Lahore, Pakistan
Beirut, Lebanon
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Sao Paulo, Brazil

The World’s Alex Gallafent looks at some of systemic problems behind such disasters.

The building that collapsed in Lahore, Pakistan, and killed more than 20 people, was a factory. It’s thought it was brought down by an exploding boiler.

The building that collapsed in Beirut killed at least 25 people. A couple of theories for its collapse:

Maybe cracks in the building were made worse by heavy rain. Or perhaps its foundations were weakened by nearby construction.

In any case, for the professionals, a building collapse is one of the worst things that can happen.

Cameron Sinclair is one of the founders of the non-profit group Architecture for Humanity. For him, what’s scary is rarely the design of buildings, rather it’s how those designs are constructed.

“The quality of construction is diminishing greatly,” he said.

“There was a time when we as architects would deal with a whole system of master craftsmen who would be working on the finer details of a building. Now it’s kind of like the McDonalds of building. It’s a lot of cookie-cutter, dropped-in solutions that are done to maximize profit locally.”

That may be true, but it doesn’t account for the building stock the world already has.

The factory that collapsed in Pakistan was about 25 years old, and the Lebanese building dated from the 1920s.

In these cases it’s more a matter of upkeep and regulation.

For instance, one commentator suggested that–in Beirut–the fact that old laws keep some rents very low means landlords don’t spend money on standard safety inspections.

And it’s problems with enforcing the rules that Christopher Gaffney thinks are to blame for the recent building collapses in Brazil.

In Rio de Janeiro a 20-storey building collapsed onto two smaller buildings, both of which also went down.

Gaffney is an architecture professor there, and he notes that Brazil has a long and proud tradition of structural engineering.

“So this was a bit of a surprise and it’s turn into a tourist attraction of sorts. But in terms of a shock at the falling apart of public infrastructure, people were not terribly surprised.”

Gaffney sees cracks not in Rio’s buildings so much as in the city’s civic infrastructure: no-one’s stepping up to take the blame.

“The mayor doesn’t want to take responsibility, the governor doesn’t want to take responsibility, the engineering firms don’t want to take it,” he said.

“And so this is a concern of mine in general for the way that the World Cup is going to be run.”

That’s the soccer World Cup in 2014, a major event that’s only going to increase the stress on Rio de Janeiro.

Rio’s problems are big and systemic, and Gaffney doesn’t see the city’s leaders tackling them.

“When you have a bit event coming in, when you have these gross failures of public administration, you expose yourself to international coverage and you expose your weaknesses,” he said.

Anywhere in the world, developing big systems takes a long time, whether it’s building a culture of responsibility or a well-regulated inspection regime, or a seamless construction process.

Maybe, says Cameron Sinclair, at Architecture for Humanity, that’s why it’s easier to blame fate when things go wrong.

“When we assume it’s a freak accident, we dismiss it and we just ignore it.”

So when the local journalist I work with suggested parking illegally near a courthouse, I said okay, noticing everyone else
was doing it. And that’s when I got a lesson in Pakistani parking control.

When we returned, our car was gone from its spot, but not far.

A forklift had gently lifted the car and placed it on the sidewalk. And the driver was doing the same thing to dozens of vehicles.

He arranged the cars so they were pretty much boxed in, making a quick getaway impossible.

His partner, the ticketing officer, explained what was going on.

“This is reserved parking for the lawyers who work at these courts and they’ve designated vehicles with stickers to mark them and they are the only ones allowed to park here,” he said.

Okay, we knew that.

But why a forklift and why put them on the sidewalk? Why not just tow them away?

Turns out, there is a very practical answer.

“There’s not a good registration system for vehicles here, so we can’t fine people online or through an electronic system so we lift the cars and put them somewhere where the drivers can’t get away,” the parking officer said. “Then we fine them to ensure the fine is paid.”

And it works. We paid our fine, the equivalent of just over 2 dollars, and we watched dozens of others do the same with very little grumbling.

It was a sight to watch as car after car was lifted, carried, set down and then lifted again and returned to their owners as the fines were paid in.

And one other notable point: turns out the police who monitor parking and the highways have been praised by anti-corruption group Transparency International for their integrity.

That’s no small feat in what is otherwise one of the world’s more corrupt nations.

It has been more than two years since she was last in the country.

