Fear and the City: Negotiating Everyday Life as a Young Baloch Man in Karachi

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/15685209-12341389

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58 (2015) 732-755

brill.com/jesh

Fear and the CityNegotiating Everyday Life as a Young Baloch Man in Karachi

Nida KirmaniLahore University of Management Sciences

[email protected]

Abstract

This article explores the impacts of continuing conflict on the everyday lives of people living in Lyari, one of the oldest areas of Karachi. It focuses on fear and insecurity as emotional practices that structure the spatial and social relations in the city. Using the narratives of young Baloch men who must negotiate the threat of violence at the hands of criminal gangs and state security forces within their area and rival political parties outside the area, the article highlights how fear and insecurity must be understood as being contextually situated, depending on one’s social and geographical position within the city. The experiences of these young men demonstrate how emotions such as fear and insecurity are both produced by and reproduce spatial configurations of power.

Keywords

Pakistan – urban studies – emotions and space – gender and the city – Karachi – urban conflict – urban violence – fear and insecurity – urban masculinities

* I would like to thank the Lahore University of Management Sciences for providing the fund-ing for this research. I would also like to thank Razak Khan, Amelie Blom and Laurent Gayer for helping me sharpen my analysis. The inputs of Margrit Pernau and the members of the Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development were invaluable in the development of my argument. I would also like to thank the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities and the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi for inviting me to present in their urban studies workshop and providing valuable feedback on my work. Finally, I must acknowledge the support of the Crossroads Asia Programme, the Zentrum Moderner Orient, and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies for providing me with the resources, space and community to develop my thoughts more fully.

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Introduction

Bilal used to work in a bank. This [harassment] started happening to him as well, but, thank God, he was saved. He managed to escape in another direction. That is why everyone is afraid that, if they go too far [outside of the area], there will be an issue. That is why people do not go further than Lyari. Everyone is just saying “Muhajirs1 are killing Baloch and Baloch are killing Muhajirs.” Now only God knows the truth. . . . We are ladies, and even when we go shopping for our children with our husbands, we are scared that, God forbid, something will happen. A person is scared even when they go shopping. [May 2013]

These words were spoken by Ruqaiya, a widow in her late forties who is of Sindhi origin and whose husband was a Baloch butcher from the same area. She lives with her two sons and one unmarried daughter in the troubled Shah Baig Lane neighbourhood of Lyari, a densely populated, multi-ethnic, largely work-ing-class area in the city of Karachi.2 She spoke about the fear she experienced in relation to her eldest son, Bilal, who was in his early twenties at the time. Her married daughter Bilquis, who lives nearby and in whose apartment we had congregated that afternoon, added that several people she knew, including her cousin, had been killed the previous year by supporters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the most powerful political party in Karachi, which claims to represent the city’s Urdu-speaking population. For this reason, Bilal’s sisters and mother preferred that he stay close to home. Ruqaiya’s utterance that “only God knows the truth,” a phrase I have often heard while conducting fieldwork, points to the opaque nature violence in Karachi, which feeds into the general “epistemological uncertainty” (Gayer 2014: 248, citing Shah 2009) of the city’s residents. Because of this uncertainty, the family felt that it was better for their son not to take unnecessary risks.

At the time this interview was conducted, Bilal was looking for steady employment as a welder. One year later, Bilal had started working in a factory in the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate (SITE) area of Karachi. When I asked him why he chose to work in SITE despite being offered jobs in other parts of

1 Muhajirs are Urdu-speaking people whose families migrated to Pakistan from India during and after Partition (1947).

2 With a population estimated at more than 20 million, Karachi is by far the largest city in Pakistan and is the capital of Sindh province. It is also the economic hub of the country, gen-erating 25% of the country’s GDP and handling 95% of its international trade (Gayer 2014: 5).

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the city, he said it was because it was a Pashtun-dominated area, and Pashtuns were generally thought of as allies of the Baloch, in that both groups had been targeted by the MQM in the past. I mentioned that the violence between Muhajirs and the Baloch had subsided considerably since 2011, but he said that “there is still fear in people’s hearts.” Bilal’s feelings of fear and insecurity were echoed by many of the young Baloch men I met in Lyari, but the causes and consequences of this fear shifted during my first two years of fieldwork.

Lyari has experienced continuing conflict among criminal gangs, political parties, and state security forces for more than a decade. This area, which is home to approximately 1.5 million people, has been labelled by state security forces and the media as one of the city’s “no-go areas”—a fact that feeds into a sense of isolation and stigmatization amongst Lyari’s residents. While the steadily rising violence within the city has led to fear dominating the “structure of feeling” (Williams 1977) in Karachi as a whole, the experience and expres-sion of fear must also be understood as being contextually situated, depending on one’s social and geographical location. For Lyari’s residents, their locality shifts continuously from being a “sanctuary space’ (Feldman 1991) against the hostile social and political environment of the city to a space of terror at the hands of local criminal gangs and state security forces. Caught in a turf war between political parties, gangs, and the state, young Baloch men in particular experience an urban landscape fraught with multiple shifting risks. Because of this, their experience of the city exists on a continuum between a pervasive sense of insecurity most of the time to outright terror during periods of height-ened political and criminal violence. This paper documents this shifting ter-rain of violence and analyzes how fear and insecurity affected the lives of these young men, reinforcing their marginalization in the city. The research findings demonstrate that emotions such as fear are both produced by and productive of spatial and social power relations within the city.

