November 7th - 13th 1998

November 7th - 13th 1998

Pakistan

Silent guns

KARACHI

For the present, at least, the killings have stopped in Karachi. There are more cars out at night, as drivers have less fear of being robbed at gunpoint. Waiters at the big hotels walk home at the end of their duties, reasonably confident that they will not be relieved of thier tips.

Violent crime has for years been a feature of Pakistan's biggest commercial city and port. At its centre has been a fued between the government's security forces and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which draws support from those, or now their kin, who left India at the time of partition in 1947. The MQM seeks political reforms in Karachi and in Pakistan as a whole, and denies any link with crime. But its murderous feud with authority has helped to create a general atmosphere of lawlessness, fed by unemployment -- which is unlikely to ease as long as might-be-investors see the city as ridden by crime.

After elections last year, Sindh, the province of which Karachi is the capital, got a coalition government formed by the MQM and the Muslim League, the party of the federal government. Peace seemed in prospect. There was talk of Altaf Hussain, the MQM's leader in exile in London, coming home and charges against him being dropped. But the violence went on. At least 750 people have been killed in Karachi this year, mainly, says the MQM, as a result of attacks on itself by a breakaway faction. In October Hakim Saeed, a former provincial governor, was murderd. The MQM has denied police claims that it was involved in the murder. "Evidence" from an MQM suspect may well have been obtained under torture. The suspect has since died.

The MQM has since walked out of the Sindh coalition, an on October 30th the federal prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, placed the province under direct rule from Islamabad. Mushahid Hussain, the information minister, says the government will take "clean, specific, single-minded" action against those "involved in terrorism". It aims to arrest between 150 to 200 people thought to be involved in recent crime.

From London Altaf Hussain offered to co-operate with Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party to campaign for the restoration of local rule. The MQM used to regard Miss Bhutto as an enemy, blaming her for orchestrating earlier attacks on itself. But alliances change easily in Pakistan. Whether this one will happen, and what that might do to the crime statistics, time will show. Meanwhile, the people of Karachi are grateful for a lull in the violence, uneasy as it is and short-lived as it may prove.