Karachi -- at war with itself

Helmeted soldiers in camouflage jackets click the safety catch off their automatic rifles and take up positions behind a stack of sandbags. An armoured personnel carrier rumbles past.

Not far away, flames dance from wrecked buses, and boys throw rocks. Older residents are hiding inside their homes. Shops are shut and the streets deserted.

What sounds like a vignette from a city at war is daily life in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi -- the commercial and industrial heart and sole port for a country that is home to 140 million people.

Karachi is unique among Pakistani's cities because it is home to a variety of ethnic groups, a volatile mix that is the main cause for its 12 years of strife.

There has not been a local election in more than five years because politicians fear residents will vote along ethnic lines, tossing out leaders who have seen their own constituencies dwindle. Without a mayor, city council, planning commission, or school boards, people say they have no place to go with their grievances.

Sindhis, the indigenous people of this part of Pakistan, constitute barely five per cent of the population in Karachi, but hold a majority of government jobs.

The city's largest group is the relatively new Mohajirs, an Urdu word meaning refugees, Muslims who fled predominantly Hindu India 50 years ago when the subcontinent gained Independence from Britain. They account for 58 per cent of the population, but say they are discriminated against.

Mohajirs demand what they see as the political power their numbers warrant, and some have tried to seize it at gunpoint.

Punjabis from Pakistan's richest state and Pathans from the tribal northwest together make up about a third of the population.

Karachi, occasionally sees fights between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, but most of Pakistan's sectarian violence occurs in the Punjab province.

While the city's ethnic gangs battle and police and soldiers try to control them, Karachi's infrastructure is falling apart because no one can be held responsible for its upkeep. Almost half of Karachi's 14 million people live in illegal slum dwellings that do not have running water or sewage disposal.

The police force is considered the most politicised in Pakistan, one used by successive governments to execute enemies.

Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, once revered as a champion of democracy, was dismissed last year amid accusations she sanctioned police hit squads in Karachi, located near her hometown. Her estranged brother and political rival, Murtaza Bhutto, died in a hail of police bullets outside his home.

Karachi's rich and powerful live fearfully in grand homes, surrounded by walls and armed guards.

"We have no water in our taps, our roads are falling apart, the electricity is breaking. Even the street lights we fix ourselves,'' said Yousuf Jamil, chairman of a Police-Citizens Liaison Committee.

"We are surviving,'' he added. "Right now it is controlled anarchy. But for how long?''

From a purely economic point of view, Jamil said the federal government has to do something to save Karachi.

The city is the source of 70 per cent of every tax dollar the government collects, most of it from the business community.

With its port, Karachi should be a magnet for foreign investors who could help this developing country. Every year, billions of dollars worth of goods are exported through the port or brought in for the rest of the country.

"As Pakistan's economic centre, Karachi cannot be allowed to drift out of control,'' Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief said during a visit to Karachi in early July.

But Arif Hasan, an architect and town planner, said the government does little more than make promises.

"For example," he said, "in the city's Korangi neighborhood where 1 million people live, the government provides 73 schools. Private educators, meanwhile, operate 509 schools in the district."

The government's record on health care is no better. It runs 17 clinics in Korangi, while 623 clinics and dispensaries are privately run.

"So far no government seems ready to give Karachi's people the vote, and the chance to solve their own problems."

Bhutto refused because she didn't want to share power with the Mohajirs. Her successor, Sharief, refused during his first term in office in the early 1990s and has said nothing about the issue so far in his second term.

An indefinite moratorium on local elections is a sure way to guarantee a small civil war in Karachi, warns Mohammed Jalil, a leading Mohajir politician.

That possibility frightens many Pakistanis.

"If Karachi cannot be restored to some of its forgotten stability, then it will be very difficult for the rest of the country not to feel the impact,'' The Herald newsmagazine said. "If Karachi falls apart, the Centre certainly will not hold.''

UNI