She talks to anchor Marco Werman and gives us a glimpse into life there.

Well, they might be if they were allowed to drink beer. Pakistan bans alcohol for Muslims – who represent 97 percent of the population.

But get this. There’s a brewery and distillery not far from the capital of Islamabad. A brewery that’s doing a booming business.

To get there, you have to navigate the checkpoints in the city of Rawalpindi, a place better known for its mix of mosques and military installations. First, you can smell it – the unmistakably yeasty scent of brewing hops.

Then you hear it. Rattling and clinking along the production line, it’s bottle after bottle of beer, here in a country where booze is banned for all but a very few.

But Murree beer has time and history on its side.

Murree Brewery started business way back in 1860 at a brewery in the resort town of Murree, in the foothills of the Western Himalayas. British colonialists built it to brew ales for thirsty soldiers. But when Pakistan gained independence, the Bhandara family took over.

“It’s more than a business, it’s been in the family since 1947, seven decades now. It’s not only me, it’s not only my family that’s associated with this company. There are grandchildren of people whose grandparents worked here,” said Isphanyar Bandara, the third generation CEO to take on the challenge of running Murree.

Business was good until 1977.

That’s when Pakistan’s then leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto banned alcohol as a way to court the support of conservative Muslims.

Today, the Rawalpindi brewery sounds as old as it looks as I enter the brew house. The Victorian era buildings haven’t changed much – and beer is made pretty much the old fashioned way, according to Murree employee Sabih-ur-Rehman.

“We add hops for flavor and bitterness and we also add yeast.”

As a Muslim, ur-Rehman isn’t allowed to taste this product nor any of the gin, rum, vodka or 21-year-old whisky.

Neither are the several hundred employees of the plant.

Under the law, only non-Muslim Pakistanis and foreigners are allowed to purchase alcohol. And they’re only able to buy it in a handful of gloomy bars that are hidden away in the corners of five star hotels.

It’s just one of the rules that more than frustrates CEO Isphanyar Bhandara given the amount of bootlegged booze that enters the country.

“Imported alcohol – I mean beer and spirits – is coming into Pakistan being smuggled into Pakistan free of duty,” he said. “The government does not earning a penny. That is coming and no one is making hue and cry.”

Bhandara is also prohibited from advertising. But what he finds most infuriating is the government’s refusal to allow him to sell his products abroad.

“If we start exporting, Pakistan I think, will be taken in a positive sense, I think more than as a fundamentalist state. Today Pakistan has a very bad image in the world exporting terrorism and suicide bombers and such a like but today if Pakistan was to export it will give a good image to our tarnished image.”

Despite Bhandara’s loud complaints, despite persistent lobbying by his late father, who was a well-connected politician in addition to being a brewmaster, the laws are not about to change. Indeed, as conservative Islam has gained influence in Pakistan, the number of legal liquor outlets has shrunk.

As a forklift operator steers another shipment of beer towards a truck, it’s undeniable that business is good. So what explains the boom in sales?

Well, it’s an open secret really. Many Muslims will swill a beer or sip a whisky, though only in private. When I put the proposition to Bhandara, a sly smile spreads across his face – do Muslims in Pakistan drink?

“Is the sky blue? Is the sky blue?” he asked with a laugh.

Bhandara may laugh, but he knows his brewery presents a troubling paradox for Pakistan. So he tries to keep a low profile inside the country.

“You didn’t see any bodyguards outside my office, I’m a nobody so we don’t give interviews to the local media but we try not discuss religion.”

It’s those kind of compromises and quiet understandings that have allowed the beer to continue to rattle down the bottling lines inside the brewery, quenching the thirst of so many in a nation that’s officially dry.

The court’s actions have raised the stakes at a time when the government has also faced pressure from the military. And it’s raising questions about whether the court is overstepping its boundaries and threatening the country’s stability.

The district court in the city of Rawalpindi looks more like a bazaar. There are lots of crowds and outdoor stalls.

But the merchants here are selling legal services – a man taking affidavits, another copying documents for files. In this chaotic maze of buildings and alleyways, the way to find the actual courtrooms is to look for the lines, long lines. Safraz Mahmoud is here, waiting for his day in court. And he said he’s been waiting for a very long time.

“The court system is really slow. Five six year I am coming here. That case (should take) maybe one, but year it take five or six years,” he said.

