Uzair Baloch started as a young comrade of Rehman Baloch – an infamous gangster of Lyari closely affiliated with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) who was later killed by the late police officer Chaudhry Aslam under mysterious circumstances. Uzair Baloch’s father Faiz Muhammad was an Iranian Baloch and a transporter. He was brutally killed by the rival Haji Lalu gang. When he was in power, it is said, Uzair Baloch took revenge by chopping off the heads of Haji Lalu’s children and playing football with them. “It is karma – what goes around comes around,” Uzair Baloch had told me.
In Lyari – Karachi’s most crime infested town, Uzair Baloch gave all the anti-Pakistan Baloch nationalists to intelligence agencies, in exchange for them ignoring his crimes, it is said. In 2008, Uzair formed the People’s Amn Committee, with the approval of the PPP, to take on the MQM. PPP hawks wanted to end MQM’s ‘fear factor’. The idea backfired. Amidst political reconciliation with the MQM, the party tried to distance itself from the group, which was renamed Lyari Aman Committee.
"I fear that I will be killed because I know too much"
The recent military operation in Karachi, overseen by the federal PML-N government and led by Pakistan Rangers – broke the back of militants wings of political parties. Having turned against the PPP, Uzair Baloch fled to Oman with a fake Iranian identity. His gang in Lyari was wiped out both by the Rangers and his former ally Baba Ladla.
In Dubai, a team of FIA and Sindh Police is working with Interpol to fight a half-hearted battle to bring Uzair Baloch back to Pakistan. They know what they do will have political repercussions. In a series of court appearances, they have failed to provide substantial evidence that Uzair Baloch is a criminal in Pakistan. “There is pressure on us. No one wants Uzair Baloch back in Pakistan, except the federal government,” said one Pakistani law enforcement official in Dubai. “I am not criminal and I am living peacefully here in Dubai. All charges against me are baseless and politically motivated,” Uzair Baloch says. “Why didn’t they arrest me when I conducted all those political functions for the PPP? I am prepared to come to Pakistan but I fear that I will be killed like Rehman Baloch because I know too much.”
In Karachi, Zulfiqar Mirza – seen as a friend of Uzair Baloch – is very angry. “My parting ways with the PPP has nothing to do with Uzair Baloch and everything to do with the policies of the current leadership of the party,” Mirza says. A senior PPP leader disagrees. “Zulfiqar Mirza’s biggest resentment with the PPP is about Uzair Baloch,” he says. “But we have no tolerance for criminalization of politics.”
“I know things that could send major political leaders to jail, because they used me to do their dirty work,” Uzair Baloch says. While Lyari is relatively peaceful since the new developments, the PPP may lose an important constituency. “We feel cheated,” says Abu Bakr, a resident of the neighborhood who had worked for the PPP during the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto era. “They have used us and abandoned us.”