The majority of literature about Karachi’s conflicts has taken a wide-scale approach to understanding the causes of violent conflict, but there is an emerg-ing trend of research exploring the way conflicts are lived and experienced in everyday life (Ring 2006; Chaudhry 2004; Khan 2010; Ahmad 2011), which includes discussions focusing on the growing experience of fear in the city (Ali 2009; Kaker 2013; Gayer 2014). This is part of a wider trend within urban studies that focuses on the emergence of cultures of fear and insecurity in cities across the world (Davis 1990; 1999; Caldeira 2000; Pain 2000; 2001; Shirlow and Pain 2003; Penglase 2014), but much of this literature focuses on the fears of the elite and the strategies they use to protect themselves from poor and marginalized groups rather than focusing on the experiences of the urban poor (McIlwaine and Moser 2007).


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Despite the growing interest in studying the phenomenon of urban fear in Karachi and elsewhere, it is necessary to explore the situated nature of emo-tions and their impact on the physical and social structuring of urban space, particularly with regard to marginalized groups. Theories related to the social construction of emotions are instructive in this regard. For example, Scheer (2012) applied Bourdieu’s (1990) concept of “practices” in such a way as to include emotions, exploring how they form part of one’s habitus and are both produced by and productive of power relations.3 Fear, in particular, has been analyzed critically, from various disciplinary perspectives, as an emotion that must be understood within particular historical contexts (Plamper and Lazier 2012). Focusing on the experiences of young Baloch men in the area of Lyari, my approach applies these concepts to the study of fear and insecurity as emo-tions that are experienced differently depending on one’s social position and that are both produced by and productive of particular configurations of power ’in Karachi’s landscape. These concepts are applied with the understanding that experiences of fear and insecurity are constantly evolving, so that one must approach the relationship between emotions and spatial configurations of power as dynamic rather than static processes.

This paper contributes to the literature on urban masculinities in general (Bourgois 1996; de Almeida 1996; Gutmann 1996; 1997; Ghannam 2013) and in South Asia in particular (Hansen 1996; 2001; Verkaaik 2004; 2013; De Neve 2004; Khan 2010; Ali 2009; Srivastava 2004, 2005, 2010) and builds on the work of feminist geographers who examine the interrelationships between space and power, particularly as they relate to gender (Spain 1992). Much of this research focuses on the experiences of women, highlighting how fear repro-duces gendered spatial exclusions (Koskela 1999; Paul 2011), but there is also a growing geographical literature on the relationship between masculinity and space (Gorman-Murray and Hopkins 2014). As Ali (2009) points out, men in Karachi are generally able to experience the city with a sense of freedom that women cannot enjoy. This is true as much in Lyari as elsewhere, where women’s mobility is restricted to differing extents, by themselves and by their families, on account of various fears, including the fear of various forms of vio-lence. As Ali and Rieker (2008: 2) point out, however, in addition to women, the poor, children, and members of minority groups, including men, have been deprived of full and free access to the streets in most cities. For young Baloch men in Karachi, spatial restrictions are experienced as exceptional in a con-text in which they are expected to be relatively mobile and are connected with

3 Also instructive in this regard is Grossberg’s (1997) notion of “economy of affect,” which approaches emotions as part of a series of economies that reproduce power relations.

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multiple forms of violence—both visible and invisible—including structural, symbolic, and physical violence (Bourgois 2009).4

Fear and insecurity structure the everyday spatial tactics5 of all residents of Karachi, who adopt “flexible routines” in order to navigate around poten-tial sites of violence (Gayer 2014: 242). This “hermeneutics of danger,” where residents must constantly read physical and atmospheric signs in order to avoid danger, leads many in Karachi to live in a state of constant insecurity (ibid.). For those living in contested spaces, including no-go areas such as Lyari, resi-dents must restrict their movements to particular routes, limiting their expo-sure in public spaces both within and outside their immediate locality. These “bystander tactics” (Ahmad 2011) are intended to create a sense of security in an otherwise insecure environment, but the unintended consequence of such tactics is both the shrinking space of what people think of as “home” (Verkaaik 2009) and the reinforcement of proliferating social boundaries within the city based on ethnicity and class. This fear and insecurity is fed by various power-ful groups, including political parties, gangs, and competing state institutions. The violent competition between these multiple power-holders is a cause of fear and insecurity and is further fuelled by this fear. In areas such as Lyari, this situation reinforces the power of local strongmen to act as protectors of their locality against rival parties and various branches of the state. This has led to Karachi being increasingly divided into conflicting “turfs” between rival mini-sovereigns vying for control of ever larger parts of the city (Alimia 2013; cf. Hansen and Stepputat 2005).

