Karachi’s contribution to revenue: 70%
Worth of a Karachi businessman’s life: An added number in the daily body count, on quick news bars.
We’ve all been seeing the underreported and softened versions of the horrors of criminal activities around the city.
A thought for a split second, what might’ve been the images of the tortures inflicted on these innocent ‘people’ , which news channels are adamant on referring to as ‘bodies’. The people, who are just as regular a Karachiite as any of us, living right in our neighborhoods. People are abducted from the streets, no pattern, except this time, the working class and entrepreneurs are specifically being targeted. I saw how this one hotel in Gulistan-e-Johar became one of the most successful hotels around and how it is closed now for 2 weeks, because the owner was shot dead at the counter in rush hours. News channels added a number in their body counts. The day refreshes and the body count resets to whatever the first numbers of killings are reported. Busses filled with civilians are abducted, civilians killed! These people are just going to work to make a hard day’s living, to be underpaid, dragging themselves as it is.
The kiling spree started with political target killings, further fueled by collision of gangs, now it seems they just want to kill! So many of them? All around? So random? Is there a motive at all? Probably partial, but there is definitely a motivation! But motive! What is it?
The threat has brought out the limits of Karachi’s perseverance, Karachiites have been trained for decades to live around these circumstances; constantly. But when they are afraid to get out of their houses and to work, it could only be something on a degree of, or above, war!
Take a second to imagine someone dying off of torture, inflicted by another person for nothing they have ever done agaianst him. Rushes the shivers down your soul. “The horror” , “the horror”, the closing words in not-so-scary-when-you-watch-it-in-Karachi, Apocalypse Now, seem appropriate when you are outside and realized you don’t have any reason to believe that the next random person isn’t you. What these words truly represent, breathes inside you. Hell, outside … they are throwing grenades on houses!
The govt. watches it happen with such disregard that it’s almost obvious that they are running the show themselves and are actively supporting the criminals, but to what end? Keeping the influence for a few more days as they sweep clean national treasure and the loans they collect?
Karachi, the golden-egg laying bird, they want its meat too! Is it the race of terror? Winner takes Karachi? Then there is ethnic killing, an eyewitness reported seeing 2 guys asking a “different” looking person to show his ID card, after a quick review of his ID card he was shot dead. It’s not even covered up anymore! What’s next? Lists? They are already there by the way (luckily, the witness happens to belong to the safe in the region ethnicity.) Seems like everyone with any kind of prejudice belonging to these gangs backed by the ruling parties are practicing their hatred out in the open.
If you ask 18 million+ people if they feel safe and they look at you as if you are crazy, you have to understand, something has gone terribly wrong! Let alone the rest of the places in the country, people have started to make sure that no two sons are praying in the same mosque.
If a ‘country’ is supposed to be a safe haven for one to live, where you get rights in return of your obligations and contribution to keep a society established, I gotta ask, what the fuck is this place we are in?
During the 1960s, Pakistan was seen as a model of economic development around the world, and there was much praise for its economic progression. Karachi was seen as an economic role model around the world, and there was much praise for the way its economy was progressing.[citation needed] Many countries sought to emulate Pakistan’s economic planning strategy and one of them, South Korea, copied the city’s second “Five-Year Plan” and World Financial Center in Seoul is designed and modeled after Karachi. Later, economic mismanagement in general, and fiscally imprudent economic policies in particular, caused a large increase in the country’s public debt and led to slower growth in the 1990s.
- Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Pakistan
