Karachi - Pakistan's melting pot

By M Ilyas Khan
BBC News, Karachi

Protests against power cuts frequently turn ugly

Karachi is Pakistan's largest city and also its most volatile in terms of ethnic and sectarian strife.

It has also served as a melting pot for such diverse people as Sindhis, Pashtuns, Punjabis and refugees from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran, China and the Far East.

For many, it is the only city where all the nationalities of Pakistan, and those from the neighbouring region, truly meet and mix.

The refugees from partition with India in 1947, the Muhajirs, are the dominant group, followed by Pashtuns and Punjabis from the north and north-west of the country.

Tens of thousands of migrants from other countries of the sub-continent also live here illegally

Population pressure

Current estimates put the population of the city at anywhere between 14 million to 16 million, spread over an area of about 3,500 square kilometres.

This has brought the city's civic infrastructure under tremendous pressure.

The city's infrastructure has not kept pace with the population

The agencies responsible for supplying water and electricity to the city have invariably failed to meet the rising demand, often leading to arson and riots.

And the city developers have failed to keep pace with the rising demand for housing, roads, schools and hospitals.

Geographically, the city is divided into class zones, with the more affluent classes mostly living in the southern neighbourhoods of Clifton, Defence and the Societies.

Since independence in 1947, the city's middle class has expanded from its original bases around the south of the city to north and east, with multiple city centres cropping up in more than a dozen areas across the metropolis.

Interspersed within these upper and middle class localities are slums where the labourers, domestic servants and other workers seek shelter.

In addition, vast settlements of squatters have emerged along the eastern, northern and north-western peripheries of the planned city, housing economic migrants from within the country and abroad.

Due to urban migration, the rate of Karachi's population growth has risen to 6% per annum, about twice the national rate.

Model city

The biggest attraction for migrants is that Karachi has always been the main, often the only, centre of economic growth in the country, a repository of both skilled and unskilled jobs.

Political violence in May left many dead.

As it is Pakistan's only major seaport, Karachi ends up raising more than 65% of the national revenue from customs and taxation.

Since independence, the city has provided Pakistan with its major industrial base. In the 1960s, it was seen as a model city for development around the world.

Amid the current economic upswing, though there has been no industrial expansion in evidence. Existing industry has been able to operate at full capacity, boosting production.

The real advance has taken place in service industries, such as banking and insurance.

Nearly all banks, insurance companies, multinational corporations, major industries and media groups have their headquarters in Karachi.

Debts rescheduled

After the September 2001 attacks in the US, many Pakistani expatriates found it more convenient to shift their finances to Pakistan.

Karachi slum dwellers in the wake of flooding

Western aid consortiums were also persuaded to reschedule Pakistan's debts and issue new loans on easy terms to the country due to its role in the US-led 'war on terror'.

These resources have helped create conditions for high economic growth and thousands of new jobs in the corporate sector, bringing even more migrants to Karachi.

A radical growth in consumer financing by banks has led to an unbridled increase in the number of new cars, bringing the city's road infrastructure under huge pressure.

Driving conditions have further deteriorated due to the frantic construction of flyovers and the expansion of roads by the administration to try to solve the traffic problem.

As a result, over the last five or six years it has become increasingly difficult and rare for the people of one area to willingly travel to another area for purposes of business or socialising.

And this helps little in resolving the city's ethnic, religious and linguistic problems which have created a lot of bloodshed in the past. These threats still loom large over the city.

Armed groups

A peaceful, clean and promising city until the 1960s in terms of both economic and cultural potential, Karachi first witnessed ethnic tensions between the Muhajirs, the dominant group in the city, and Sindhis, the natives of Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital, in the 1970s.

Karachi old timers say nobody goes without three square meals a day

In the late 1980s, ethnic hostilities broke out first between Mohajirs and Pashtuns, then between Mohajirs and Punjabis, and finally between Mohajirs and Sindhis.

Another source of violence is the sectarian rift between the majority Sunni and the minority Shia communities. The Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978 and the Islamisation policies of Pakistan's military ruler Gen Ziaul Haq sharpened the divide.

Over the years, mosques of both communities have been the target of bombings and suicide attacks.

It is today a city of different ethnic and religious groups living in separate localities with their armed wings lurking in the shadows to strike whenever they perceive a threat from a rival community.

The introduction of weapons into politics has also led to the creation of political mafias that extort money from businessmen, protect trading in contrabands and patronise street crime to fund their groups.

Despite all of this, it continues to be the most hospitable city in Pakistan where, as some Karachi old timers say, nobody goes without three square meals a day.