Focusing on the narratives of young Baloch men, this paper provides an ethnographic account of the relationship between space and emotions and argues that the fear and insecurity resulting from multiple forms of violence have varying effects, depending on one’s social position. The experience of fear and insecurity by young Baloch men living in Lyari leads to the adoption of particular bodily and spatial practices and certain strategies of “social navi-gation” (Vigh 2006) that are both produced by and productive of spatialised configurations of power in the city as a whole.

4 Bourgois (2009: 19) includes structural and symbolic violence in the category of invisible vio-lence. Structural violence refers to violence caused by economic insecurity, while symbolic violence includes various forms of domination and hierarchy.

5 The concept of “tactics” is used throughout this paper in the sense put forward by De Certeau (1984), to signify those actions taken by the dominated in their everyday lives in order to negotiate within and, when possible, subvert existing structures of power.


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1 Methodological Note: Writing about Fear

In his work on Colombia, Taussig (2003) has written extensively about the dif-ficulties of writing in a context in which local people are struggling to account for inexplicable disappearances at the hands of the multiple armed groups. In such an uncertain situation, reality is often experienced as a “public secret”—something that is understood by all but expressed openly by none (Taussig 1999). Smith (2009) notes the tension present in writing about fear because it entails naming something that is often, by necessity, unnamable. Building on the work of Williams (1977), who points to the gap between what is felt and what is expressed, Smith (2009: 282) points out that those who study fear arrive on the scene only after the event, and it is only then that they assign a name to an as yet unnamed social practice. Feelings of fear and insecurity are often not expressed at all verbally, either because they are in the realm of “the unmen-tionable” or because they are expressed in a non-verbal manner (Hirschauer 2006). Hence, these emotions must often be “read” by the researcher through various other signs, including pauses in conversation, silences, and various bodily gestures and expressions. This raises a series of methodological con-cerns about the validity of such research, which must be acknowledged at the outset, even if it cannot be resolved, and which is part of the wider “crisis of representation” in the field of ethnographic research more generally (Clifford and Marcus 1986).

Furthermore, researching fear in a conflict-ridden environment raises ethi-cal questions about the psychological and physical harm it might cause respon-dents. Avoiding talking openly about fear is often used as a coping mechanism in a context in which fear is pervasive. As Skidmore (2003: 10) notes, “Burmese people do not talk about fear, a strategy that enables them not to think about it, and not thinking about fear is crucial to successful functioning on an every-day basis.” To pry too much into the subject of fear risked raising suspicions about one’s intentions in a context in which the purpose of research is poorly understood and where everyone is suspected of being a possible intelligence agent or gang informer. Asking questions about fear can also have negative psychological effects on respondents and can cause them to experience more fear, drawing out what has remained necessarily repressed, reopening old wounds, and possibly exposing people to more risks.

In a discussion held in a derelict tuition centre in the conflict-ridden neigh-bourhood of Kalri with a group of ten young Baloch men belonging to the Zikri6 community, I noticed halfway through the interview that only two of

6 Zikris are a heterodox Sunni community from Balochistan of whom there are many in Lyari.

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the men were speaking, while the rest were quiet. When I asked the others why they were not speaking, there was a long, uncomfortable pause. Finally, one of them said, “Ma’am, we are scared of you.” The young man who said this did not explain why, but the implication was that I could be linked to one of several threatening groups operating in the area or that I might inadvertently share the information I received with the wrong people. The ethics of field-work in repressive and violent contexts are extremely difficult, and it is a con-stant struggle to balance the desire to gather more information against taking care not to cause harm to respondents or subject them or oneself to any kind of risk (Skidmore 2003).

The research for this paper was conducted between August 2012 and July 2014. During this time I conducted interviews with people belonging to various ethnic groups living in neighbourhoods across Lyari.7 I also spent time engag-ing in participant observation in the area and was involved personally with a community-based youth organization. The paper focuses particularly on the stories of young Baloch men in their twenties who were living or had lived pre-viously in areas controlled by gangs. I have focused on young Baloch men not because they are the only or even the most insecure group in Karachi. Rather, I focus on them because, as young men, they are expected to be very mobile in the city. For this reason, the constraints on mobility they face due to the fear of various threats brings the spatial impact of emotions into sharp relief.8

2 Background

Referred to by English-language press as the ‘Colombia of Karachi’ because of its perceived control by drug mafias, Lyari is infamous for being one of the most conflict- and crime-ridden parts of the city. The residents of this area, however, present a counter-narrative; they often refer proudly to Lyari as ‘Karachi ki maan’ (the mother of Karachi) because it is one of the oldest settle-ments in the city. As Slimbach (1996: 139) argues, “Lyari is not just a physical place but also a physical expression, a space endowed with historic, cultural, economic, and political values and meaning.” Lyari also holds a great deal of emotional meaning, particularly for its older residents, who reveal a nostalgia similar to that expressed by members of the Muhajir community for a more

7 Interviews were conducted in Urdu and translated by the author into English.8 I have taken great pains to protect the identities of the individuals involved in the research,

so all names have been changed and certain details altered to preserve the anonymity of the respondents.


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peaceful and harmonious time when they felt less marginalized and insecure in the city (Verkaaik 2009; Ali 2009).

