Book Review

Karachi, A Terror Capital in the Making: Wilson John, published 2003 by ORF-Rupa.

In this book Wilson John attempts the extremely difficult task of drawing a composite sketch of terrorist activity in the Karachi area. The basic premise of the book is that Karachi (like Beirut before it) is becoming the hub for international terrorism. The book explores the social and historical factors that work in favor of this being the case. The links between Karachi and several major acts of terrorism like the Sept 11 attacks and the killings in Kashmir are also profiled.

In attempting to map this dark underworld of Karachi, Wilson John faces many difficulties. First and foremost, there is very little actual data from primary sources on this underworld. Criminals speak only under duress, and intelligence agencies who interrogate them are loathe to put out the actual testimonies. In rare cases these terrorists do speak to the media but the interaction is very controlled and few conclusions can be drawn about the nature of the underworld from such accounts.

Charting the links that connect various parts of the underworld to each other is quite hard also. A number of links are family ties, there are also a number of links through religious organizations that are offer a platform for terrorists to interact with each other. The madrassas and Jamias of Karachi are excellent examples of this sort of social networking. Also given the large population base in Karachi, it is very easy to recruit new people for random tasks and this complicates the analysis.

The hardest part of this riddle is factoring in the role of the Pakistan Army and its ISI agency. Everyone knows that the Al Qaida and a number of ISI sponsorred local jihads share a common roof in Karachi. However no one quite knows (or knows how to know) how exactly the ISI, the Al Qaida and all rest of the lot coordinate with each other. A large portion of terrorist activity is midwifed by the ISI, and the others are sort of like a multi-role task force that does their bidding, but determining how exactly the ISI tasks these groups is nearly impossible.

In the book Wilson John places the range of terrorist activity of the Al Qaida flavor in the context of a single cell operating in the city. This cell carefully draws on almost unlimited financial resources from a pool of money maintained by the criminal syndicates, and materiel from an large community of ISI affiliates like sectarian organizations, ethnic groups, and assorted nasty people etc...

All in all the book is probably a little difficult for the first time reader to comprehend. To someone who is not familiar with the legends of Karachi's netherworld, the patterns will seem disconnected and narrative will appear abstruse. If you don't know who Dawood Ibrahim is then this book is not meant for you, stick to Arundhati Roy instead. However to the avid follower of violence in Karachi, the book offers an interesting first take on the killings in the past decade. It is also a great way for the old Pakistan hands at places like BR to refresh their memory of the days gone by. So if you find yourself  in a heated argument, unable to remember what the names of the two launches that landed RDX in Ratnagiri (a month before the Black Friday Blasts in Mumbai in 1993) were; then pick up this book for the answers.

Sunil S

(ps. the names were 'Sada-al-Bahar' and 'Bismillah')