There is a sinister twist to the new Karachi habit — end of day news stories, citing official sources, summing up the dead and wounded scorecard, with appropriate action still sadly missing. Even as expanding violence in our financial capital vindicates concerned quarters’ warning of just such hostility when the city’s turf wars started raging anew not long ago, it also exposes Islamabad’s strategy as hollow. Indeed, reports of no less than presidential orders forbidding friction with coalition partners down south, even as increasing bloodshed bears their fingerprint to an extent, is quite revealing, not the least because the ruling party has lately started losing workers quite frequently in Karachi. To say violence is disrupting Karachi in unprecedented ways is unenlightening, a testament to the city’s cruel, often brutal past. Yet it is instructive to study the recent chronology. Once the city’s usual extortionists registered repeated encroachment on what has long been their bhatta (extortion) domain, and the government’s political calculus ruled out a head-on confrontation with a major coalition partner, the lack of law enforcement itself created conditions ideally suited for a quick escalation of violence. Soon enough political, ethnic, social and sectarian outfits from around the country found it politic to initiate proxy battles in Karachi, already home to representation from the length and breadth of Pakistan. Even worse, intelligence chatter seems to confirm strengthening doubts about Taliban and al Qaeda militias also infiltrating Karachi, a suitable habitat for militant Islam in a place featuring Baloch nationals, disenfranchised Pashtuns, hunted sectarian and ethnic minorities, all up in arms. Surely coordinated hits in the financial metropolis stand to win them far better jihadi points than any manner of operations in the rugged mountains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Pakistani security establishment ought to be no stranger to the dynamics of such proxy exchanges spilling over into other parts of the country. With all its complexities, Karachi already resembles a small country engulfed in a mini-civil war, one that threatens spiralling out of control and engulfing a far wider part of Pakistan. A port city that concentrates major financial activity is a prize for any country, and protected and defended as such. But the way Karachi has been left to its fate, much in line with other, more difficult to manage areas, betrays a glaring disregard of the city’s fortunes on the part of the ruling elite. This is a disturbing symptom. The only way to deal with Karachi is freeing the law enforcement agencies from political interference and control. The more such action is delayed, the more centres of power prefer staying in power over protecting the country’s security, social, political and economic edifice. *