Spread over approximately 1800 acres in Karachi’s South district, Lyari began as a fishing settlement in the early eighteenth century. The population of the area grew significantly during the period of colonial rule, when the British began modernizing Karachi’s port, relying largely on labour from Lyari. It was also one of the few majority-Muslim areas of Karachi at that time. Although Lyari is often characterized as a Baloch area, the Baloch comprise approxi-mately half of Lyari’s population; the rest include Katchhis (a subgroup of the Sindhi community originally from what is now the Indian state of Gujarat), various Sindhi communities, Punjabis, Pashtuns, and a few Urdu speakers on the peripheries of the area.9 This multi-ethnic character is cited as a source of pride by many of Lyari’s residents in a wider context in which localities are increasingly ethnically divided. Lyari has become extremely densely popu-lated, and, as in most parts of the city, many of the area’s conflicts are related to the struggle for control of land by competing powerful groups, including state actors, political parties, criminal gangs, and various mafias, with the lines between all of these groups often blurred.

Lyari has also been host to various criminal groups, which have become increasingly powerful during the past decade. Gangs have existed in Lyari since at least the 1960s, but their activities became more violent during the 1980s, when Karachi as a whole became increasingly weaponized as a result of the influx of arms into the region from the Afghan war (Gayer 2007; 2014). This was also the period in which fear increasingly became a “way of life” for many in Karachi (Green 1994), but it was not until the appearance of Rehman Dakait10 in the early 2000s that criminality and politics became more explicitly intertwined in Lyari in particular (Ayub 2009). Rehman became aligned with the Pakistan People’s Party, and he and his men were allegedly central to the security apparatus of both Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari (Imtiaz 2010). His group was also involved in a gang war, from 2003 to 2008, with a rival group headed by Arshad Pappu. This conflict ravaged the area and was believed to be supported by rival political parties, creating widespread insecurity amongst its residents and hampering social and political activities.

The conflict between the two groups ended officially in 2008, when the People’s Aman (Peace) Committee (PAC) was created with the support of the PPP, which was formed ostensibly to maintain peace in Lyari but became

9 According to the 1998 census, the Baloch comprise 4.34% of Karachi’s population; most live in Lyari.

10 Dakait is the Urdu word for dacoit (bandit).

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the primary mediating body between the state and the local population. In a police encounter after Rehman’s death in 2009, Uzair Baloch took his place as head of the PAC. During Uzair’s reign, the PPP stepped up its support for the Lyari gangs in a more blatant manner, using the gangs as their militant wing against the MQM, thus significantly boosting the material, physical, and politi-cal strength of these groups.11 The creation of the PAC and the tacit support it received from the government helped facilitate considerably the growth and spread of criminal gangs in Lyari; most of Lyari was controlled by various gangs at the time this research was conducted. Furthermore, the power of the gangs was formalized during the 2013 elections, when the PPP allowed Uzair Baloch to choose the candidates running for election from Lyari, further blurring the line between the gangs and the state.12

By the summer of 2013, Uzair’s authority was being increasingly questioned both within and outside of Lyari, leading to further divisions and violent con-flicts between the gangs. In September 2013, a rift occurred between Baba Ladla, one of the most powerful and notoriously violent gang commanders, and Uzair Baloch, following the murder of Zafar Baloch, who was the spokes-person of the PAC and the supposed political mastermind behind the group. This led to a bloody conflict between gangs that supported Uzair and those that supported Baba Ladla, dividing Lyari’s neighbourhoods and leading to hundreds of deaths in Lyari and causing a heightened sense of fear and insecu-rity for its residents. This paper explores the ways in which the various phases of the conflict between 2012 and 2014 affected the spatial and emotional prac-tices of young Baloch men living in Lyari.

3 Narratives of Fear and Insecurity

Although the violence in Karachi has spread to more and more parts of the city, Lyari residents experience a particularly high, though fluctuating, level of fear both within and outside their locality because of the frequency and inten-sity of violence. This fear was described as being felt both outside and inside of Lyari by all of its residents, regardless of their age, ethnic background, and gen-der, but the way fear was articulated and which groups were feared the most

11 In fact, Zulfiqar Mirza, who is the former Home Minister of Sindh, admitted openly, on national television, that he had issued 300,000 weapons licenses in Lyari during his term.

12 Two of Lyari’s members of the Provincial Assembly, Sania Naz and Javaid Nagori, and Lyari’s member of the National Assembly, Shahjehan Baloch, were chosen by Uzair Baloch.


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differed, depending on the social position of the respondent. As Pettigrew and Adhikari argue (2009: 404), “fear is always contextually situated, differently experienced through time and related to personal circumstances.” Similarly, James (1997) notes the situated nature of fear—as an experience that must be understood as a realm of feeling that exists outside the immediate person or the immediate present. For young Baloch men living in Lyari, fear was nar-rated in relation to a variety of groups, including political parties, state security forces, and gangs operating in Lyari, depending on the circumstances in which the discussion was occurring.

