Amid the hustle and bustle in the Sherhshah scrap market, what was unusual was the frequent Rangers and police patrol. Armed and alert, both forces were moving about in their jeeps.

Such activity was not the norm till a few years ago. The reason behind the heavy presence of law-enforcement agencies was obvious, though. At Rana Azeem’s shop I witnessed one of them.

“Look at this hole left by a bullet,” he said, showing me a metal sheet hanging along the ceiling fan. I couldn’t recognise what it was until he told me.

Also read: Shershah scrap dealers carry on work amid fears

“It’s the roof of a Suzuki Margalla,” he explained. “I bought it only three or four days before Oct 19. I left the shop open for just a few minutes to go see a friend waiting at the other side of the market. I returned to a bloodbath. One of the bullets hit that roof.”

Azeem is one of the witnesses to the 2010 carnage that occurred on the evening of Oct 19. Armed men carrying assault rifles walked into the streets of the Shershah scrap market. They were there for only 10 to 15 minutes but at least 13 people died and scores were injured.

Those “most horrifying few minutes of my life” still haunt Azeem and other traders at the Shershah scrap market. The fear is constant but kept at bay these days due to measures under the ongoing “targeted security operation”.

Blamed on one of the criminal gangs operating in the neighbouring Lyari, the attack was followed by days of violence on mainly ethnic grounds and brought relations between the then coalition partners in the provincial government — the PPP and the MQM — to the brink.

Five years later, things looked normal. Business appeared promising with traders and buyers busy in routine deals. However, interaction with the survivors and family members of those killed in the attack suggested all is not well. The traders were shy of talking to this reporter about the tragedy and those who did avoided sharing their names.

One of them was the elder brother of one of the victims who was shot twice from very close range on Oct 19; his father was hit by a bullet in the shoulder. He agreed to share his thoughts only after his colleague, Azeem, introduced us.

“The situation was not well even months before the attack,” he said. “There were regular extortion complaints and street crime was on the rise. There was no business as the buyers didn’t want to visit the market for security reasons. The attack finally destroyed everything: business, people’s confidence and years-long brotherhood between the traders and the residents of this old neighbourhood.”

He referred to a trader who abandoned his scrap store, sold out the shop and moved it to Liaquatabad after the attack. Many workers quit their jobs as well, he said. A few yards from his shop was the scrap store of Abdul Latif Sheikh, who lost his worker in the attack.

“He was like my son,” he said, voice choking with emotion and eyes brimming with tears. “He was too young. It was not an ethnicity issue, I believe. My boy was the resident of Lyari like many workers here. I have been here for the past 33 years and we never thought of each others’ ethnicity. It was just terrorism to spark ethnic violence.”

I couldn’t detect any confidence in the tone of the traders when they were asked about any positive change in the security environment. Their representative, Malik Zahid Dehalvi of the Anjuman Welfare Kabarian, summed it up well:

“You would have witnessed yourself that the situation has improved a lot during the past few months,” he said. “But it’s all due to the Rangers’ efforts and the operation against criminals. We want them [the Rangers] here permanently. We want them to establish their checkpoints here. If they leave, I fear we will be facing the same challenges, the same threats and the same risks.”

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2015

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