Karachi Buries Its Refugees in Dust, Not Silence
As Afghan Basti disappears under bulldozers, Muslims watch Muslims lose their homes — and the state stays quiet.
Karachi doesn’t cry anymore.
Its pain is too routine now — too familiar to hurt.
Bulldozers arrive at dawn, dust rises like prayer smoke, and another colony of broken people disappears from the map.
This time, it is Afghan Basti.
“People sitting on the roofs, move forward quickly… hurry up,” a loudspeaker echoes through the smoky air.
It is not a festival call. It is an order — the final evacuation of a forgotten community.
Once, Afghan Basti was alive with the smell of tandoors, the rhythm of Dari songs, and the laughter of barefoot children.
Now, silence and fear sit in its streets.
The Afghan settlement is finished. Gone.
After today, no Afghan will be found here under the name Afghan Basti.
Only a few homes remain — fragile boxes of memory.
Inside one of them, an old man says, “We have only a few days left. But our hearts will remain in every corner of this home. We will take our memories back to our country.”
He looks around and adds softly, “Even now, we are asking the government for a little more time.”
The Fear in the Night
“Our water is cut. Electricity is cut. The tandoor where we bake bread has been shut down,” says a woman, her voice breaking.
“These Sindhi men come at night, jump over the walls, break doors, and force their way inside. They write on our walls — ‘This is ours.’
They even whitewash and mark their names.
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I told them, ‘We are still alive! How can you take our home?’
But they said they will bulldoze it anyway.
If they kill us, bury us — our souls will never rest.”
Who Are the Real Land Grabbers?
When the Afghan refugees left, poor Sindhi laborers — displaced themselves — began to occupy the vacant houses.
The Sindh Police call them land grabbers.
But if you look closely, they are not mafia.
They are men with blistered hands, women with cracked lips, and children who sleep hungry.
And yet — they are Muslims.
The Afghans who are leaving — they are Muslims too.
Still, Pakistan’s Punjabi-dominated establishment remains silent, as if faith ends at provincial borders.
Shouldn’t someone remind them that Islam forbids injustice, even against a fellow believer?
Where is that Muslim brotherhood we praise in sermons and write into constitutions?
The Government Speaks
A government officer explains with bureaucratic calm:
“When Afghan refugees vacated their homes, people illegally occupied those plots and marked them as their own.
After orders from the Karachi Commissioner, DC West, and Director of Anti-Encroachment, we launched an operation at 6:00 a.m.
We faced resistance. Around 250 houses have been demolished so far.
Those arrested attacked the police with sticks and stones.
In four to five days, we’ll hand the cleared land to the Malir Development Authority — part of the Taiser Town scheme.”
A Prayer in the Dust
As the bulldozers roll away, an old Afghan man kneels in the dust.
He kisses the ground one last time.
“This soil has known our tears,” he says quietly. “But no one saw us as Muslims — only as Afghans.”
And that, perhaps, is Pakistan’s deepest wound:
that Muslims keep forgetting Muslims.
Every time a refugee leaves, silence fills his place — and someone else’s misery begins.
