Since their Taliban allies were ousted in Afghanistan, Qaeda terrorists have infiltrated Karachi, making the city–already known for ethnic, sectarian and political violence–one of the epicenters of the war on terror. At Karachi International Airport, banks of video cameras now watch every arriving and departing passenger. The cameras and new immigration computers are both linked to the U.S. FBI, so that American agents can quickly check faces and names against lists of wanted terrorists. Pakistani Army Rangers, dressed in flak jackets and carrying automatic weapons, guard foreign consultants. (The U.S. consulate was closed in August for security reasons.) Several intersections are little more than sandbagged bunkers manned by heavily armed cops. Cars entering hotel and office parking lots are checked for bombs. Rangers even roam the campus of the University of Karachi.
Even by Karachi standards, this has been a bloody year. In late September two gunmen entered the office of the Institute for Peace and Justice, a largely Christian-run human-rights group, and killed seven people, methodically shooting them with pistols. Pakistani authorities believe the executions–the sixth terrorist attack on Christians in Pakistan since last October–are the work of the Islamic extremist group Harkat-ul Mujahideen Al-Almi, which intelligence sources in Karachi say may be linked to Al Qaeda. In January U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi and killed. In May a car laden with explosives detonated alongside a Pakistan Navy bus, which was sitting in traffic near the Sheraton Hotel. The explosion killed 11 French naval technicians and three Pakistanis. In June a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-packed car into the wall of the U.S. Consulate, killing 12 Pakistanis. Last month Pakistani security forces engaged in a four-hour firefight with Qaeda operatives who were holed up in a middle-class apartment building located near a posh seaside neighborhood; among those taken into custody afterward was suspected 9-11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh. “People are worried,” says politician Nasreen Jalil, who saw two of her colleagues murdered in April. “I don’t know how anyone survives in this city.”
Al-Shibh’s arrest showed how deeply Qaeda militants have penetrated lawless Karachi, which has a significant Muslim fundamentalist community. (The mastermind of the 9-11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, may still be in the city, where he and al-Shibh were interviewed by an Al-Jazeera reporter in June.) Western intelligence sources believe that perhaps several hundred Qaeda could be holed up in city’s jam-packed neighborhoods–passing on their deadly expertise to anti-U.S. Pakistani militants.
Before the murders of the Christian human-rights workers, Pakistani authorities thought that they had nearly broken the city’s terrorist underground. In a series of raids in June and over the past few weeks, the security forces rounded up 24 Pakistani militants, all members of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Almi, who are believed to be responsible for the two Karachi car bombs. Inside the captured men’s houses, police say they found a cache of automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and a ton of chemicals used to manufacture bombs. Police also say they discovered plans and maps of their next targets: foreign consulates, McDonald’s and KFC restaurants, as well as Christian churches and organizations.
The problems posed by metropolises like Karachi go well beyond individual extremists, though. Karachi’s seemingly endless violence has severely damaged its, and the country’s, economic prospects. Almost all foreign investors have fled Karachi and withdrawn their expatriate staff. Even local entrepreneurs have moved their corporate headquarters to the safety of Europe and Dubai. Despite the chaos and crumbling infrastructure, thousands of Pakistanis continue to move to Karachi, for the same reason others flock to unruly megalopolises like Jakarta and Lagos: opportunity. But the pressures they are putting on the city could well transform those dreams into an ongoing civic nightmare.