Mahmoud said he’s come to court hundreds of times to try to resolve a dispute with his nephew over a parcel of land. He must travel far to get here and it costs him time and money.

Down another lane, lawyer Imran Abbasi went over a file with a client in his one-man office. No grandeur here, just a single desk, a few chairs and a lawyer who is fed up with overloaded courts that he said are leading to injustice.

Abbasi cited the case of one client, charged over two years ago with murder, who is still far from knowing when he’ll have his trial. Abbasi listed the endless reasons the case keeps being adjourned.

“One day one advocate is not present, the other day the other opponent advocate counsel is not present. One day the police did not bring the accused from the jail One day the learned magistrate the judge has been on leave.”

He said he could go on and on.

Then there’s the other problem, highlighted, said Abbasi, in the court that deals only with anti-corruption cases. He said he can’t get anything done there without paying bribes.

“This is disastrous for our lower courts Corruption is at peak in that court,” Abbasi said.

For Abbasi, there’s not only frustration. There’s an acute sense of disappointment and betrayal. In 2009, he was one of hundreds of lawyers arrested for demanding the reinstatement of the sacked Supreme Court Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry.

Chaudhry got his job back.

But critics say the Chief Justice is now so focused on fighting battles with the government, he’s ignoring the problems he should be addressing within the justice system. Others, like lawyer Anis Jilani, blame the government.

“Frankly speaking, the system and democracy cannot function if the institutions continue to clash like this,” Jilani said.

Jilani has watched as the Chief Justice steered the court into unfamiliar territory, protecting the little guy. Chaudrhy’s court has intervened in cases involving discrimination and municipal planning decisions.

Just a few days ago, the court announced it was demanding answers surrounding the deaths of more than a hundred people given tainted heart medicine. Jilani said that Chaudhry is only doing what needs to be done to hold government to account.

“Where he feels things are going out of control and the government is unable to handle the situation, he intervenes,” Jilani said. “He has this knack of grabbing and realizing the right opportunity. You can say, he has his hand on peoples’ pulse and he knows what people want.”

But it’s rulings like today’s contempt notice against the Prime Minister that are setting the court on a collision course with the government.

In conspiracy-rich Pakistan, some believe the court is doing the military’s bidding, a military that has had its own clashes with the government. Jilani discounted that, along with critics who say unelected judges are overstepping their authority.

“Someone has to intervene,” he said, “and I think it’s much better for the courts to intervene than the armed forces.”

In unusually candid remarks, Mr Obama said the strikes targeted “people who are on a list of active terrorists”.

Pakistan says drone raids violate its sovereignty, although it is believed to have given them its tacit support.

The US government does not routinely speak publicly about drone operations, which have killed hundreds in recent years.

Mr Obama made his comments during an hour-long video “hangout” on Google’s social network, Google+, which was also streamed live on YouTube.

Laura Lynch reports from Pakistan.

“As a general proposition, the question that was posed, I want to make sure the people understand, actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” the President said.

He went on to say that “for the most part they have been very precise precision strikes against al-Qaeda and their affiliates. And we are very careful in terms of how it’s been applied.”

Still on the topic of drone strikes, he said that “a lot of these strikes have been in the Fata” – that refers to Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Marco Werman talks with Micah Zenko, Fellow for Conflict Prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations, about how surprising it is that President Obama publicly acknowledged the US use of drones in this way, and what it means for public discourse on this issue.

Zenko is the author of “Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World“.

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Marco Werman: Micah Zenko is a Fellow for Conflict Prevention at the Council at Foreign Relations. He’s an expert on U.S. national security policy and military operations. Micah Zenko, let’s be clear here. Were President Obama’s comments yesterday on the U.S. use of unmanned drones the first time anyone in the Obama administration had publicly acknowledged the first time use of drones?

Micah Zenko: It was the first explicit acknowledgement by a U.S. official that the United States is using these drones in Pakistan. That’s the key aspect. The U.S. has described their use in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, but under U.S. law these are quote “covert actions” and what that means is that the United States government cannot acknowledge that they occur. Never before had any administration official explicitly acknowledge that the United States is using drone strikes in what’s called the Fata area of Pakistan, so this is a completely new development.

Werman: So were you shocked by this and what exactly was this moment for President Obama, this public admission of covert action?