In the context of Karachi’s violent politics, political parties are one of the greatest sources of fear; political and ethnic divisions often overlap, and parties often manipulate this fear in order to serve their own interests. At the begin-ning of my research, in the summer of 2012, the group that was immediately cited by most respondents as the main cause of fear and the greatest threat was the MQM. The notion that the MQM was the primary enemy of the people of Lyari and that it had systematically targeted the area, particularly young Baloch men, emerged again and again in the interviews I conducted. This ani-mosity was traced back by some to the time of Partition, when the Muhajirs began moving to Karachi, but, it is only since the mid-1980s that the MQM has emerged as a powerful political force in Karachi, and it was during the two years prior to my fieldwork in particular that violence had escalated between members of the Lyari gangs and the MQM. Several interviewees cited the period during the summer of 2011, when tit-for-tat killings occurred between supporters of the MQM and members of Lyari’s gangs who were linked with the PPP. An unknown number of Baloch and Muhajir men were killed, many of whom had no formal links to any political party or criminal gang.13 The PAC, which was increasingly asserting itself as independent of the PPP as a means of flexing their muscles, used this violence in order to consolidate their support in the area, arguing that they were the only protection of Lyari residents from the MQM.

It was never clear how many people were killed on either side or who was responsible for the deaths that did occur, because the reporting of such inci-dents is partial at best and highly politicized. These fears were, however, rein-forced through the rumors that circulated throughout the neighborhood at the time that young men were disappearing and their bodies being found days later in boris (gunnysacks), a practice that has come to symbolise Karachi’s terrain

13 Exact numbers are difficult to come by, as many of these deaths were not reported in the media, but the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported that, by August of 2011, 800 people had been killed across the city (Siddiqui 2011; Mirza 2011).

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of violence. As Pendleton (1998: 72) points out, “Rumours tend to thrive during periods of social upheaval because of the related conditions of instability, fear and uncertainty.” While it was clear that the MQM was responsible for some of these murders, some suspected the gangs themselves of having orchestrated some of the violence and blamed the MQM in order to build their support, capitalizing on the effectiveness of rumors as a means of spreading fear (Emde 2000: 388). Like other violent actors (including the state and political parties), the gangs engaged in the “the strategic use of uncertainty and mystery” as a means of building terror and shoring up their power (Taussig 1992: 16).

Arif, a first-year philosophy student in university, whose family was origi-nally from the part of Balochistan that is now in Iran, talked about how he would think twice before leaving the area during this period:

Arif: I haven’t left for three months. I only go out to buy things, and then I just come back. There is a lot of fear. When I go into the city on my bike, I hope that I don’t cross any traffic signals where I will have to stop. I go to university and then straight home.

Nida: But why are people scared, because they are Baloch or because they are from Lyari?

Arif: Both, but the fear of being Baloch is greater. [May 2013]

Arif spoke about how this fear affected his movements within the city, both reducing the frequency of his excursions outside of Lyari and restricting his movements whenever he did leave, in order to reduce his travel time and stay constantly in motion. This is reminiscent of Phadke, Ranade, and Khan’s (2011) observation about the way women in Mumbai conduct themselves in public spaces, going out only when necessary and always appearing to have a pur-pose, so as to avoid the sexual harassment that comes from the appearance of loitering. In a seeming reversal of gender roles, several young men actually mentioned how they would often take their mothers or sisters with them dur-ing this time when they travelled outside of Lyari because they felt they were less likely to be targeted in the presence of women.14

14 In general, women are rarely targets of politically or ethnically motivated violence in Karachi. When women have been targeted, it has often been to make a particularly pow-erful point. For example, Khan (2007) has written about the murder of a Punjabi police officer’s wife and her decapitation by an MQM party worker as a spectacle meant to send a strong message about the MQM’s power in the city. Violence has also been used by various


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Like Bilal, whose story I began with, many of the young men I met spoke about the impact of violence on their employment prospects. Arif ’s uncle Faheem, who was working in Dubai when I met him, spoke about his diffi-culty in finding steady employment in Karachi in general but particularly as a result of the violence taking place at the time. He spent several years moving amongst various areas of the city in search of stable employment, an experience common to many young men across the city. During the period of conflict between the gangs and the MQM, however, the fear of violence fur-ther restricted Faheem’s employment choices to those areas of the city that were considered “safe.” After trying several jobs, Faheem found relatively sta-ble and well-paid employment working as a porter in a hospital, but he was forced to leave this job when the hospital transferred him from the day shift to the night shift, as this would mean travelling home through MQM-dominated areas after dark, when the risk of violence was perceived to be greater. Because Faheem had personally seen the dead bodies of friends being brought back to Lyari during this period, his fears were further heightened.

He then opened a small kiosk in his own neighborhood in Lyari, where he thought he would be safe from violence, but the local gangs soon began to ask for bhatta (extortion money), which he could not afford to pay out of his meager earnings. Although Faheem felt that the local gangs were not particu-larly dangerous for him because he was more comfortable asserting himself in his own locality as opposed to in other parts of the city, he still chose to close down his business. In the end Faheem asked his brother to help him secure a job in Dubai:

I said however difficult it is, only I know the difficulty I am facing here now. I want to get out of here. I want peace. The kinds of things I am see-ing here make me feel more suffocated. Now I want to get out of here. I don’t care what happens, how hot it is, if I have to work all day in the sun, I will do it. [June 2014]

Faheem’s description of feeling suffocated by the conditions in Karachi reflects the nature of fear as a bodily practice (see Scheer 2012). Although he was not happy with his pay or working conditions and complained about the loneli-ness and impersonal nature of life in Dubai, Faheem felt that it was better than living in a state of constant fear in Karachi.

state and non-state actors to punish those women who stepped too far over the line, for example, the murders of the prominent social activists Parveen Rehman in 2013 and Sabeen Mahmud in April 2015.

