To Have & Have Not

Some policemen also perform special favors for politicians and influential businessmen. Wiretapping a pol's rivals is a big moneyspinner. An assassin (TIME agreed not to publish his name) claims that cops knew he was under contract with a political party. He says he was treated like a "VVIP" whenever he visited a police station. "The police wouldn't dare touch us." He had to laugh when the police took credit, four-and-a-half years ago, for one of his own kills. "He was a hit man, too, sent down from Lahore by a rival political party to get me," the assassin recalls. Except that the assassin tracked the newcomer down first, gunning him down at a crowded intersection. He adds, "The cops don't arrest the criminals; they only arrest the weakest." This allegation is echoed by a top police officer. He explains that often when a murder occurs, "We'll grab somebody—anybody—and beat him until he confesses and even starts blaming his own mother."

Naturally, when the cops were confronted with real, bad guys—terrorists who last year committed a rash of bombings and the kidnapping of American journalist Daniel Pearl—this squeeze-them-until-they-squeal approach got them nowhere. Agents from the FBI brought in for the Pearl case and the U.S. consulate bombing were also less than impressed by such techniques, according to a Western diplomat. A police officer admits that at first his men were also afraid of the extremists, who had informers inside the police force. They were also well equipped, he says, with guns smuggled across the lawless frontier with Afghanistan and money from Arab donors. "We have over 800 madrasahs in Karachi, and many of them are nurseries for terrorism," the officer claims.

The Americans found a useful ally in Jameel Yusuf, head of the Citizen-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC). An energetic, well-heeled businessman, Yusuf formed the committee in the early 1990s when Karachi was stricken by several kidnappings and murders a day. "It was turning into a city of death," he says. By setting up a data bank and electronic surveillance of criminals, Yusuf and a few honest cops managed to bust many of the major kidnapping gangs. These criminals were often linked to cells of sectarian killers and terrorists. "They all steal cars and buy and sell illegal weapons," Yusuf says.

With the FBI's help in monitoring cell-phone calls and e-mails, Yusuf was able to throw an electronic net over the Karachi neighborhoods where terrorists and some of Pearl's kidnappers lurked. "Al-Qaeda isn't like a social club," he says. "They don't have a posted membership list." What he did find was a link between al-Qaeda and two virulent Sunni sectarian groups—Lashkar Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammad—which had trained in Afghan camps alongside Osama bin Laden's holy warriors. The two groups, in turn, were mixed up in the Karachi underworld. Often, says Yusuf, it was the criminals who rented the hideouts used by al-Qaeda members, sent their coded messages from Internet cafés and helped them vanish into the city's maze of slums.

Yusuf's close ties to the Americans proved to be his undoing. On March 22 he was removed as CPLC chief. "The rumor was I worked for the CIA," says Yusuf. "That's a laugh. The Americans won't even let me have a visa after all the help I gave them." Because of terrorist threats, Yusuf travels with an extra car of bodyguards and lives in an ultra-secure penthouse as he struggles to win back his old job. He has enough money to leave Karachi, but he likes the place. "Any other city with 14 million people and so many bad governments would have collapsed long ago," he laughs.

A handful of other Karachiites have also refused to give up on their city. Abdul Sattar Edhi, a saintly ex-shopkeeper who goes around after the nightly bout of violence to collect the dead and give them a decent burial, also declines to flee. And that's a good thing for Karachi: his charity foundation now runs orphanages, mental institutions, clinics and ambulance services. Ardeshir Cowasjee, an irascible millionaire who wears silk pajamas and writes a weekly column for Dawn in which he tracks corruption to the highest places, vows to stay put, as does sociologist and city planner Arif Hassan who campaigns to save the few remaining buildings from Karachi's regal colonial past. Roland De Souza, whose organization SHERRI fights against illegal land developers whom he says are often in cahoots with city nabobs and some military officers, also insists he will always call Karachi his home. They, along with many other die-hard citizens, find that Karachi possesses a dynamism missing in other Pakistani cities. It's what lures 3,000 newcomers a day to Karachi, even if it means shoveling rotten fish on the wharf for $8 per 12-hour shift and bedding down with the ubiquitous rats on a stretch of pavement.

Karachi is a city of predators, says M.R., the assassin. He complains he barely makes a profit after he has paid off the cops, government contacts and his political protectors. His cell phone chimes. After taking the call, he says almost apologetically, "I have dozens of boys working for me. I try to make sure they each get a 'job' at least once every two months." Then he stubs out his cigarette and slips out of the apartment, trailing two armed thugs for protection. Karachi isn't safe at night, not even for a killer with connections.