Right-wing, elite, liberals sab eik hotay hai Karachi waalon aur muhajiron ke khilaaf. Ziadti sab pe najaaiz hai lekin Karachi ke rehne waalon pe ziadti karna theek hai kiunke hum khud hi violent hain haina? Its the same script everywhere, which is why dismantling it is necessary

And ideologically dismantling it is necessary to prove that civilians don’t deserve to be profiled, brutalized, picked up or face curfew simply because they come from the wrong income bracket or neighborhood. Cuz that’s who this LEA violence primarily affects

And what people need to understand is that Rangers have occupied land that isn’t theirs in Karachi, they’ve seized land on Karachi University a literal educational campus and they don’t just harass muhajirs but Baloch, Sindhi, Saraiki, Pashtun, working Punjabis as well

The script is always the same. If they’re muhajir, they’re a militant with MQM. If they’re Pashtun, they’re terrorists. If they’re Baloch, they’re gangsters. If they’re Bihari, Bengali, or Afghan, they’re illegal, not Pakistani at all.

This construction of a violent figure, often attached to ethnicity, who needs to be violently policed and contained provides the impetus for occupying neighborhoods, imposing curfew, harassing civilians, profiling/arresting people and extrajudicially murdering them

I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. The day I realized Karachi was militarily controlled was when I saw firsthand in Lahore how soldiers in jeeps kept the ends of their guns inside. In Karachi, the guns are pointing out cuz the city is seen as a foreign, hostile territory

That is to be contained, controlled, profited from, sold off and occupied. The attitude of LEAs in Orangi or North Karachi or Federal B Area is not so different than in Lyari or Kati Pahari or Malir which is not so different from FATA or Balochistan.

I am not going to throw personal stories in here but bcuz they might be pertinent: my Saraiki family faced both brutal discrimination from MQM and profiling from LEAs, a jaaney waaley who is Sindhi faced police violence while at NED University

And both student activists and anyone who is political in Karachi face violence from Jamaat and right-wingers while also from the state. Universities in Lahore and Islamabad aren’t occupied by a paramilitary which isn’t from the city. This is the privilege of the center

And while Karachi is rich, wealth isn’t being circled back into the city and everyone knows why. Laurent Gayer explains quite succinctly how ordered disorder in Karachi is a politically engineered condition that benefits major stakeholders - mafia, pol parties, tycoons, center

Telling Urdu-speakers who have grown up amidst ethnic violence, curfews and military operations they’re “polishing the boot” isn’t just in poor taste, it’s a false thing to say. Pakistan maybe benefited *some* of us in the 1960s but we don’t fit the national imaginary

Because at the end of the day our heritage and proximity to India makes the state and even elites see us as Hindustani. And even in the 60s we weren’t polishing Ayub Khan’s boots we were supporting Fatima Jinnah, our voice and political agency has continually been erased

Because ashrafiya isn’t a stand-in for communities within migrant bracket. Our inability and unwillingness to assimilate isn’t a weaponization of our cultural capital - not all of us are from Lucknow - but rather a continual reinforcement of us not being “Pakistani” enough

In the eyes of the state and which even well-meaning ethnic nationalists and leftists enforce by propagating an outdated and un-representative narrative, which erases the lower + working class. And in the gentrification of the city, this same culture is now under attack

As traditional street food joints are knocked over or bulldozed, bazaars with silk fabric and styles indigenous to the muhajir community are outsourced to capitalism, big designers and wholesale, and the gold jewelers remain vulnerable to the dropping rupee and street crime

All that said, *some* (not all) activists in center may face LEA crackdown after getting politicized. Many of us never had that luxury, because of our ethnicities or where we lived we faced institutional violence. Even if we weren’t politically involved, we faced state violence

And the wounds of that intergenerational trauma, the degradation of student politics in Karachi, cyclical poverty, lack of opportunities and arrest/imprisonment, the decline of an organized left in biggest city in Pakistan is the consequence of institutionalized state violence

Where I live in Karachi, Rangers are always out on motorbikes and jeeps with guns. I live near University Road. Whether ideologues accept this or not, Karachi is one of the biggest cities in the world. Sooner or later, the analysis will mature. And I’m looking forward to that day