[Pakistan] Vice Guide to Karachi

[s land balla]

I've never been to Karachi and, after watching this video, have no desire to.

[Realjad]

the Pakistani 'raid' is hilarious

[geeimsobored]

Karachi is gang violence at its worst. Except even worse because all of the mobs and militias are aligned with elected political parties so they're shielded from ever being stopped because they have the backing of major political parties.

It's like the border cities in Mexico except if factions of the Mexican government supported different drug cartels.

[adeelsiddiqui]

Horrible.

[bigtexxx]

looks like a swell place to settle down and raise a family

[Uprising]

Awesome videos. Thanks for sharing.

[Omer]

This is not a guide to Karachi, it's a guide to the most violent areas/gangs of Karachi. The violence is clearly focused on, and thus overstated. You can go to the ghettos of any big city in the world and find violence and make a documentary on it.

I was born in and lived my first 5 years in Karachi before moving to the US. I used to visit every other year over the summers and I never was the victim of any violence or for that matter even in the vicinity of the violence they depicted.

[Uprising]

I couldn't help but chuckle at the scene where the guy says "no wonder the US didn't include the Pakistanis with getting Osama".

That police parade was a JOKE. All show.

What a mess.....that country is insane. So much extremism, and no real government control.

[geeimsobored]

Originally Posted by Omer This is not a guide to Karachi, it's a guide to the most violent areas/gangs of Karachi. The violence is clearly focused on, and thus overstated. You can go to the ghettos of any big city in the world and find violence and make a documentary on it. I was born in and lived my first 5 years in Karachi before moving to the US. I used to visit every other year over the summers and I never was the victim of any violence or for that matter even in the vicinity of the violence they depicted.

Right but that doesnt answer the point that the violence has gotten WORSE. Far worse in recent years. I know plenty of people who are from or have lived in Karachi. Most wont go back now. It's just getting more and more unstable each day.

Outside of border cities in Mexico, you cant name another city with the type of gang violence going on in Karachi.

Until Pakistan learns to reconcile the ethnic differences in the country, this will only get worse as the government gets weaker.

[bigtexxx]

Originally Posted by Omer This is not a guide to Karachi, it's a guide to the most violent areas/gangs of Karachi. The violence is clearly focused on, and thus overstated. You can go to the ghettos of any big city in the world and find violence and make a documentary on it. I was born in and lived my first 5 years in Karachi before moving to the US. I used to visit every other year over the summers and I never was the victim of any violence or for that matter even in the vicinity of the violence they depicted.

ever considered moving back?

[HombreDeHierro]

lol gang members from the american continents would destroy their 'gang members'

[s land balla]

Originally Posted by Omer This is not a guide to Karachi, it's a guide to the most violent areas/gangs of Karachi. The violence is clearly focused on, and thus overstated. You can go to the ghettos of any big city in the world and find violence and make a documentary on it. I was born in and lived my first 5 years in Karachi before moving to the US. I used to visit every other year over the summers and I never was the victim of any violence or for that matter even in the vicinity of the violence they depicted.

I was just in Lahore earlier this year, and even my family there (including my uncle who is a brigadier in the army) say the situation in Karachi nowadays is worse than ever.

[1JumpShot]

Go to vice.com they have some very excellent journalist and great documentary there.

[desi tmac91]

My cousins are over there right now for the break. From what I've heard from them, its pretty bad. They were eating out with my extended family, came home and heard two people were killed at the exact same place they were just eating. My cousin told me they left 30 minutes before it happened. I still don't understand why people keep going outside when the violence is this bad.

Originally Posted by Omer This is not a guide to Karachi, it's a guide to the most violent areas/gangs of Karachi. The violence is clearly focused on, and thus overstated. You can go to the ghettos of any big city in the world and find violence and make a documentary on it. I was born in and lived my first 5 years in Karachi before moving to the US. I used to visit every other year over the summers and I never was the victim of any violence or for that matter even in the vicinity of the violence they depicted.

I went in 2006 (middle of the Heat-Mavs finals) and I had no troubles with my stay over there. However, I have heard that its gotten much, much worse since then. Not sure if you've been there in the past 1-2 years.

[TreeRollins]

Originally Posted by HombreDeHierro lol gang members from the american continents would destroy their 'gang members'

Ever hear of Dawood Ibrahim?

[vaids_13]

Having been to Karachi last year, I can tell you the video is not an exaggeration at all, and it's not a stretch to state that Karachi is one of the single most dysfunctional cities in the world today. I have had family and friends killed in terrorist attacks and street violence in the city, and violent activity is pretty much a daily headline in the newspapers and on the news.

Basic infrastructure services are lacking- sewage systems, waste management is abysmal, electricity and energy services often require load-shedding of 5 hours daily, water supply shortages, and poor road maintenance are just a few examples. When a city that large fails to maintain even a modicum of physical and organizational structures needed for daily societal operations, instability is bound to ensue.

Add to that an enormous poverty rate and homelessness, rampant drug usage, a corrupt political class with regular political conflict, ethnic conflicts, religious conflicts and strife, and its not surprising to see why criminal activity is burgeoning.

Violence is but one problem in a large web of interrelated, interdependant problems that plague Karachi, and whatever the 'solution' is, it will have to be a multi-faceted solution that acknowledges and addresses the reality on the ground.

[AroundTheWorld]

How safe is the airport? Thinking about doing a turnaround there, there are some sensational fares from KHI.

