Karachi in the eye of Taliban storm

KARACHI (AFP) - Militants are fanning out across country’s financial capital, where crime fuels funding for insurgency and its 14 million residents offer perfect cover for extremists resting from the battlefield.
Karachi is one of the biggest Muslim cities in the world, its Arabian Sea port a gateway to the Middle East and the key transit point for NATO supplies heading to the war effort in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Country’s richest city, Karachi, has historically been connected with the criminal underworld and more recently with religious fundamentalism. Indeed it was here that US journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded in 2002.
Police have in recent weeks arrested three suspected militants accused of both plotting attacks in the city and trying to recruit potential militants.
“We often go to large cities to hide and rest from fighting. These places are ideal to save us from the American (drone) attacks,” said one man, who told AFP he is a follower of Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud.
Giving the name Manzar Khan, he said he does low-paid work in Karachi and goes back and forth to the mountains of tribal region.
“Karachi is the most ideal place of all. It is packed and congested with people so the risks for us are minimal compared to other places,” he said. “We come and go quite often,” he added.
Karachi has long been a centre of migration, with an estimated 2.5 million Pashtuns from the northwest said to be living here.
The influx began in the 1950s but accelerated in recent years with successive Pakistani offensives against militants.
Ethnic tensions between Pashtuns and the local population have spilled over into riots, and stalwarts in traditional local politics complain that the ‘Talibanisation’ of their region is eating away at liberal values.
An Army offensive against the Taliban in the three northwest districts launched in late April has also raised fears that militants are relocating and intensifying attacks across the nuclear-armed nation to avenge the operation.
Since late May police have arrested three would-be suicide bombers in Karachi, one of whom they said was linked to Mehsud.
“(Naeem Rehmani) is one of Mehsud’s men who is an expert in making suicide jackets and is recruiting people here and sending them for training to tribal areas,” said Javed Bokhari, a deputy inspector general of police. “We are on the lookout for his accomplices who wanted to bomb government and security agency buildings in the city.”