Qasba Aligarh Massacre

by Ali K.Chishti
It has been more than a decade and a half but by actually going back to what really happened haunts me to the core. I didn’t know the extent of this massacre until only recently. Yes, I am guilty as charged and it was only recently I met some of the survivors out of an accident to realize what really happened to the residents of a remote place named, Qasba Aligarh in Karachi. It really was a massacre.

Qasba Aligarh is located with-in Karachi limits and consists of basically poor and lower middle class Mohajir families living side by side by Pashtoons brothers who mainly resides on the mountains mostly Afghan migrants who settled during the Afghan-Soviet War. Qasba Aligarh was basically made as a colony for journalists where amenity plots were handed out to the residents but due to the distance from the city most journalists sold their plots or give out to their relatives mainly Muslim Migrants from India to Pakistan.

Background

It all started from an administrative decision from the than Governor Sindh, Gen.Retd. Jahandad Khan who took the decision on the orders from the federal government to start an operation at what we know as Al-Asif Square at Sorab Goth, Karachi, an illegally encroached properties by Afghan migrants during the late and early 1980’s. During the Afghan War in the 1980’s against the Soviet Occupation and General Zia(s) manufactured Islam and Islamization of Society more than 4 million refugees from Afghanistan were welcomed in Pakistan as temporary refugees. It was suppose to be the largest concentration of refugees in the world after the Second World War.

Apparently, this migration of refugees had a huge socio-economic impact on the Pakistani Society where Afghan Migration into Urban Pakistan promoted the Kalashnikov, Drugs and Encroachment Culture in Pakistan, a country which was previously drug free and largely deweaponized was flooded with automatic weapons apart from the population of drug users shooting up to over a million in 1980’s, it’s around 4 million now officially.

Apparently a over whelming proportion of settlers from Afghanistan settled in Karachi, the economic hub of Pakistan and the criminal elements from them started what they did best: land grabbing of precious land in Karachi apart from spreading the gun and heroine culture in Pakistan. At a same time, another political party with strong links to the Afghanistan and NWFP criminally give them a political cover on the basis of Pashtun Nationalism.

The Operation at Al-Asif Square

The Operation initiated by Governor on the orders of Federal Government was against the drug barons, land encroachers and criminal elements who had previously illegally occupied the area post Afghan War. A team was made by the than Governor, Gen.(retd) Jahandad Khan which consisted of Deputy Commissioner Karachi, Sardar Ahmed under him DIG Karachi, IGP, Sindh and Core Commander Karachi who were given duties to operate in the area and arrest criminal elements apart from relocation of illegal encroachers from Al-Asif Square to a new site at the National Highway.The tensions and political atmosphere was tense during those time where there earlier had been tensions

The Reaction

Unfortunately, some of the Pashtoon Groups based in Karachi as always thought that any operation at Al-Asif Square is against Pashtoons (although it was purely against criminals regardless of their ethnicity). A political party with her origins in Mardan who had traditionally capitalized on Pashtoon sentiments yet again capitalized on the situation and portrayed the action against drug barons, encroachers and criminal elements as if it was against a certain ethnicity which created lot of tensions in the city and calls for revenge were vowed in corner meeting of the party belonging to Mardan.

Meanwhile, Army and Para-Military troops patrolled the tensed city and were deployed in almost every area for a possible reaction from the Pashtoon-Afghan community. Qasba was pin-pointed as a high-tension area and atleast 2 fully armed Army Units were deployed in advance apart from keeping the police on high alert.

The Killing Spree

On December 15, 1986, a group of armed mostly Afghans with the backing of a Nationalist Political Party attacked the Aligarh, Orangi and Qasba colonies and adjacent areas of Karachi and killed innocent people, burnt shops and house] A total of 400 Mohajirs were killed in just two hours of this horrible massacre.
“They came inside out houses and asked for men”, “they killed indiscriminately with knifes and guns chanting Allah’o’Akber as if we were infidels” said one of the survivors who lost her father and elder brother sobbing and she was correct. Astonishingly mosques were used to mobilize people to kill and there were speeches and sermons given against the people living in Qasba Aligarh by pseudo Mullah’s that day branding Mohajirs as “Infidels” and that “killing them would take one to heaven”.

Mohammad Ibrahim another survivor who lost his elder brother told us that “they came in and started burning our houses, kicking the babies, raping our women and killing anyone in front of them …”.
More than 400 Mohajir Men and Women were brutally mutilated at Qasba Aligarh that day and nothing happened, no-one stopped them as if the establishment didn’t care about them , as if they were second class serfs who didn’t mattered. The question is: where were the law enforcement authorities? Where was the Army Unit employed by the government as a preventive measure for any reaction Post-Al-Asif
Operation against drug barons and arm-smugglers?

The details are not sketchy at all. On asking the survivors and those who were in administrative structure in Sindh during the time revealed a shocking tale of how the Army Unit deployed at Qasba was mysteriously pulled out just before the massacre and how police never reacted while the police station was less than a kilometer away from Qasba? All these questions were raised by the people of the area ; facts which are undeniable.

The army division which deployed to the Qasba Coloney was mysteriously pulled back just two hours before the incident took place whom you do think is responsible? I asked to a top administrative official who refused to be named and his reply was “whom you do think has the power to call the army back?, ofcourse the than Core Commander Karachi (name from Wikipedia). “ Obviously the Generals can not be questioned in Pakistan since they belong to the super-unquestionable class. The police? Well we in Karachi know their line of work? From Bushra Zaidi Case to the one recently in actually promoting land mafia in Karachi.

Justice Sajjad Ali Shah the former Chief Justice of Supreme Court is the man who wrote the inquiry report or the fact finding report which was send to Islamabad where he criticized, “army, administrative and governor’s role in the event and clearly wrote in the report, “that it is the worst kind of massacre I had ever witnessed, where women, children and men from Mohajir community were slaughtered by people from illegal immigrants and Core Commander Karachi should have questioned as to why Army was asked to retreat approximately 2 hours before the incident took take. There clearly seems to be a foul-play”. Obviously like any report and fact finding mission this was ignored by the federal government because the people who were killed were not “Pisser-e-Zameen” (Sons of the Soil).
And what’s more shocking is the total silence on this issue to this day? Except of MQM who was the only political party which actually protested heavily and got a compensation of Rs.4 carore approved for the victims.

And the hypocrisy of those who cry foul just to take political mileage from the 12th May incident, where were they when Qasba Aligarh Massacre took place? Imran Khan would be playing cricket during the time and probably would have laughed as they were “Hindustoras”, a term he often used against the wheatish looking mustached, Mohajirs. Where was the so-called self-proclaimed, “Civil Society” as if the rest who didn’t agree with them were uncivil? Or the so called National and Religious Political Parties?