[geeimsobored]

Originally Posted by AroundTheWorld How safe is the airport? Thinking about doing a turnaround there, there are some sensational fares from KHI.

The airport is safe from what I've been told. There's a McDonalds and a Ramada attached to it if you need a room.

Also check out, http://www.sleepinginairports.net/as...m#.T9dIbtVrNv4

Great guides to airports that you may be stuck at.

[s land balla]

Originally Posted by AroundTheWorld How safe is the airport? Thinking about doing a turnaround there, there are some sensational fares from KHI.

Can you message me the details on this?

[geeimsobored]

Here's a small picture of the violence of Karachi. And this really only discusses the Muhajirs and the Balochs. Add in the PPP (Sindhis) and the Pashtuns, and you get a full picture of ethnically backed gangs slaughtering anyone of the wrong ethnic group.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/01/140072...thnic-violence

Pakistan's long list of problems has a new addition this summer: vicious communal violence in Karachi. More than 300 people have been killed in recent weeks, some under grisly circumstances that include decapitations, torture chambers and bodies placed in gunnysacks and dumped on the side of the road. The neighborhood of Lyari, a warren of streets and rampant crime, has been a no-go zone during the escalating violence. The Date Market is a landmark in this congested part of Old Karachi. It's showing signs of life now, but some are still reluctant to venture out at a time when they should be marking the end of Ramadan, and a month of daytime fasting, with the celebration of the Eid holiday. "It's really very bad, especially for the laborers and the working-class people, they have been crushed because of this violence," said Mohammad Naeem Baloch, a date merchant. "In such conditions, how would you celebrate Eid?" A City Of Ethnic Tensions Karachi was a modest port city at Pakistan's independence in 1947. It's now a sprawling, chaotic mega-city with roughly 18 million people, though no one knows the number for sure. Much of that growth has come from migrants. They include the ethnic Baloch from the rural southwest of the country. In addition, Pashtuns have come in large numbers from the war-ravaged northwest of Pakistan. Millions more are known as Muhajirs, or Urdu-speakers who are descendants of Indian immigrants. Politically, the Muhajirs support the MQM, the dominant political group in Karachi. The People's Party, led by President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, is also a force in Karachi. But there are many competing factions — like the gang leaders who are also lionized on billboards. Most of the recent violence has involved the Baloch and Muhajir communities. Baloch Men Targeted After one recent killing spree, five young Baloch men from the same neighborhood, Lyari, were buried on the same day. In the night hours spanning Aug. 15 and 16, all five were abducted and tortured, and after they were killed, their bodies shoved into gunnysacks. One of them, Shahnawaz Baloch, was the father of baby triplets and was going out to buy his children new clothes for Eid when he was kidnapped, according to his father, Maula Baksh. Baksh said that when he saw his son's body, it bore the marks of severe torture. His face was so disfigured that one side was unrecognizable. He says his son was tall and healthy, and the killers stuffed his legs into one gunnysack and his torso in another and stitched them together. They dumped his son's body on the side of the road near a graveyard. Maula Baksh's son was not alone that night. He had piled onto a single motorcycle with his two best friends, Kamran and Saqib. Police say the bodies of all three men were discovered on a road in an area of town dominated by Muhajirs. Kamran and Saqib's uncle, Mohammad Hanif, saw their bodies when an ambulance service brought them home. He said they were wrapped in simple white linen but were drenched in blood, and he sent a nephew to ask a mufti, an Islamic scholar, whether the bodies should be washed. The mufti ruled that the linens could be changed, but the bodies should not be washed because he said they were martyrs. Two more youths, who were cousins, were killed with guns and hand drills. Motives Not Clear Relatives say the five who were slain said they did not belong to any political party, and worked in shops and small industries. A report published in a leading Pakistan newspaper, Daily Jang, claimed that a Baloch gangster killed the five young men on suspicion that they had been spying for a rival gang. The families of the dead men deny this, and have accused the MQM, the Muhajir political party that has long been accused of cultivating gangs to consolidate its political power. However, President Zardari's People's Party has been seeking to counter the power of the MQM in Karachi, according to Moin-Ud Din Haider, a retired lieutenant general who served as a caretaker governor in Karachi in the late 1990s. "Every party wants to increase its influence on its political turf," he said. "And that is also a cause of friction." Muhajirs Also Targeted Muhajirs, too, have been victims. In a Muhajir area across town, parents grieved for their murdered son, Malik Irfan. The mother, Zareena Begum, said her son was decapitated. "Our hearts are broken," she said, adding that during Eid, a time of celebration, her family felt only sorrow. This Muhajir family was expert in Baloch embroidery and even opened a shop in an area many Muhajirs dare not go. But as tensions rose over the murders of the five young Baloch men, 28-year-old Irfan was a convenient target for those seeking revenge. Malik Gulzar identified his son at the morgue. "I didn't have enough courage to look into the gunnysack of my son's remains," he said. "But others I saw had their arms and legs chopped off. Even an animal is not killed in the way my son was killed." Malik Gulzar does not wish to avenge his son's killing. He said he has lived among the Baloch for many years, and that "the majority are good; the criminals are very few." Still, he lacks faith in the judicial system. "If the murderers of a prime minister could not be arrested," he said in a reference to the 2007 killing of Benazir Bhutto, "then who would nab our children's killers?"