Zenko: I was shocked given the setting which he did, which was essentially an hour long event for Google at answering questions from the public, but I think the reason he made this announcement now is there are a lot of increasing criticisms about the transparency and oversight of drone strikes and particular about the killing of Anwar al-Alawki, who was a U.S. citizen in Yemen, by a drone a few months back and I believe that this statement by the President sets up what is supposed to be a forthcoming speech by Attorney General Holder that explains what is the legal justification for the United States government to kill a U.S. civilian, a citizen living abroad without access to their Fifth Amendment due process rights.

Werman: Well the drone program officially is secret and secrecy has its costs. What has been the cost of official secrecy on drones?

Zenko: Well some of the things that happens is that the United States, because it cannot acknowledge or defend them, is on a back foot within countries like Pakistan about what the effects of them are, so if you read the Pakistani press or in Pakistani television shows some of the worst myths and mus-perceptions about drone strikes are allowed to fester because nobody from the U.S. government can correct them. The other issue is that within the United States itself there is very limited transparency in oversight of these drone strikes, so these are properly reported to the intelligence committees within the House and the Senate, but within other committees dealing with the Senate Foreign Relations committee or the House Foreign Affairs committee, many staff members and officials on them have very little understanding of how these work.

Werman: I mean that raises the point that some critics have argued, that the use of drones has allowed the U.S. to go to war through a back door and that undermines the legal safeguards against going to war. Would you agree with that?

Zenko: I would. I mean there have been something like 285 drones strikes in Pakistan since the summer of 2004 when they first began, 85% of those occurred under President Obama. If there was 285 bombs dropped by manned aircraft in Pakistan, for example, there would have to be some formal declaration of war under the War Powers Resolution and there would have to be some acknowledgement to Congress, broadly, of what’s happened. As it is now, these are reported simply to a number of select senior members of Intelligence Committees in the House and the Senate. There’s no explicit Congressional authorization for these particular strikes and so the Administration has sort of let this go on and on and on and on for seven and a half years without ever acknowledging that these were occurring.

Werman: This is an election year, do you think the President came out publicly and spoke about drones for some political payback, and if so, do unmanned aircraft now become a campaign issue?

Zenko: Well drone strikes are incredibly popular especially in Capitol Hill and among members of the Democratic Party who want to have a smaller military, but I think the real reason that the President did this is, again, after seven and a half years the pressure had simply built to great with enough officials within the Administration and who have recently retired and enough people on Capitol Hill who finally said “You have to explain the scope and range of the targets which with unmanned drones are being used to kill, and in particularly, you have to explain why the U.S. believes that it can target U.S. citizens without Fifth Amendment due process rights.”

Werman: Micah Zenko is a Fellow for Conflict Prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of “Between Threats and War: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the Post-Cold War World.” Micah, thank you very much.

Zenko: Thank you so much.

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I have not been to Islamabad, or even Pakistan, in over two and a half years. After the killing of Osama bin Laden by American special forces last year, visas were hard to come by. Still, I managed to get a visa last week, just in time to accept an unusual invitation.

It came in an email just after Christmas. Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, who has been living in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai since leaving politics in 2008. But Musharraf planned to stage a return to both active politics and Pakistan with a high-profile flight into Karachi planned at the end of January. I, along with a number of other journalists, was invited to buy a ticket for what promised to be a dramatic return.

After all, I had been in Karachi on October 18, 2007, when Benazir Bhutto returned from her own self-imposed exile to contest elections. The streets were jammed with hundreds of thousands of cheering supporters. As Bhutto’s convoy crawled along its route, I waited under an overpass. Realizing she was still more than an hour away, I returned to my hotel to file my report.

I saw the explosions happen, at the very spot I had been standing earlier, on the television in my room. 139 people died, 450 others were injured.

Bhutto herself was unhurt, though when I interviewed her two days later, she complained that her ears were still ringing from the blasts. Still, she vowed to carry on. And she did, until she was assassinated just over two months later on December 27th.

In Pakistan’s tumultuous and dramatic political stage, the ghost of Bhutto undeniably haunted Musharraf’s planned return. Even as the preparations grew more intense the government, (headed by Bhutto’s widower Asif Ali Zardari ), made it clear Musharraf would be arrested if he returned, on charges relating to the death of Bhutto.

