^^It worked flawlessly
After watching it i am convinced pakistan needs to enforce gun control....the scale of violence is shocking
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Glad it worked
I totally agree that the scale of violence is staggering and at a different level to that witnessed in places like Mumbai. The closest analogy would be the rampant lawlessness observed in parts of Latin America, Mexico or the favelas of Rio etc. Even in those communities, one would be hard pressed to find rival gangs going at each other with machine guns and rocket launchers..
At the risk of going off topic, what I find interesting is the fact that the piece raises fundamental questions about Pakistani society’s attitude towards violence and the different trajectories India and Pakistan have followed in relation to violent crime, particularly gun crime, since independence. I would pin much of the blame in Pakistan’s case on its long history of military rule leading to the establishment of a de facto security state since the 60s, which has consequently led to a veneration of gun culture (as illustrated by a senior member of this forum who describes her location as the 'land of guns') and normalisation of casual violence in that society.
I recognise that there may be significant ethnic and cultural factors that influence perceptions about the use and availability of guns in Pakistani society but it is clear that the` top down message’ about power and influence being determined by might and violence, frequently reinforced through religious and racist rhetoric (Pakistanis being a martial ‘race’ etc), has found resonance with whole sections of society (for instance, the Pakistani establishment’s obsession with conventional and nuclear parity with India, a sentiment that by all accounts is shared by the general population ).
It is tempting to view Karachi with its population fractured along ethnic lines as a microcosm of Pakistan itself, which illustrates the inherent difficulties of creating a nation by clubbing together ethnic entities that have little in common apart from a shared belief system. I think Islam as a shared identity only work for these disparate groups in the presence of a common enemy, for instance the ‘infidel’ in undivided India. The sense of common cause was lost to a large extent once the state of Pakistan was created, which consequently gave rise to a sense of rootlessness and ‘anomie’ among the population and eventually led to the rise of violence and interethnic conflict of the sort witnessed in Karachi today. (the nation briefly rediscovered its raison d’ etre, that of being the bulwark of Islam against the infidel, during the Afghan War but it sadly only lasted until the final Russki pulled out)
However, I have to admit that despite the challenges confronting it, Pakistani society has somehow managed to plod along which I believe, in addition to the strong hand of the army also owes much to an inner resilience, a lot of it derived from the strong need for self validation through existing as a worthy adversary to India. I hope that the Pakistani establishment will finally see sense and channel this inner strength of the Pakistani people more constructively in the future in order to restore relations with India, which will ultimately benefit people in both countries.
that is what is happening in major cities in Pakistan.
