In the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks and the Obama administration's announcement of troop increases in Afghanistan, Pakistan has emerged as a central front in the War on Terror.
Bad Times Return to Karachi
Published May 6, 2009
Despite Karachi's decades-old reputation as Pakistan's most violent city, over the last year this urban economic hub has remained a haven from the bombings and violence reverberating through the rest of the country. But a flaring of ethnic clashes in recent weeks, exacerbated by a the arrival of thousands of refugees from the violence in northern Pakistan, has many worried that instability has returned to the streets of this massive port city on the shores of the Arabian Sea.
Karachi is a migrant city, home to more than 14 million people, drawn from all corners of Pakistan by the promise of economic opportunity.
It is members of two of these groups, Pashtuns from the north and Urdu-speaking Mohajirs — descendants of immigrants from India during partition — that have been engaging in violent skirmishes throughout the city in past weeks.
"We believe that military operations in northern areas are causing the Taliban to now divert attention to Karachi," says Haider Abbas Rizvi, of MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movement), a powerful political party associated with the city's Mohajirs. "We believe that it is Taliban militants in these [Pashtun] areas encouraging Talibanization in Karachi and creating the violence."
Reports say that the recent fighting sparked after an unidentified man shot three members of the MQM.
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Alex Stonehill and Sarah Stuteville, co-founders of the Common Language Project, will share some of their mult
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Sarah Stuteville is a print and online reporter with Seattle-based www.clpmag.org, an award-winning nonprofit multimedia publishing house whose mission is to engage, educate and inform Americans of...