Musharraf’s officials insisted the former president was not deterred. He admitted he knew the risk but planned to go anyway. So I booked a flight to Dubai, still not certain he would actually take the gamble, not certain I would see the former president who seized power in a coup return to try to cloak himself in the mantle of democracy.

On Friday, as I flew from London, Musharraf’s top advisers did the talking for him. He would not return at this time, they said; instead he would wait for better conditions inside the country.

That does not mean there aren’t plenty of other stories of political intrigue to tell from inside Pakistan. There is the continuing power struggle between the government, the military and the judiciary that is threatening to destabilize the country even further. There is the deteriorating state of relations between the US and Pakistan, exacerbated by American drone strikes, a cross border attack that left Pakistani soldiers dead and of course, the daring American mission to kill Osama bin Laden.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s admission that a Pakistani doctor helped the CIA by collecting evidence of bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan probably will not help. Nor will Panetta’s thinly veiled criticism of Pakistani officials for holding the doctor in custody pending potential charges of treason.

And so that is why Musharraf’s change of plans did not deter me, it simply meant buying the ticket that brought me to Islamabad in the middle of the night. Now I can only hope it will not take too long for Musharraf to reimburse me for the flight that never happened.

“Patience,” I say to myself.

In a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast by CBS Sunday, Panetta reiterated that someone in the Pakistani government must have known where Osama bin Laden was hiding.

The Pentagon chief also admitted that a Pakistani doctor helped the CIA find bin Laden’s compound last year.

And he expressed concern about the doctor, who’s been arrested by Pakistani officials and charged with treason.

Leon Panetta was in charge of the CIA when Navy Seals staged their dramatic raid inside Pakistan, killing bin Laden.

Weeks later, a Pakistani doctor, Shakeel Afridi, was arrested.

Afridi may yet face treason charges after being accused of running a fake vaccination program as a way to gain access to bin Laden’s compound for the CIA. Panetta told “60 Minutes” he’s worried about how Afridi is being treated.

“This was an individual who in fact helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation,” Panetta said. “He was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan, he was not in any way doing anything that would have undermined Pakistan. As a matter of fact Pakistan and the United States have a common cause here against terrorism. And for them to take this kind of action against someone who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think, it was a real mistake on their part.”

Pakistan was embarrassed by the raid and accused the US of violating its sovereignty.

Back then, anti-American sentiment was running high – one Gallup poll suggested 85 percent of Pakistanis disapproved of US leadership. It wasn’t always like that.

“I have been to America when I was a young officer. I did one of the training courses there and that was the F-16. I have some very fond memories of the people I interacted with,” said Retired Pakistani Air Force Marshall Shahad Latif.

Latif remembered the good old days when he worked side by side with American pilots, learning to fly US made warplanes. But Latif said all those years of teamwork doesn’t give Panetta a right to criticize Pakistan for how it treats Afridi – someone who Latif believes must face consequences for working for the CIA.

“What are Americans to think in a situation like this where a man who apparently helped the world get rid, helped the world get rid of Osama bin Laden is being held and accused of being a traitor in this country?” I asked him.

“This is a difficult proposition that you put up. But apparently the fact he passed information I think he does come in the bracket of a traitor,” Latif said.

Political analyst Imitaz Gul takes a similarly hard line. It doesn’t matter to Gul that Afridi’s apparent target was bin Laden – it matters that he was passing secrets to the US and withholding them from Pakistani authorities.

“You know, it’s really easy to argue against it or argue for it. But it depends who is arguing it. The Americans probably think they can probably get away with everything,” Gul said.

Gul knows American officials have lost faith in Pakistani intelligence – believing they actively cooperate with sections of the Taliban in Afghanistan. And in the “60 Minutes” interview, Panetta said that while he had no evidence, he believed that someone in the Pakistani government knew bin Laden was hiding in their country.

So, plenty of bad feelings on both sides, said Gul. And not made any better by a November cross border clash with US troops that left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead.

“These relations continue to suffer from mistrust. So as long as this perception stays, I think there will be enough reason for the Americans to be wary or suspicious of the Pakistani establishment and the Pakistani establishment on its part is suspicious of the American long term planning,” Gul said.

There have been some attempts to repair relations. US drones are reportedly flying over northern Pakistan again. And the parliament in Islamabad seems poised to reopen the border crossings for NATO supplies that were closed by Pakistan in an act of retaliation.

