Murder in Karachi

Posted December 1, 2006 to Pakistan , Pakistan category.

A view of Karachi from the outside:

Karachi is the saddest of cities. It is a South Asian Beirut: a city on the sea, rich and almost glamorous in parts; but also a monument to hatred among different sectarian and ethnic groups, and to the failure of a civic society. It is a city at war as much with itself as with the outside world. The most populous metropolis in Pakistan, Karachi is a profoundly troubled place, intermittently engulfed in terrible bouts of killing and kidnapping. It is a city where the police sit huddled in sandbag emplacements for their own safety, and where the foreign consulates now resemble great fortified Crusader castles--which is how the people of Karachi look on them: the unwelcome, embattled bridgeheads of alien powers.

Tagged karachi

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