Islamabad targets slums after suicide bomb attack
"This is a government that very much represents urban commercial interests," said Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, an academic and chairman of the All Pakistan Katchi Abadi Alliance. "They like the idea of vacating all this public land and selling it off on contract."
In a capital city of comfortable villas and tidy streets organised on a strict grid plan, the Afghan Basti slum is an uncomfortable fit. A collection of tightly packed mud hovels, it looks like it has been transplanted fromPakistan's troubled tribal areas into what is otherwise a manicured enclave for the country's elite.
The slum, one of several inhabited by the menial workers who keep the city ticking along, may, however, be living on borrowed time. The government that came to power last year has sounded increasingly hostile towards illegal settlements that occupy valuable land and, according to some officials, are havens for terrorists and criminals.
The slums, or katchi abadis, were swiftly singled out for blame after this month's double suicide bomb attack in the city's district courts, which killed 11 people and was the worst attack Islamabad has suffered for five years.
"Whenever there is any terrorist incident they blame the katchi abadis," said Noor Mohammad Khan, a vegetable seller in the Afghan Basti, whose family moved to Islamabad from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. "We tell police, 'if you think there are terrorists come and carry out operation, including commando operation', but they don't find anything," he said.
A court ruling in February ordered the municipal authorities to clear the slums. Another option under consideration is fencing them off and controlling entry and exit points. "Clearing these areas will be difficult because there are so many people," one of Islamabad's top police officers told the Guardian. "Putting a fence around them will enable us to monitor who is coming and going much better."
Enclosing Islamabad's poor would be a remarkable step, even for a city where the social divide is sharper than most.
Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar has led the charge for a crackdown. He singled the katchi abadis out as possible militant havens soon after his party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, came to power last summer. Slum dwellers say they are being singled out in part because of ethnic prejudice.
"There are members of the government who do not like Pashtuns," said Haji Muzafar Khan, 60, who lives in a slum near the Afghan Basti. Pashtuns are the group who predominate in Pakistan's restive north-west and Afghanistan. "The upper class Punjabis think we are uncivilised, dirty terrorists."..
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