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The heightened violence between the MQM and the gangs slowly dissipated, and, by 2014, the fear was based mostly on memories rather than on immediate threats. Zeeshan, who was in and out of work and who lived with his family in Shah Baig Lane—an area that has often been a fault line between rival groups for several years—talked about how the situation evolved for him between 2013 and 2014:

Now it seems that it is scarier for us to remain in Lyari. Now I am not scared when I go out of Lyari. I even go on my own to Muhajir areas and wander around. Wandering around is part of my work.

However, there were also limits on Zeeshan’s movements in Muhajir-dominated areas, which became apparent as the conversation continued:

I will go from here for some work on a rickshaw and get off there [in a Muhajir-dominated area]. I wander around in their markets. I wander around on foot, and no one bothers anyone. Yes, but it is there that, if I see one of their units [MQM sector units], if I see that “unit” is written somewhere—that this is their unit—then I am a bit scared, because, if they ever catch anyone at their unit and take them inside, especially if the person is a Baloch, then they will never come out alive. I am scared of these things. [March 2014]

Zeeshan’s wanderings around the city were disrupted by the sight of spatial markers such as MQM unit offices, political billboards, or graffiti, which acted as triggers for fears, symbolically marking political and ethnic boundaries and reminding members of outsider groups of the possibility of violence. In her work on memory and fear, James (1997) notes how a complex blend of short-term and long-term memories create structures of feeling related to fear (also Kirmani 2013). For young Baloch men in Lyari, the memories of violent events continuously coloured the way in which they experienced Karachi, with MQM unit offices serving as spatial reminders of past violent events. Hence, while the fear of leaving Lyari had decreased for Baloch men by the middle of 2014, remnants of these fears remained and continued to affect the way they negoti-ated the city.

If particular fears existed for people when they left Lyari, different sets of fears existed for them within Lyari. Several people I met mentioned the state security forces, particularly the police and the Rangers,15 as a major source of

15 The Rangers are a paramilitary security force separate from the police and under the juris-diction of the Ministry of the Interior.


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fear in Lyari. This issue emerged most clearly during discussions of the police operations that took place in April 2012,16 which targeted the PAC but in which several innocent bystanders were killed. This operation took place at Cheel Chowk, one of the iconic squares in Lyari, which holds emotional significance for residents because it has been the site of anti-authoritarian struggles in the past. Arif, who lived next to Cheel Chowk, articulated this fear during a focus-group discussion with community-based activists some months after the oper-ation took place:

When this operation was happening, we were most afraid of the police. . . . When we see the police, we run away for fear that we might be shot. Children see them and run away. This means that we are so afraid of the police that, instead of their being our protectors, we have started to fear them. [August 2012]

This operation was a turning point in many of the narratives of Lyari’s resi-dents, heightening their sense of marginalization and contributing to the fear and distrust of state security forces. It also served to increase support for the PAC and Uzair Baloch in particular, who framed himself as Lyari’s only defender at this time. As Penglase (2014) notes in his work on Rio de Janeiro, gangs and state security forces work symbiotically to produce disorder, thus creating a sense of constant insecurity, which they use to their own advantage.

The presence of state security forces in Lyari increased significantly in September 2013, after the federal government initiated a large Ranger-led oper-ation across the city. Included in the list of those to be targeted were the mem-bers of Lyari’s gangs. The Rangers spatially marked their presence by setting up observation posts and checkpoints across the area, on main streets and on the roofs of buildings, a practice used to observe and to spread fear, documented by Verkaaik (2009: 74‐75) in and around MQM-dominated neighbourhoods dur-ing previous operations. While many in Lyari were relieved that the operation was taking place and saw a reduction in the presence of gangs, many others felt that the Rangers were targeting innocent people and letting the real crimi-nals escape. They pointed out that the gang leaders, such as Uzair Baloch, who had several warrants issued against him, had managed to escape the country safely, which could not have happened without the state’s cooperation. Stories

16 In April of 2012, the police under the leadership of Chaudhry Aslam, undertook an eight day operation in Lyari in order to capture members of criminal gangs including Uzair Baloch. The operation was largely unsuccessful and led to the death of at least 31 civilians and five police officers (Kaleem 2012). It also compounded the sense of marginalization and targeting felt by many people living in the area.

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were also circulating of young Baloch men being picked up at random by the Rangers, harassed and either let go after paying a bribe (if they were lucky) or returned in a body bag. Like many of the stories of violence circulating in Lyari, it was difficult to distinguish truth from rumor in many of these accounts, but the stories did serve to heighten the fear of the state security forces in the area.

