The Tony Soprano Of Karachi: Gangster Or Politician?

Gangsters have been part of life in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, for decades. And nowhere is their rule more notorious than in the slums of Lyari, a dusty warren of low-slung tenement houses in the south central part of Karachi.

And in Pakistan, they are a little different from the American variety. They are part Tony Soprano — with the attendant extortion schemes and kickbacks and armed enforcers — but they are also, in a sense, politicians closely aligned to the various political parties. So when the leading such figure in Lyari speaks, it is with both the vocabulary and the sensibility of a politician.

“The people here in Lyari support us,” says Uzair Baloch, 32. “It is the people outside who are trying to give me a bad reputation. They call me a gangster, but they have this wrong. I’m a politician. I’m a social worker.”