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Special section on Karachi (part 1): guest editor - Nausheen Anwar

Enclaves, insecurity and violence in Karachi

Pages 93-107 | Published online: 09 Dec 2013
 

Abstract

This article presents conditions of insecurity and violence in Karachi in relation to an emerging geography whereby the city is fragmented into various enclaves of business, leisure and residence. Such enclaves have proliferated as a response to impotent public security in the face of rising urban violence and insecurity. Focusing on residential enclaves, which are primarily privately securitized spaces that attempt to restrict unwanted circulation, I emphasize the paradox of Karachi’s enclavization. Although the city is fast morphing into an archipelago of enclaves, Karachi continues to be drawn into a vortex of violence, and residents remain insecure. In this article, I investigate this paradox through a relational study of enclavization, insecurity and violence. I argue although enclaves in Karachi emerge as a tactic to deal with everyday insecurity and violence, the socio-political conditions generated by processes of enclavization create circumstances that produce a continuum of violence. This argument is illustrated through an analysis of two case studies, Clifton Block 7 and Sultanabad, which are both residential enclaves within Karachi. The case studies are an output of qualitative field research that focused on the politics of everyday life within enclaved spaces in relation to the city ‘outside’. Analysis demonstrates that enclaves are spaces of subjectivity that also create contradictions of security and insecurity, and generate vulnerabilities of inclusion and exclusion. The article also demonstrates how such enclaves emerge as urban political actors that shift existing state–society relations. In conclusion, it presents a critical analysis of emerging connections between enclavization and insecurity, which proves that the causes and consequences of enclaves, insecurity and violence exist in a continuum.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Steve Graham and Martin Coward for their supervision, which has been instrumental in shaping my work and developing my thoughts. A special thanks to Martin for his very useful comments on an earlier version of this article. I am also thankful to the two referees for SAHC for reviewing this article.

Notes

1. Author’s calculations from data available with the Citizen Police Liaison Committee and Sindh Police.

2. Mercer, Quality of Living Worldwide Rankings.

3. Dawn Newspaper archives, June 2010 to June 2013.

4. Interview, Arif Hasan Karachi, 29 June 2011; Interview, Parween Rehman, Karachi, 19 July 2011; also see Budhani et al., “The Open City”; Gazdar et al., “Informality and Political Violence in Karachi”; and Gayer, “Guns, Slums, and ‘Yellow Devils’.”

5. Pakistan Institute of Peace studies, available online at URL: http://san-pips.com/index.php?action=reports&id=tml2

6. Gayer, “Guns, Slums, and “‘Yellow Devils’”; Ahmar, “Ethnicity and State Power in Pakistan.”

7. Interview with Sharfuddin Memon (security advisor to Sindh Home Minister) on 9 May 2012.

8. Gregory et al., eds., The Dictionary of Human Geography, p. 191.

9. See, for example, Glasze, et al., eds., Private Cities: Global and Local Perspectives; Lemanski et al., “Divergent and similar experiences of ‘gating’ in South Africa: Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town”; Rosen and Razin, “Enclosed residential neighbourhoods in Israel: from landscapes of heritage and frontier enclaves to new gated communities”; Ploger, “Practices of socio-spatial control in the marginal neighbourhoods of Lima, Peru.”; Caldiera, “Fortified Enclaves”; Caldiera, City of Walls.

10. Ibid.

11. Agamben, Homo Sacer; Diken and Laustsen, The Culture of Exception. Agamben’s camp is a contemporary biopolitical paradigm that puts into motion the sovereign’s power to suspend law and hence produce ‘naked life’ in order to defend society. Agamben uses the concentration camp in Nazi Germany as a paradigm to understand the spatialization of the state of exception. Camp theory has been applied to explain the political space of enclaves in contemporary literature, most notably in work done by Diken and Laustsen. This application has received criticisms that are beyond the scope of this article. I prefer using camp theory as a descriptor to understand enclaves as biopolitical sites: enclaves often operate through a state of exception to state laws, usually imposed through an imperative to protect residents within. Emerging rules render life within vulnerable to the new sovereign authority.

12. Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism.

13. See the 11 papers within Oliver Coutard’s special issue of Geoforum, “Placing Splintering Urbanism”; Stephen Graham, Cities Under Siege.

14. Chatterjee, “Violent Morphologies”; Davis, “Fortress Los Angeles”; Angotti, “Urban Latin America.”

15. Lemanski, “A New Apatheid?”

16. Diken and Laustsen, The Culture of Exception.

17. Low, “Urban Fear.”

18. Low, Behind the Gates; Caldiera, City of Wall.

19. See, for example Bénit-Ghaffou, “Unbundled Security Services and Urban Fragmentation in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg”; Caldiera, City of Walls.

20. See Koonings and Kruijt, eds, Fractured Cities.

21. Perlman, “Megacity’s Violence and Its Consequences in Rio De Janeiro,” p. 62.

22. Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, Violence in War and Peace, p.1.

23. See Ingram and Dodds, Spaces of Security and Insecurity.

24. See for example Norton, “Feral Cities”; Thomas, Troy S. “Slumlords: Aerospace Power in Urban Fights”; The Guardian, February 16, 2010 “Karachi was haven for Taliban Fugitives.”

25. Ingram and Dodds, Spaces of Security and Insecurity: Geographies of the War on Terror.

26. Interview, Sharfuddin Memon, Karachi, 9 May 2012.

27. Gayer, “A Divided City”; Waseem, “Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: The Case of MQM”; and Budhani et al., “The Open City.”

28. Names of interviewees been changed where specifically requested to respect conditions of anonymity.

29. Interview, Amir Esbhani, Karachi, 4 July 2011.

30. The Area Manager has been hired to deal with clerical work and supportive administrative jobs such as forwarding residents’ complaints to relevant municipal offices, taking attendance of security and municipal staff working in the area.

31. Compiled from field research.

32. Interview, Sajid, Karachi, 26 April 2012.

33. Interview, Saddar Town Administrator, Karachi, 28 April 2012.

34. Interview, Natasha, Karachi, 7 May 2012.

35. Interview, Jamal, Karachi, 4 July 2011.

36. Interview, Amir Esbhani, Karachi, 26 April 2012.

37. Interview, Akmal, Karachi, 20 May 2012.

38. Interview, Samina, Karachi, 30 April 2012.

39. Interview, Amir Esbhani, Karachi, 26 April 2012.

40. Compiled from field research.

41. Interview, Amir Esbhani, Karachi, 12 May 2012.

42. Zaman and Syed-Ali, “Taliban in Karachi.” Dawn News, 31 March 2013.

43. Interview, Sultan Beg, Karachi, 13 July 2011; Interview, Khan, Karachi, 13 May 2012.

44. A union councillor is a democratically elected political representative working at the lowest tier of the local government system.

45. Interview, Nishat, Karachi, 12 July 2011.

46. Interview, Kamal, Karachi, 13 July 2011.

47. Interview, Habib, Karachi, 15 July 2011.

48. Interview, Imam, Karachi, 15 July 2011.

49. Interview, Qaiser, Karachi, 4 May 2012.

50. As quoted by Imam, in an interview in Karachi, 15 July 2011.

51. Interview, Majid, Karachi, 11 July 2011.

52. Interview, Imam, Karachi, 15 July 2011.

53. Ibid.

54. Interview, Irfan, Karachi, 26 April 2012.

55. Interview, Imam, Karachi, 4 May 2012.

56. Based on Interviews with residents and government officials during June 2011–September 2012.

57. Interview, Asma, Karachi, 22 May 2012.

58. Gupta and Ferguson, “Beyond ‘Culture’.”

59. See the various chapters in Keith and Pile, eds. Place and the Politics of Identity; and in Fincher and Jacobs, eds. Cities of Difference.

60. Fincher and Jacobs, eds. Cities of Difference.

61. Alsayyad and Roy, “Medieval Modernity.”

62. Ibid., p. 3.

63. Budhani et al., “The Open City.”

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