Sundown Town was once used for the places in the Midwest and South in the USA where, after dark, non-whites or people of certain races weren’t allowed to enter. People wandering after dark were subjected to discrimination, intimidation and violence. This is a bygone story there, while we are landed in a ‘new Sundown Town’ with even worse circumstances in Pakistan.
Notoriously known as the ‘Katcha’,— the riverine region around Ghotki, Kashmore and Shikarpur— the bandits within it have created circumstances described above in Sundown Town. While in the Sundown Town solely non-whites were not allowed to walk in in the town, the bandits, going a couple of steps beyond, allow ‘no one’ to wander after dark. Worse, the acts of looting, abduction and thuggery are performed in the sunup/sunshine.
Recently, the nightmarish murder of a school teacher, Allah Rakhiyo Nindwani, in Kandhkot testifies to the circumstances being akin to ‘stateless societies’ like Somalia, Libya or Yemen. The loss of his life is the price he paid to carry a double-barrelled gun for his own protection. Prior to this tragic incident, a university teacher, Dr Ajmal Sawand, who earned his degree from France in Artificial Intelligence, was mercilessly murdered in the same region, Kandhkot, by some rogue tribal men. However, the police cited both cases, as personal clashes, a vendetta.
These are the cases that came to the spotlight, while hundreds of cases routinely escape reporting, some due to executive authorities’ negligence and others because of the fear of retaliation, and perception of crime severity, among other factors. The ineffectiveness of police in protecting, reporting and executing necessary procedures aggravate the injuries.
Sindh, once a province of peace, prosperity and hospitality with vibrant culture, and archaic identity, has been catalysed into a battlefield. The pivotal role in changing the history, culture and nature of the province has been played by feudal lords with the support of the political elements. Courtesy of ‘influential people’, the Katcha and its adjacent areas are ‘no-go areas’.
To nip an exigence in the bud is to transform the modus operandi. Bringing the feudal system in the region to the halt along with bringing reform to the police department and enlightening the population of the region will catalyse deliverance in queue. Though a Herculean task, it is never impossible to bring a change.
The population of Sindh in general, and of the northern region in particular, are treated as sub-humans with no basic facilities, access to education, health and justice. Perhaps, due to the absence of state writ. With people a herd before feudal lords, an obsolete population before the incumbent, rural Sindh resembles a society that existed in archaic times. In that locality, intermittently individuals are abducted, kept for ransom and sometimes even murdered due to the demands of the bandits not being fulfilled.
With the talons of feudal lords getting sharper and the dwindling role of state institutions in combating the irregularities surfacing time and again, the fate of the northern region of Sindh remains in doldrums. This, in effect, triggers the feudal elite to continually racketeer at the expense of people’s coercion, ignorance and disenfranchisement while the police perform auxiliary roles.
The feudal lords, often under the veneer of demagogues. transcend the societal, constitutional and imagery bulwarks as if it is their prerogative. Since the state institutions submissively let the population be dragooned, the grievances of the people are merely falling on deaf ears. “The docile masses of an enslaved nation” are on a ride on a dilapidated road and it’s a slippery slope: one crisis will unfold after another.
Though questions are constantly raised regarding the silence of the region’s representatives for what purposes are they elected, owing to the cloud of fear, no one goes beyond slight criticism, with meaningful criticism being treated as heterodoxy and heresy. The representatives are dynamically the same with parallel actions. The representatives meet the criteria to be dubbed as incompetent, opportunist and tyrants. However, no one dares to point a finger.
“The power flows through the barrel of the gun”, from this statement what one should perceive: the bandits transcend the state writ? Do they have the upper hand over the status quo? Will the citizens be left at their mercy? If so, how long? How powerful the state may be internationally, its take in this region remains an enigma.
In addition to this, who sowed the seed of this bandit system and when? What made them so powerful that the state writ seems weak? What were the push and pull factors leading to this malaise, and most importantly, who let them become police of the state and local regions? What is more concerning is that the state has treated the symptom, never entirely killed the cause. How? Time and again solely CSPs were shuffled, but never a grand movement was led. Thus, this malaise turned into a cancerous malady haunting the locality.
How far it may be the Achilles’ heel for the state to liberate its citizens from these bandits, it should be the primary purpose for the institutions to hijack them; either via carrot and stick approach or by state writ.
In short, by hook or crook, liberty must prevail in the region for a sigh of relief. Categorically, to nip an exigence in the bud is to transform the modus operandi. Bringing the feudal system in the region to the halt along with bringing reform to the police department and enlightening the population of the region will catalyse deliverance in queue. Though a Herculean task, it is never impossible to bring a change.
