KARACHI: The Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P), a major opposition party in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, on Tuesday demanded a paramilitary Rangers or army led crackdown against street crime, as the provincial government blamed “illegal settlers” for a rise in violence this year.
At least 57 people have been killed in street crime in Karachi, the country’s commercial hub and home to roughly 30 million people, averaging nearly one murder every other day since the start of this year, according to a tally collected from media reports.
At least 18 of the killings, including that of an army major who was assigned with the Coast Guard, occurred during the holy fasting month of Ramadan. The officer was shot by muggers on March 30 amd died after being hospitalized for a week.
Ali Khurshidi, an MQM-P member, told Arab News provincial police had failed to control street crime and Rangers should be given special powers to lauch a crackdown.
The demand is a hark back to 2013 when, after years of crime and militancy had made Karachi a byword for violence, an extended operation by the Sindh Rangers, who are ultimately answerable to the powerful Pakistani military command, pushed crime notably down across the city.
“Rangers have been granted such powers in the past to restore law and order,” Khurshidi said. “Isn’t the killing of more than 50 people reason enough to involve paramilitary forces to control crime, especially when the police have completely failed?”
He said the killing of such a large number of people in a little over three months “is reason enough to seek the intervention of all stakeholders, the provincial and federal governments, to take immediate steps to save precious lives on the streets.”
Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and home to its biggest port, has for decades been plagued by street crime, robberies, kidnappings for ransom as well as ethnic, political and gang violence.
After a drop in crime following the 2013 crackdown, violence and robberies are once again on the rise, with dozens of residents, including traders and university students, killed during muggings on the city’s busiest thoroughfares.
Amid calls to bring in Sindh Rangers, Zoha Waseem, an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick who has authored a book on corruption within Karachi police, said Rangers were meant to act in support of the police and their role in controlling crime needed be clearly defined.
“We know from the past that this has not always been the case,” she said. “At times, they have acted independently.”
She was referring to widespread reports that the 2013 crackdown, which continued for a number of years, had also been used to upend the city’s political order, and was expanded to target political parties and figures at odds with the military establishment, including the MQM-P at the time. The operation also left behind a broad trail of human rights violations — including accusations of extrajudicial killings, in which officers shoot suspects after taking them into unlawful detention, according to rights advocates and political leaders. Sindh Rangers denies this.
In view of the rising crimes, Mustafa Kamal, a member of the MQM-P party which has itself in the past been the target of a military-backed crackdown, demanded the army take control of the city.
“Karachi should be handed over to the army for three months as the Sindh government has failed to adequately protect the lives and property of its citizens,” he said in a statement.
In the latest killings in Karachi, Muhammad Hassan, 70, and his 37-year-old son were killed in the Motorville area of Karachi by robbers as they snatched Rs12.6 million ($151,398) from the father-son duo on Monday.
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah suspended the in-charge of the area police station in response.
Arab News made multiple attempts to get a comment from Karachi police chief, Imran Yaqoob Mihas, but he did not respond.
Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon told Arab News he did not believe the provincial government needed assistance from the center.
“Unfortunately, the chain of street crimes has escalated throughout the country,” he said. “Our efforts are aimed at swiftly controlling street crimes and the new interior minister and the new IG are working hard [in this regard].”
“Illegal settlers are the cause of street crime,” Memon told reports after Eid ul Fitr prayers in Hyderabad on Wednesday morning.
An expulsion drive that has mainly targetted Afghans has seen half a million so-called undocumented Afghan refugees expelled from the country since late last year. The deportations started after a spike in suicide bombings last year which the Pakistan government — without providing evidence — said mostly involved Afghans. Islamabad has also blamed them for smuggling and other militant violence and crime.
