Pakistani Troops Ordered to Use Bullets to Quell Karachi Turmoil
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/world/asia/09karachi.html
KARACHI, Pakistan — The federal government gave paramilitary and other security forces shoot-on-sight orders against gunmen who have plunged this sprawling southern port city into four days of ethnic and political violence that has left more than 70 dead, including 18 people on Friday.
More than 1,100 people have been shot dead in what are known as targeted killings in battles between ethnic groups in Karachi since the start of the year, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. But this week's violence has been the most sustained, said Zohra Yusuf, the chairwoman of the commission.
"It is extremely disturbing," Ms. Yusuf said. "The absence of law enforcement agencies is very clear. It seems to be a poor response from the government."
After four days of intense bloodletting, the federal government on Friday finally called in 1,000 soldiers from the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force, to supplement the forces already deployed in the city: the police and the Sindh Rangers, a force governed by the Pakistan Army. The new forces and the Rangers were given orders to shoot on sight.
"Let me make it very clear that there is no operation planned," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters as he arrived in Karachi late Thursday night. "But definitely there will be targeted actions in the affected areas."
Karachi, a city of immigrants, has a long history of political and ethnic violence. The city's political fault lines mirror ethnic lines, and the violence has been confined to low-income areas dominated by two groups, the Pashtuns and the Muhajirs, which are aligned with competing parties.
The Pashtuns tend to support the Awami National Party, or A.N.P., and the Muhajirs, Urdu-speaking people who immigrated from India in 1947, are aligned with Karachi's strongest political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or M.Q.M. Karachi has been a traditional stronghold of the M.Q.M.
But a wave of Pashtun migrants in recent years has challenged the city's demographic and political balance as the Pashtuns demand their share of political representation. The main political groups also frequently have links to criminal gangs who control lucrative smuggling and black-market syndicates.
"This is a bloody turf war," said Cyril Almeida, a columnist with Dawn, a leading English daily newspaper in Pakistan. "On the one side you have the M.Q.M., who believe they own the city, and on the other side you have the A.N.P."
Pockets of Pashtuns and Muhajirs often reside right next to each other, and it is at those intersections that the worst violence has broken out.
"We are taking all possible measures," said Karachi's police chief, Saud Mirza. "Wherever there are ethnic interfaces in the city, we are deploying precautionary forces."
On Thursday, the M.Q.M. called a protest strike of workers, as politicians criticized the government response as inadequate. Since then, shops have pulled down their shutters, public transportation workers have parked their vehicles and gas stations have closed across the city.
"Despite all our efforts of peace and tolerance, it is very apparent that the enforcement agencies and the Rangers, who operate under instructions from provincial and federal government, have decided not to provide protection to Karachites," an M.Q.M. politician, Mustafa Kamal, said in a statement. "As a result, dozens of innocent citizens lost their lives in open attacks and targeted killings."
The Pakistani news media reported that a 6-year-old girl had been killed after being caught in a "hail of bullets" as she walked home from school and that two public buses had been sprayed with bullets that killed at least 12 people and wounded 30.
The attacks on the buses were aimed mainly at Muhajir passengers and appeared to be in retaliation for the killing of five Pashtuns on Thursday, Dawn reported.
Ms. Yusuf, the Human Rights Commission's chairwoman, is not confident that the additional security forces will dampen the underlying causes of the violence.
A leading national politician, Imran Khan, said it was up to the three ruling parties in Karachi — the A.N.P., the M.Q.M. and the Pakistan Peoples Party, which leads the federal government — to take responsibility and arrest the people from their parties who are behind the violence.
"Can Rehman Malik cure cancer with an aspirin?" Mr. Khan said in a televised news conference.