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Guns, Slums, and “Yellow Devils”: A Genealogy of Urban Conflicts in Karachi, Pakistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2007

LAURENT GAYER
Affiliation:
CSH, New Delhi/CEIAS, Paris

Abstract

Karachi is a city of migrants and an important commercial hub, which provides Pakistan with a window on the world. But Karachi is also a deeply fragmented city, plagued by an acute urban crisis that takes roots in the failure of the development plans that successive Pakistani governments have delegated to foreign experts. The transnationalisation of the Afghan jihad, in the 1980s, also fuelled social and ethnic antagonisms in the city and contributed to the proliferation of violent entrepreneurs and ethnic parties. Both criminal elements and ethnic activists contributed to the ever-increasing fragmentation of urban space in the city, and to the multiplication of ethnic enclaves controlled by private militias. This extreme fragmentation of the city has benefited local jihadis and foreign terrorists who have taken shelter here since the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. However, Karachi will never be a “sanctuary” for jihadi militants, due to the hostility of local ethnic parties, whose activists see themselves as enlightened secularists at war with the most retrograde elements of their society and their foreign allies.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2007 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Laurent Gayer received a Ph.D in political science from the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) in 2004. His doctoral dissertation, which dealt with the international dimensions of Sikh and Mohajir identity politics, was entitled “Les politiques internationales de l'identité. Significations internationales des mobilisations identitaires des sikhs (Inde) et des Mohajirs (Pakistan)” [The Globalisation of Identity Politics. International Dimensions of Sikh and Mohajir Ethnic Movements”. He is currently a research associate at the Centre d'études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud (CEIAS, EHESS/CNRS), Paris, and the coordinator of the international relations research programme at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi.