakistan many times and know my way around the rest of the country, but this was my first time working in Karachi. This place is different. A sprawling, ultraviolent metropolis of 18 million people, it’s one of the fastest-growing cities in the world and is probably most famous in the West as the place where Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded.
Karachi has a rich history of violence, dating back to 1947, when Pakistan rose from the ashes of the British Empire. The massive influx of Muslim refugees into the new country brought turf wars, ethnic diversity (as well as ethnic tensions and rivalries), political warfare, gang violence, sectarian killings, and, in more recent years, suicide bombings.
Twitter is a place where fierce opposition to Pakistan’s security agencies is expressed. There is a clear trend that the Pakistani military and spy agency get a strong critique from Pakistanis themselves, something that does not happen in mainstream media where people are generally shy to express such views.
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Raza Rumi speaks to Salman Masood Pakistani correspondent for The New York Times about the new ban on Twitter enforced by the Government of Pakistan through the IT Ministry. It was initially portrayed as a ban against the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad but as time passes by, many have realized that the ban was essentially against rising political dissent in the country. Many Pakistanis are openly critical of the current PPP regime and its complicity with the military establishment and subsequently the secret agencies.
Many Pakistani Twitter users, including yours truly, are using various proxies to gain access to the website.
(via mehreenkasana)
Way to pull a really weird Iran, Pakistan.
(via mohandasgandhi)
(via mohandasgandhi)
Yeh Karachi hai meri jaan | This is Karachi, my dear
As I traveled throughout Ethiopia and the Somaliland Pakistan (Northern Somali for you die hard nationalists) region, anytime I encountered corruption, bribery attempts, sexual harassment, discrimination, incompetence, abuse, I was simply told ‘This is Africa Yeh Karachi hai meri jaan.” Dare I ask, “Is that a Hyena in this restaurant?”, and someone within a few feet will retort ‘This is Africa Yeh Karachi hai meri jaan’. This defeatist phrase reeks of internalized racism and self-loathing. It connotes that ingenuity, efficiency, transparency, and competence are foreign to Africa and Africans Pakistan and Pakistanis, and one ought to leave these particular expectations at the door when one enters the continent. Common sense is for the white man, they say. For efficiency, go to America. And Human Rights, now that’s crazy talk, This is Africa Yeh Karachi hai meri jaan. Surely we can do better, and demanding better is only holding our nations up to the standards we know it can achieve, and has achieved without colonial distractions.
(This paragraph is taken from Idilay Bilan’s piece on her own blog - www.afrolens.com - titled, If I hear This is Africa one more time…. Its localized to Pakistan/Karachi by me.)
Posted at 1:48am on 16 May, 2012 |
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Tags: [Karachi] [Pakistan] [Corruption] [Perception] [People] [Life]
Tags: [Karachi] [Pakistan] [Corruption] [Perception] [People] [Life]
Pakistani policewomen actively participate in Lyari Operation against miscreants and gangsters.
Damn. Get it, ladies.
Faces of Karachi a video by Ismet Kurtulus
We all travel and see the world these days but one thing that always comes back are the faces we see during our travels. Sometimes, many of them are hard to forget. I think this is just one of those trips.
Enjoy!