Still, the resentment toward America doesn’t appear to be dissipating. And that probably means the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA bag bin Laden shouldn’t expect to get off lightly in his own country.

He spent the past three months in Pakistan under order not to leave the country while being investigated for his alleged involvement in a controversial memo asking the Pentagon to help curb the Pakistani Army.

Anchor Marco Werman gets details from New York Times reporter Declan Walsh in Pakistan.

The show’s anchor was fired for producing a program in which she raided a public park in Karachi, hounding young dating couples and questioning their morality.

Asra Nomani teaches journalism at Georgetown University.

And she’s the author of Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, over 1,400 people were killed in the city in violent incidents in the first eight months of 2011. At its peak in the month of July alone there were 358 killings.

And the violence is affecting businesses especially hard.

“They came with gunmen,” said Parveen Rehman, who heads a social development nongovernmental organization in Karachi. “Five or six went into the courtyard and they said that ‘today we will occupy this place no matter what.’”

Rehman said the armed thugs wanted to take over the group’s compound. Luckily, she said, a person in her organization knew someone more powerful. So they turned to him for help.

“He came and he said if you fire then we’ll fire many more rounds,” Rehman said. “So imagine, to save ourselves, we went to a bigger thug.”

This is by no means an isolated incident. Many organizations and businesses face similar problems. And it’s especially hard to fix because the violence goes right to the top, to city officials and political parties.

Karachi houses almost every different ethnic and political group in the country: Muhajirs, Pashtuns, Baloch, Sindhis… not to mention a range of Islamist groupings.

All of the different groups have political organizations that claim to represent them. And most of those groups have their own militias. Parveen Rehman said that grabbing land brings lots of power.

“There is continuous battle over various segments of land in Karachi between various groups of people who I would not say are given sanction by any one political party; but who as a strategy align themselves with political parties,” Rehman explained. “And police and of course all the government departments and the elected members are all partners in this. Because the money involved is so much, that overnight you can earn so much more.”

It’s a strategic mix of politics, crime and business. Once a political party’s thugs steal land, it’s divided and illegally sold to others. And that creates an instant – beholden – constituency.

This phenomenon of “land-grabbing” exploits the weakness of state institutions, as well as the ever-increasing demand for housing not met by the government. About half of Karachi’s estimated 17 million people live this way, dependent on one private group or another.

“It could be housing, transport, drinking water, even electricity,” said Haris Gazdar, a political economist at the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi. “Most of all, all of these activities are underpinned by informal systems of contract enforcement. So contracts were then enforced by private people, sometimes in collusion with government officials who had all kinds of side deals with them. So you had a situation where the private use of violence was legitimate.”

Add to the mix a massive influx of arms to Karachi during the Soviet War in neighboring Afghanistan during the 1980’s, creating what is referred to locally as the “Kalashnikov culture.”

And today, everyone in the city seems to be armed. There are twice as many private security guards in the city as police officers, not to mention tens of thousands of private weapons.

Faisal Subzwari is a government minister from the MQM, a party that represents the Muhajir community and which is often accused of using strong arm tactics. Subzwari denied that his party has its own militia, but he admitted to carrying a weapon. He called it only normal to be armed.

“It’s my lawful right to have licensed armed weapons and people must have them. Why? I am quoting you specific examples of inaction from the police’s part, politically motivated targeted killings, and politically motivated ethnic cleansing. If the government isn’t doing anything, rather helping out criminals and gangsters then in order to save my skin at least I would acquire a licensed weapon which is not a crime in Pakistan today,” Subzwari said.

So everyone is armed because everyone else in the city is armed. As political economist Haris Gazdar explains, trying to change this “arms race” will be extremely difficult.

“The major kind of gaps in urban planning and political management, and the existence of military governments over long periods of time have led us there,” Gazdar said. “And realistically we shouldn’t expect any political party to give up on this model on its own.”

And until that happens, expect the seemingly unchecked violence in Karachi to continue.

Fireworks were set off when Musharraf announced that he promised to return to Pakistan some time between the 27th and 30th of January.

He was addressing a rally of about 8,000 supporters in Karachi, via a video-link from Dubai.

