FOLLOWING the prime minister’s visit to Karachi last month, the general impression formed subsequently was that the ‘targeted operations’ initiated by the police and Rangers had begun to yield results. The number of daily killings in the city was down, while reports suggested that criminals and militants were being tracked down not only in the metropolis, but also in other cities of Sindh and beyond the provincial boundary. However, as the number of people killed — at least 13 — on Monday shows, the mission is far from accomplished. The same kind of killings that were occurring before the state swung into action are happening again. In fact, not a single illegal weapon is reported to have been turned in to the authorities despite a much-publicised media campaign warning the public to give up any illicit arms in its possession. As expected, the results since then have not been encouraging either. Although officials have made excuses for the deweaponisation drive’s lack of success (people have failed to hand over their guns because it was the weekend), we had commented earlier that violent elements were highly unlikely to surrender their weapons simply because of a media campaign.

As far as action against criminals and militants is concerned, there needs to be consistency on part of the state. After initially showing enthusiasm to pursue criminal elements, the drive and energy to get the job done by the Sindh administration is definitely missing. Such lethargy will fail to have any permanent impact on reducing Karachi’s bloodshed. Hence the state needs to keep its focus on pursuing criminals and not leave the job half done. Where deweaponisation is concerned, as pointed out earlier, good intelligence coupled with raids to recover illegal arms, as well as busting gunrunning rackets, is likely to produce better results.