Karachi

By Imtiaz Tyab in Asia on August 3rd, 2011

The constant clanging coming from the four-arm swinging power-looms was deafening. I had only been inside the tiny silk cloth factory for 10 minutes but already had a pounding headache from all the noise.

And yet, produced out of that dark, dingy, space came some of the most beautiful cloth I have ever seen.

Karachi's Banaras town has long been a destination for shoppers looking to buy the country's finest silks.

Situated in Orangi - one of the city's poorest slums - the locally produced material has long provided an economic boon to an otherwise depressed area.

But not any more. Business is down by more than 50 per cent. Local traders say the city's chronic and often deadly violence is to blame.

At the factory, I met a young man named Naveed Ansari whose family has been in the silk business since before Partition.

He told me no one can remember business ever being this bad.

By Kamal Hyder in Asia on July 10th, 2011
Police watch a deserted street in a violent-hit western neighbourhood. [AFP]

When Pakistan became an independent state in 1947, its first capital city was Karachi. It was the first port of call for international shipping in an age when aviation was used by few.

Over the years, it attracted both the educated elite and workers in search of employment. Many decided to make it their home. When Pakistan split from India, a great number of Muslims migrating to the new country came to Karachi for the same reason.  

The city soon became an epitome of unity. Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians and Hindus intermingled and lived side by side. I remember, during my days in school, no one ever asked anyone who they were, and everyone took pride in the fact that they were all patriotic Pakistanis.  

Sadly, the past is another country.

Tags: Karachi
By Kamal Hyder in Asia on November 18th, 2010
Photo from Al Jazeera

Just recently my team and I drove to Lahore to join the Vintage Cars Club of Pakistan's rally from the southern port city of Karachi. The cars were arriving in this historic city, once the playground of the Moghul and Sikh emperors, and were preparing for the final leg of their journey to Islamabad, the capital.

The drivers were an assortment of personalities, each with his or her own tale to tell. While most of the original owners were too old or dead, the stories and the legends left behind were etched into the minds of the connoisseurs who came from all four corners of the land.

The proud owner of a 1026 Dodge Brothers happened to be the Nawab of Tank. Registered in the name of the elder Nawab, the car still had the registration on the inside.

By Imran Khan in Asia on November 12th, 2010
Paramilitary soldiers keep guard around the destroyed CID building [Reuters]

I first reached the bomb site as the day began to break over Karachi. Just hours earlier, a truck carrying 1000kg of explosives had destroyed almost a whole city block.

The work of the Pakistani Taliban.

The scene was a gruesome reminder that Pakistan teeters on the edge of collapse, perhaps saved only by the extraordinary resilience of its citizens.

Resilience that seems to be turning to acceptance. Acceptance that bombings are now part of the country's every day.

My driver Maqbool actually heard the blast. Chain smoking and without a hint of nervousness, he tells me what happened.

"The noise was like a thunderbolt going off inside my head. I was asleep kilometres away from the site, but I heard it. I thought the bomb had gone off in my street. I ran outside and only saw others as confused as me," he recalled.

"In the end it's only God that decides who lives and who dies. We live our lives and put our faith in God.

By Zeina Khodr in Asia on September 10th, 2010
Photo from EPA

"Karachi doesn’t go hungry because of Islamic charities." Those were the words of the secretary general of the ruling Pakistan's Peoples Party in Sindh - an acknowledgment of the work of Pakistani groups some of which are suspected of having links to what the United States and United Nations believe are terrorist organisations.

One of those groups is Jamaat au-Dawa.

By Imran Khan in Asia on June 6th, 2010
Children wade through a flooded street in Karachi (AFP)

It's a little after 22:40 local Pakistan time. Karachi, where I am situated, is braced for Tropical Cyclone Phet. It's due to hit the coast of Karachi in the next 20 minutes or so.

The streets here are deserted. Karachi is a late night city, but this Sunday evening you can hear a pin drop.

Along the coast though it's different picture: Throughout the day, hundreds of people have come to the seafront to see for themselves exactly what is going on.

One man I spoke to says he has been hearing of a cyclone hitting Karachi every year for the last 20 years. "But every time, we see nothing. Let's hope God is on our side this time as well."

God and good planning, it would seem. The city's authorities have been battling it out to make sure that the city survives anything the weather can throw at it.

They seem to have done a good job.

Tags: Karachi
By Imran Khan in Asia on January 16th, 2010
Al Jazeera

I will never forget the first time I met Asim in person. Myself and Zein Basravi, Al Jazeera's producer in Pakistan, had been working long days in Karachi chasing down a story on Taliban financing.

Around 1am we arrived at Asim's house, in desperate need of some non-Taliban company.

He struck me as a skinny youth, living a little bit like the character Estelle from the Dickens novel Great Expectations.

This young man staying at his grandmothers house. His work littered the place, and he sat with his friends smoking and sharing good times.

He welcomed us with open arms.

Fiercely creative

I remember thinking that Asim had a wicked smile, and a fiercely creative mind, buzzing with ideas.

He loved to share them and at the end of the evening he promised to take me on a tour of Karachi's galleries.

The next morning he was true to his word and off we went in search of the true art of Pakistan.

By Imran Khan in Asia on November 22nd, 2009
Photo from AFP

Mullah Omar, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, has a free reign to travel around Pakistan, it would seem.

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