The presence of state security forces affected the physical movements of young Baloch men in particular, because they were most likely to be suspected of affiliation with gangs. For example, several young men spoke of altering their bodily practices by not running if Rangers entered the area, because the Rangers would often assume that anyone who ran was a gang member and could be shot on sight to be shot on sight. Zeeshan described how he restricted his movements when the Rangers were in his area. He talked about how he would not leave his house if they were conducting a search in his neighbour-hood. I asked what would happen if he did.

Zeeshan: If I went outside, they would insult me, and they would slap me and what not.

Nida: Why?

Zeeshan: It is part of their terror. They want to spread fear; they want to spread terror inside Lyari, if someone even hears their name.

Nida: What are they gaining from this?

Zeeshan: I don’t know what they are gaining. They are making a name for themselves, and they are gaining the respect that one gets from fear. Maybe they are doing this to increase their respect. [March 2014]

In his work on East Harlem, Phillipe Bourgois (1996) discusses the strategic use of violence by crack cocaine dealers as a means of both evoking fear and gain-ing the respect of their peers. Being feared was also a key aspect of a particular construction of masculinity. Similarly, state security forces and gangsters com-peted with each other in Lyari by the use of violence as a means of establish-ing their control of the area and gaining the respect of locals. Zeeshan’s fear of the Rangers was greater than that of the local gangs, largely because these were men who were known to him, and he knew how to negotiate with them. Hence, while Zeeshan might try to stay out of the way of local gang members, he would actually physically hide from the Rangers.


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While fear of the MQM and state security agencies was recounted fairly openly during interviews with Lyari residents, the fear of the gangs emerged in more subtle ways and often only after having known a person for some time. When I began my research, I was under the impression that the gangs were not a major source of fear for the people living in Lyari and even believed that most Lyari residents supported the gangs, taking what I was told at face value. Many of the people I spoke with said that the gang members (often referred to collectively as the “gang war”) did not bother anyone in the area, and some even argued that they served as protection from outside groups, particularly the MQM. However, as my research progressed, the picture that I had initially formed of the gangs began to evolve as a result both of shifting political cir-cumstances and my own changing relationship with people in the area. I soon began to realize that there was a code of silence in relation to the local gangs. While the fear of the MQM and the state was discussed relatively openly, most would not speak in the same way about their fear of the gangs. In several inter-views, respondents began to talk about the gangs and would stop suddenly in mid-sentence or backtrack and conclude that the gang members were not really so bad. As Green’s (1994: 239) research on Guatemala reveals, silence is often used as a survival strategy, but at the same time, “silencing is a powerful mechanism of control enforced through fear.”

I began hearing stories—whispered quietly after the recorder was shut off or told to me outside of Lyari when no one else from the area was present—of people who had been harassed and intimidated by the gangs. I spoke to Mahmood, an undergraduate student whose father was Baloch and mother was Urdu-speaking, and his family: they told me how they were harassed repeatedly by the younger brother of one of the most powerful command-ers in Lyari for supposedly looking at him the wrong way. The family consid-ered complaining about the incident to Uzair Baloch but then decided not to, because they realized that this might prompt further retribution from the gangs.17 The family ended up moving out of Lyari temporarily and returning later, to a different neighbourhood in Lyari. Arif and his friend Jamil, who was also an undergraduate student, said in conversation with me that people who approached Uzair with complaints would be told by him to go to their respec-tive area commander, and that he could not do anything about it because this was not his turf. Similar stories were repeated by several others I spoke to in Lyari. This was a marked contrast to Rehman Dakait, who most of my

17 This mirrors the fear people have of taking their complaints to the police, who are per-ceived to be working with criminal groups.

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respondents felt had greater control over the gangs and was the object of fear and respect across Lyari. Uzair’s unthreatening persona was one reason given for his lack of control over the area—a fact that created even more fear and insecurity amongst residents because of the perceived instability and lack of order that this caused in a context in which the state was not trusted.

When the rift took place between Uzair Baloch and Baba Ladla in 2013, Lyari erupted in a full-blown armed conflict in which commanders took sides with one or the other. During this period, neighbourhoods became battle zones with gunfire occurring almost every evening, and rockets (known locally as awans) being launched into rival groups’ territories. Similar to the insecurity caused by “stray bullets” written about by Penglase (2011) in the context of Rio’s favelas, residents residing in conflicted neighbourhoods lived in constant fear that a rocket might land on their house at any time. Zeeshan narrated this sense of existential fear when he spoke about how his entire family slept in one room in the interior portion of the house during this period in order to avoid a stray rocket that might land on their roof.

