INTRODUCTION

Karachi, like many other mega-cities, is laden with political, social, and even criminal fault lines, many of which seem to culminate around ethnicity. For the inhabitants of the city, the locality of ‘Katti Pahari’ (the cut mountain) comprising primarily of the Pashtun and Muhajir communities seems to embody the ethnic fault line. One of the bloodiest “ethnic” riots, mainly between the Muhajir and Pashtun happened in 1985, when Bushra Zaidi, a young college girl was killed in a road accident involving “yellow devil”, a bloody nickname for Karachi buses. Whereas the level of conflict fluctuated over the following decades, still the incidents of violence between these ethnic groups continued. While the level of violence has decreased since the government commissioned the Rangers’ operation in 2013, still signs of animosity and a latent conflict between these ethnic communities remain.
In other words, there exists a form of ‘Negative Peace’ with the possibility of violence as soon as the security forces recede.