Musharraf ruled Pakistan as a military dictator from 1999 to 2007 and then as a civilian president for another nine months. He finally stepped down from office in August 2008 to avoid impeachment proceedings against him.

Since then he has lived in exile in London and Dubai spending much of his time on the global lecture circuit. But recently he has expressed an interest in returning to Pakistan to contest parliamentary elections as a constitutional leader.

In 2010, he set up the All-Pakistan Muslim League, a new political party that he leads.

The only problem is that there are arrest warrants out for him in Pakistan in connection to the killings of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and Baloch nationalist leader Akbar Bugti.

His opponents are also threatening to push for him to be tried for high treason for his 1999 military coup. But Musharraf remains defiant.

“There are many who are trying to scare me, but I am not scared,” Musharraf said during the rally. “I have fought wars. I have seen threats. I don’t fear, and I will come to Pakistan. These cases against me have no basis. I will face them in the courts.”

And while Musharraf has no shortage of opponents, he does also have supporters – as was evident yesterday in Karachi.

“I’m here to support Musharraf because I think we are a beneficiary of his era between 2000 – 2007,” said businessman Waquas Haider. “Haven’t seen a better time in Pakistan than that.”

Haider is part of a class of entrepreneurs and white-collar professionals that arguably prospered the most during Musharraf’s rule.

The former general’s supporters overwhelmingly refer to economic growth under Musharraf as his most important credential. Haider said businessmen like himself could count on growth back then – and they want that certainty back.

“And that’s what has been missing since he’s been gone, certainty. In a business environment that’s what we need,” Haider said.

Musharraf’s supporters are convinced he can bring back prosperity. They also don’t think the former general did anything wrong back in 1999, when he overthrew an elected government in a coup.

According to Ali Naqvi, an office-holder in Musharraf’s new political party, it was a legitimate act by Musharraf.

“I don’t call it unconstitutional,” Naqvi said. “At that time the situation was very grave. Pakistan was being declared a failed state. It was high time, he did a right thing. People supported it. People were distributing cakes and sweets. Especially in the urban areas. People were on the streets and dancing. How can you call it unconstitutional?”

That’s not how Musharraf’s foes see it. Which is why his most immediate challenge – before campaigning for parliament — is how to return to Pakistan without getting arrested.

Imran Khan made his name playing cricket, the most popular sport in Pakistan. In 1992 he became a legend after leading the Pakistani team to victory at the World Cup:

He formally entered politics in 1996, founding the PTI, or “Movement for Justice,” which promoted an anti-corruption platform.

The PTI attracted mostly urban educated professionals, but failed to get a mainstream following. In fact, in the 2002 parliamentary elections, Imran Khan was the only candidate from his party to win a seat.

But now Khan has managed to mobilize enough young urban professionals to become a rising political force. In the past, this demographic shunned politics as a dishonorable activity. But young people are coming out now out of frustration with the current leadership.

“This is the first rally that I’ve come to! I’ve never supported anyone before in Pakistan,” said Shazia Farooqui, who works at a shipping company. She came out to support Imran Khan at Sunday’s rally.

“The Pakistani want change. We believe that Imran Khan is probably the best person. He talks about respect. We’re getting tired of being pointed at.”

Uzair Dadabhoy also came out for the rally. He’s a recent university graduate, who works at an asset management company in Karachi.

“You can’t get justice, you can’t get safety. People’s businesses are getting affected. Our livelihoods get affected when the country gets in to such a terrible situation.”

Dadabhoy says he’s been a huge fan of Imran Khan since his cricket days, but only joined his political movement a few months ago.

“They might not have the best expertise to run the railways and Pakistan International Airlines, but at least they will be honest. They won’t loot,” Dadabhoy said, adding that anyone could do a better job of running the government than the people doing it now.

At the rally, you could see posters of Imran Khan with the slogans “hope” and “change,” a clear reference to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Some people wore t-shirts with the phrase, “Yes We Khan”.

Despite this new found enthusiasm for Imran Khan, not everyone’s so sure what he’s offering. Badar Alam, editor of Pakistan’s Herald magazine, said that Khan’s ideology is continuously evolving, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

“Whether it is right wing, centrist, or some kind of liberalism, we are never sure about his own ideology. Where is he coming from? The moment he gets his hands on to some wonderful idea, he wastes no time in adopting it,” Alam said. “If you go to his party’s website you will see articles which praise how Hugo Chavez has turned around the economy of Venezuela, and then you hear him speak very fondly of how China has eradicated corruption.”