While the movements of all residents of Lyari were restricted at this time, with family members and friends unable to visit each other’s homes in dif-ferent areas, young men in particular found themselves unable to cross into other neighbourhoods for fear that they were controlled by rival gangs. Arif recounted being held for questioning by local gangs after dropping a friend off in her neighbourhood on returning from the cinema. He spoke of the uncer-tainty he experienced when questioned about where he lived, not knowing whether his neighbourhood was ruled by a gang belonging to a camp opposed to those who were questioning him, which would have put his life in danger. After hours of questioning and phone calls, the gang members escorted him back to his own neighbourhood, having ascertained that he was indeed from an area under the control of an allied gang. While Arif escaped unharmed, several others were not so lucky. Hence, rather than risk mistakenly stepping onto enemy turf, most young men avoided travelling to other parts of Lyari, choosing the most direct routes possible when they had to leave the area, pref-erably taking busy main roads and meeting friends and relatives from other neighbourhoods outside of Lyari. Many also spoke about avoiding the nar-row, inner lanes of neighbourhoods other than their own, because these were generally picketed by local gang members who were charged with protecting their turf against perceived intrusions by the state or by suspected members of opposing groups. The narrower the lane, the more dangerous for outsiders it was perceived to be. This reflects the spatialized nature of violence and fear (Feldman 1991) and the complex tactics that residents regularly employ in their navigation of a constantly changing terrain.


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FIGURE 1 Uzair Baloch is pictured in the middle of this billboard with Rehman Dakait in the upper left corner and two “martyred” gang members at the bottom.

FIGURE 2 Uzair Baloch is pictured in the middle of the billboard, along with General Ashfaq Kayani, the former army chief, and Zulfiqar Mirza, the former Home Minister of Sindh under the PPP.

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If spatial tactics were determined by shifting fears, spaces themselves were marked in particular ways to evoke fear by groups as a means of securing their power. Clouser’s (2009) research on Guatemala demonstrates the ways in which discourses of fear are reflected geographically by the army in its use of the landscape itself in order to instill terror in people continuously and remind them of their power. Similarly, posters of Uzair and Rehman were plastered all over Lyari, along with photos of several other gang leaders “martyred” by rival gangs or by state security forces, thus paralleling the practices of the MQM in other parts of the city.18 Some of these posters also featured photos of political and military leaders, implying to the observer that the gangs had the support of certain members of the state. Jaffe (2012), in her work on dons in Jamaica, highlights the importance of popular culture, including visual culture, as a per-formative practice that enables criminal iconization and hence reinforces the power of local dons. Similarly, posters of gangsters in Lyari serve as territorial markers for the gangs and as visual reminders of their status in the community as individuals who should be both respected and feared by locals, and they serve as a warning to outsiders who enter the area. This practice of symbolic marking of the landscape was thus replicated across the city by competing claimants to power, as a means of asserting their power and control through the spatial evocation of fear.

Conclusion

Discussions with young Baloch men living in the inner city area of Lyari revealed the shifting nature of fear in everyday life, with young men having to make constant calculations in terms of their spatial and bodily practices in order to reduce the risk (real or perceived) of violence they faced both inside and outside of their locality. During the period of heightened violence between political parties, young men were largely restricted to Lyari, leaving the area only when absolutely necessary, preferably during the day and in the company of female relatives. However, when the split between the gangs occurred, these same men felt safer outside of Lyari than in neighbourhoods in Lyari other than their own, although the echoes of earlier fears remained. Their narratives demonstrate the constantly shifting nature of violence and the fears that come

18 Verkaaik (2013) refers to the practice of labelling the victims of violence as “martyrs” as the “sublimation of violence,” which imbues violent acts with religious meaning, allowing such actions to transcend the mundane world of politics. The MQM used such practices to mobilize new recruits to undertake violent acts.


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with it; when one threat subsides, another quickly emerges. Therefore, rather than simply bouncing back from bouts of violence, as suggested by the popular narrative of Karachi as a “resilient city,” young Baloch men must constantly reformulate their tactics in order to adjust to changing circumstances, con-tinuously honing their “social navigation” (Vigh 2006) skills.

Such complex navigations have social, material, psychological, and emo-tional impacts, affecting where or whether young men choose to work, study, or socialize. In this way, the experience of fear and insecurity further restricts the economic prospects of young Baloch men, many of whom already face discrimination and limited employment prospects in Karachi because of their ethnic identity. This experience of living in a state of constant insecurity pro-duces a sense of alienation from the city as a whole, further fuelling the cycle of social and spatial marginalization and leading a minority to turn to criminal gangs for material gain and security, thus claiming a sense of dignity, respect, and power otherwise inaccessible to them.

The research presented in this paper thus highlights the interrelation-ship between space, emotions, and power in the context of Karachi’s violent urban landscape. Focusing on the narratives of young Baloch men living in Lyari, it demonstrates the ways in which emotional practices, and, in par-ticular, the experience of multiple kinds of fear and insecurity, place various spatial restrictions on disadvantaged groups, thus further reinforcing their social, economic, and spatial marginalization within the city and strengthen-ing the power of violent men to act as “protectors” of marginalized groups. An examination of these narratives demonstrates that, while fear may be a “chronic state” (Gayer 2014: 250) experienced by all people living in Karachi, it must also be contextualized according to one’s geographical and social posi-tion in order to understand the particular impacts it has on people’s everyday lives and on their experiences of the city. For young Baloch men, the threat of multiple forms of violence—physical, psychological, material, and existen-tial—coloured their everyday experience as men negotiating their lives within the city and reinforced their sense of marginalization. The evidence presented thus illustrates the ways in which an ethnography of emotional practices sheds light on the formation of the spatial and social architecture of the city itself.

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Documents

Fear and the City: Negotiating Everyday Life as a Young Baloch Man in Karachi