The Fall Of Lyari

By Amir Zia
The News on Sunday
January 30, 2011

With the votebank and demography in its favour, but with no party organisation, is the PPP trapped in this backward neighbourhood?

It is considered the strongest lair of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Bhutto loyalists in Karachi,but the elected representatives of the ruling party remain among the most unpopular individuals here. Graffiti on the walls ridicule and insult PPP lawmakers elected in the 2008 general elections from Lyari -- one of the earliest and most backward neighbourhoods of Karachi -- where old and new tricolour PPP flags dot the electricity poles, rickety old houses and buildings.

At many places, along with posters and huge pictures of slain family members of the Bhutto dynasty and President Asif Ali Zardari, photographs of a notorious gangster of his time, Sardar Abdul Rehman, alias Dakait also adorn the neighbourhood -- underlining the emergence of a new political phenomenon in this PPP stronghold.

Yes, the name and legend of Rehman Dakait, killed in a controversial police encounter in August 2009, continue to live in Lyari. Dakait’s ambitions to join politics from the PPP platform ended with his death, but his People’s Amn Committee (PAC) emerged as a force to reckon with in Lyari -- a PPP stronghold since 1970s. Disgruntled supporters and workers of the PPP, gangsters and criminals comprise the core of the Amn Committee, which takes pride in doing social and welfare work. For the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and even some PPP stalwarts, the Amn Committee symbolises criminalisation of politics, while its supporters say that it represents the voice of ordinary people and party workers ignored and forgotten by the leadership.

But between these two extreme points of view, the hard fact is that the Amn Committee has effectively managed to establish its grip over Lyari at the cost of PPP’s organisational structure. The PPP member National Assembly from the area Nabeel Gabol avoids his constituency because of what he believes a threat to his life. Gabol has been staying away from Lyari for months now -- even before he provoked the recent wrath of President Zardari by what the party insiders say his “ill-timed” and “thoughtless” statement about the two PPP allies the Awami National Party (ANP) and the MQM -- which nearly cost him his ministry.

The two PPP MPAs from the area -- Muhammad Saleem Hingoro and Muhammad Rafiq Engineer -- are taunted and badmouthed by a vast number of people in Lyari and have restricted movements in their respective constituencies, where the Amn Committee now wields power.

“It is not that there is no PPP structure in Lyari,” says a senior PPP leader and lawmaker from Karachi requesting anonymity. “From the ward to the district level, there are office-bearers and the party structure, but it is dormant. After coming to power, the leadership failed to come up to the expectation of people. They have been hiding from the people and their demands. The vacuum has been filled by the People’s Amn Committee. Those PPP workers have joined the committee, who were not allowed to rise within the party. They are third and fourth tier of local PPP leaders.”

Uzair Baloch, a cousin of Rehman Dakait, who now heads the committee, first went to jail while protesting on a call made by PPP and so was his father, he added.

Zafar Baloch, a spokesman for the Amn Committee, said that the elected representatives disappointed the people. All uplift projects in Lyari are being carried under a more than three billion rupees special presidential fund, he said. “These elected representatives have nothing to their credit,” he claimed, adding that Gabol has not been barred from Lyari. “Gabol himself does not come to Lyari despite being elected from here. We are ready to provide him protection in Lyari. But if his voters are angry with him, what can we do. Even an MQM minister and a supporter live in Lyari and none of them have ever been attacked or victimised.”

But matters are not as simple as they appear as the Amn Committee now spearheads not just the drive against crime in the area, but also works on social welfare projects -- from restoring public parks to running clinics and supporting education institutions. Police sources say that street crime, rampant all over Karachi, is nonexistent in Lyari. Drugs, which once used to sell openly, are now being sold under wraps. The appearances can, however, be deceptive.

The committee is trying to expand its influence. And in doing this, it is clashing with established forces -- especially the MQM. The tussle is one big cause of the continued violence in the city where more than 70 people have been killed in the first 25 days of January in political assassinations and crime related incidents. These rival groups also accuse one another of running extortion racket, which police officers admit have direct connections with political parties.

Indeed, politics has transformed into a sordid and bloody business in which there are no rules of the game. And the irony is that the central leadership of the political parties and the state institutions not just tolerate it, but in some ways patronise it.

Another disgruntled PPP lawmaker claimed that even the Station House Officers (SHOs) at the Lyari police stations are being appointed on Amn Committee’s recommendations. It is not the local leadership, but Sindh Home Minister Zulfikar Mirza, who has been supporting it, he claimed. “The PPP as a party has vanished from Lyari. Even there have been instances of kidnapping of PPP local leaders -- which was unthinkable in the past.”

The whole problem emerges out of the mindset of a coterie within the PPP that Amn Committee and ANP can be used as an effective force to counter MQM’s muscle power. But this hedging of position by individuals is being done at the cost of the party, PPP insiders say.

“Supporting criminal element is not an answer to a problem. In the long run, it will hurt not just the PPP, but the overall politics of this city,” the PPP lawmaker said. “When we go to Lyari, there appears no security. We feel threatened. Criminals will be calling the shots here in the next elections.”

Some old PPP supporters say that their party has been trapped in Lyari. “The Amn Committee is pro-PPP, but not in the party discipline,” said a veteran PPP worker, who in mid-1980s was an active leader of the People’s Student Federation -- the PPP’s student front. “The PPP has a votebank and demography in its favour in Lyari, but has no organisation. The Amn Committee has not just the organisational structure, but it is also backed by the gun-power.”

Old dwellers of Lyari say that their area, having a strong tradition of democratic struggle against every military rule especially that of General Ziaul Haq, has now transformed. “All the leftwing and nationalists groups which along with PPP workers were the conscience of the area have been wiped out from here. Ideological and honest political workers have taken a backseat or left politics. It is the area of toughies and goons who are now in the forefront,” the former student leader said.

Baloch of the Amn Committee says that his group has no political agenda. “We want to merge with the PPP. But those with vested interests do not want us.”

With the PPP government surviving from one crisis to another and Karachi remains on the boil with ethnic, religious and politically motivated violence, there hardly appears a chance of the change of fortunes for the people of Lyari.