Khan’s political rivals question whether his party, the PTI, with its untested upper-class leadership, can really tackle the country’s problems of poverty, violence and conflict. Nasreen Jalil, of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement or MQM, a dominant political party in Karachi, said there’s no comparison between Khan’s PTI and MQM.

“We’ve been there, delivered and proved,” she said.

Until recently MQM was at bitter odds with Imran Khan. The rhetoric is less heated now, but the differences remain.

“The problem has been that people who haven’t really faced the problems, they don’t realize how to tackle them,” Jalil said. “It’s like saying if they don’t have bread let them eat cake. Imran Khan doesn’t seem to have the organization and doesn’t have the people at present. He might be able to develop them, only time will tell.”

Western governments might also be wondering what they could expect if Khan and the PTI make it in to power, particularly when it comes to cooperating on counter-terrorism. They might look to his comments following a press conference last Saturday.

“If Western countries and the U.S. are looking for a friend, Pakistan will be friends,” Khan said. “But if they are looking for a hired gun as it has been today, or a government that is pliant, a puppet, I’m afraid Pakistan won’t be that.”

In Pakistan, there has been a growing trend of using the Latin script to write Urdu, the national language of the country, instead of the official Urdu script.

This trend is still fairly limited, but it has left some Urdu purists concerned about what will happen if the trend continues.

While it may sound harmless enough, it’s creating some unintended side effects. Because the first generations of mobile phones couldn’t send text messages using Pakistan’s Urdu script, Pakistanis improvised and started transliterating Urdu phrases into the Latin alphabet. Even though Urdu-capable phones are more common now, many people have become used to using the Latin script.

Shaista Parween, who teaches math and computer studies, said texting-mad students are just as comfortable writing Urdu in Latin as they are using the regular Urdu script. In fact, she said they sometimes even do their schoolwork using the Latin alphabet to write Urdu.

“I’m facing this a lot in my classes,” Parween said. “Latin Urdu is being used so much, what can we do? We can’t say it’s wrong if they are trying. It’s used so much in the media and television, that’s why.”

Not the First Time

Officially, and overwhelmingly, Urdu is written in a variation of the Arabic script. But while the use of Latin letters for Urdu has reached unprecedented levels, it isn’t the first time it’s been done.

European missionaries and administrators transliterated Urdu into the Latin script back in the 18th century. And in the 1950s, military ruler Ayub Khan proposed officially writing Urdu in Latin letters, just as Ataturk had done for Turkish decades earlier. But religious leaders thought the Arabic script to be an important marker of Pakistan’s Islamic identity, so Ayub abandoned the idea.

Oddly enough, tech-savvy kids are inadvertently doing today what a military dictator couldn’t achieve 40-years ago.

And many Pakistanis aren’t happy about that.

“Trying to write a language in another script is like trying to drop off your skin and trying to have a new one,” said Rauf Parekh, an assistant professor at the University of Karachi’s Urdu Department. He’s concerned about the impact this will make on society if people stop learning the Urdu script.

“They will be cut off from their culture, from their tradition, their history, their classical literature. How are they going to enjoy if they cannot read it in the original. So it’s a kind of deprivation on cultural and educational side. They won’t feel it perhaps now, but maybe hundred years from now they will realize what a great loss they have incurred,” he said.

But while professor Parekh bemoans the loss of traditional Pakistani culture, a new kind of “text messaging culture” is emerging.

Pakistanis use text messages for just about anything, but especially for passing on political jokes, poetry, quotes and for flirting.

Urdu Alphabet with Devanagari and Latin transliterations. (Photo: Goldsztajn/Wikipedia)

One book is titled “Cool SMS”, another “Love & Love SMS”. Their notable feature is that each joke or poem in the booklet has both the Urdu script and the Latin transliteration.

“It’s been about 10 years that these books have been published now,” Shop owner Basharat explained. “There was a lot of demand for them initially. This is because the majority of our population is not educated, so Latin Urdu books were made so that every person can read the books and send SMSs. It made it so much easier.”

Nowadays, Basharat said, the SMS booklets don’t sell as much, in part because cell phone companies have caught on. And are sending out the Latin-Urdu text messages themselves.