Favelização e Política

Todo partido totalitário ou populista se beneficia, assim como estimula, a favelização dos grandes centros urbanos. Além da formação de currais eleitorais, outros benefícios incluem o tráfico de drogas, importante fonte de financiamento dos partidos. A principal consequência dessa política é a violência. Exemplos no Brasil abundam, como o caso dos brizolistas nos morros do Rio, ou dos rorizistas nas cidades satélites no Distrito Federal. O Pakistão não poderia ser diferente e Karachi, sua maior cidade, sofre com a “urbanização” desenfreada:
Karachi is Pakistan's largest city and its financial capital, providing the majority of the country's tax revenue and nearly a quarter of its GDP. It is a miniature Pakistan: every major regional ethnic group in the country is represented in substantial numbers. The city's politics are dominated by the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), a notionally secular party claiming to represent the largest "ethnic" group -- the Muhajirs, Urdu-speaking descendants of the refugees who left India during partition in 1947.
But the MQM is in relative decline: although Muhajirs make up almost 50 percent of Karachi's population, the party has no provincial population to draw from and is facing a steady influx of Pashtun workers, whose numbers have grown since 2002, when the fight against insurgents in the country's northwest first gained momentum and pushed millions of people south. The city's other major political parties have adopted the MQM model, propagating narratives of perceived inequality along ethnic lines. The Awami National Party (ANP), which claims to represent Karachi's estimated five million Pashtuns, is attempting to carve out an increasing share of power. It is allied with the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), a Sindh-based party that rules at both the national and provincial levels but is a minor power in Karachi, where it effectively represents Sindhis and Balochis.
The MQM's unwillingness to accommodate a growing population of Pashtuns is at the root of what is beginning to be described as a "civil war" inside Karachi. In 2010, nearly 1,400 people -- almost as many as were killed in suicide bombings and terrorist attacks over the same period -- died in "target killings" of party workers and members of one or another ethnic group.