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Editorial overview The
political angle 100
casualties in 4 days Clash
of interests Change
of power
Editorial We hit a new low each time violence hits Karachi. And then over again to a new phase of normalcy that may last a few weeks if not months. For people living elsewhere in the country, violence in Karachi has become as normal as loadshedding and military rule over this country; it is accepted as a recurrent phenomenon, each time bloodier than before, and to which they see no solution possible. People living in the city and those at the helm cannot afford to ignore it or stay indifferent like some outsiders may. This should not, nay can not, go on, they feel. In the current phase that began with an attack on a Pashtun leader and claimed hundreds of lives, of mostly innocent citizens, the grey areas of the last few years have become darker, identifiable. The mysterious target killers and gang warriors now have a face -- which can be recognized among this party or that. Karachi today is divided along ethnic lines and so is its politics. A contradiction in terms since, ideally, politics must neutralise all considerations of creed, caste, ethnicity etc. Here, on the other hand, the Pakhtuns vote for the JUI and the ANP, the Sindhis and the Baloch vote for the PPP, the middle class Punjabis vote for the Muslim League and the Urdu speakers for the MQM. The war to grab as much of Karachi as they can thus continues. The current spate of violence is all about ethnicity and politics. The solutions that have been sought in the case of Karachi in the last few years are self-defeating, to say the least. One political party is armed, the rest must follow suit. One party backs criminal gangs, so must others, and so on. In most cases, an overwhelming majority of the city’s population stays unaffected; the killings continue in one or at the most two districts. But unlike the killing spree last week, Thursday saw the entire city closed down. Now that kind of a breakdown needs a political solution. And politics it is that breeds the problem. Here lies the irony that is Karachi.
The current wave of violence is likely to expand. It’s hard to expect any good from the present lot of politicians or the so-called stakeholders By Zulfiqar Shah Karachi was completely shut on Thursday last, this time in reaction to Zulfiqar Mirza’s statement the night before, at the residence of ANP leader Shahi Sayed, in which the former Home Minister asked the people of Karachi and Hyderabad to stand up and “get rid of MQM”. He also termed MQM-Haqiqi chief Afaq Ahmed as the true leader of the Urdu-Speaking population (as against Altaf Hussain). The MQM immediately came
out with a strong reaction in which it called for a day of protest -- on
Thursday. Soon The reign of terror compelled universities to cancel their scheduled annual examinations that were due on the day next, besides forcing business community and transporters to close shop. The city wore a deserted look on Thursday. Many people who were oblivious of the goings-on stepped out of their homes to go to offices and factories but found no vehicles on the roads. It was the second time in the last whole week that the city of 16 million people came to a complete halt, thanks to the MQM’s call. Earlier, Karachi was closed on July 8, following MQM’s call for a day of mourning. The unrest in the city actually began with MQM’s decision to quit the coalition government with PPP early this month which was followed by a fresh wave of target killings in the city, massacring over 100 innocent people. The victims belonged to all age and ethnic groups who inhabit the city, chiefly Pashtuns and Urdu speaking. The violence continued for four days without any effective intervention by law enforcement agencies, now a usual feature in the city. At last, the interior minister arrived, held meetings and announced a targeted crackdown. The calm returned to city on Sunday last and life began to come back to normalcy. Though what happened on Thursday was quite ‘expected’, nobody knew it would last long. Those who thought the political parties would finally show some maturity and resolve their petty issues for the sake of the city were proved wrong. On Wednesday, the day before this new wave of violence erupted, I along with two friends from a civil society group visited at least three major political parties in Karachi, pleading them to come together on the table and find a solution to the city violence. The PPP Secretary General Sindh gave us a long lecture and declared PPP as innocent in the entire episode of violence. His contention was that the state could fight terrorists on the main roads but not catch those who hit back from the quiet corners of narrow streets in the city. It was also suggested that the ‘major party’ of Sindh had no strategic solution in mind to address the Karachi issue and would rather fire shots using other’s shoulder. We were told that lies, betrayals, making alliances and unmaking them etc had become a permanent part of Pakistani politics. The city-level leadership of Jamaat-e-Islami told us in clear terms that they would not sit together with the MQM as they saw it as the major part of the problem. They would rather join hands with those who work for peace without MQM. At Nine Zero, the strategic headquarters of MQM and the residence of their leader Altaf Hussain, two senior members of MQM’s Rabita Committee, though operating under tight security, seemed completely unaware of what happened the next day. They told us how their voters were being targeted and killed in parts of Orangi and attacked from the now-infamous Katti Pahari area which is mostly dominated by Pushtuns. They also pleaded innocence and expressed their longing for peace. We were told that disturbing Karachi’s peace didn’t suit them as after all it’s their voter that would be suffering. We could not have access to the ANP leadership as the party’s provincial president was out of city, so we decided to meet them the next day. But, the next day, like the rest of Karachiites, we couldn’t move out because of total shutdown. But we knew their answers, too. They would have told us that their opponents were terrorists and that Pashtuns were being killed in Karachi. On Thursday morning, I took a walk in a deserted street of Gulshan–e- Maymar, in suburban Karachi, about 25 kilometres away from the main city, looking for milk to feed my two-year-old child. I asked a labourer in a nearby textile factory as to who, in his mind, was responsible for Karachi’s situation. His reply was simple: “All parties are involved. We have no expectations from anyone.” Just a few steps away, I came across two young people discussing how Zulfiqar Mirza’s irresponsible statement had triggered the incidents of violence. One of them even said it was PPP’s policy and that “Mirza is just a tool”. In Gabol Goth, across the Maymar, a middle-aged man told me that the MQM would not want peace for the city because they had opted out of the coalition government. Incidentally, the current wave of violence is likely to expand and prolong. So one can only hope and pray for the best, though it’s hard to expect that from the present lot of politicians -- or, the so-called stakeholders. Conspiracy
and violence seem to have taken precedence over politics in Karachi It is almost a cliché to say that bloodshed in Karachi is for political turf and control over the resources of the mega city. Karachi is a golden sparrow, and all political actors are after it. The ethnic strife in the city is between Mohajirs and Pakhtuns while the political competition currently involves Sindhis and Mohajirs. In this way, Mohajirs (MQM) are a party to both ethnic and political conflicts -- arrayed against the Sindhi-Pakhtun (PPP-ANP) alliance for the time being. Mohajirs, Pakhtuns and
Sindhis are the three major ethnic players in Karachi politics, while the
Muttahida Qaumi In 2008, the PPP, being the largest representative party of the Sindhi population, formed the provincial government in Sindh, but its ambitions regarding Karachi were limited due to its coalition with the MQM. Until December 2010, the MQM ruled the city with its mayor Mustafa Kamal, running the Karachi city district government with vast powers under the devolved local government system of 2002. In addition to the glory of power, the government in Karachi means income in graft worth billions of rupees a year. Money also flows to the city administrators through illegal occupation of real estate property, cuts in development contracts, share in smuggling into and out of the city, contract for thousands of water-supplying tankers, underground world of gambling dens, extortion mafias and markets of drugs, prostitutes, human trafficking and arms. The PPP is a relatively smaller player in the city compared to the MQM and the ANP as the Sindhi-speaking population is in the minority in the city. Lyari and Malir have been traditional PPP strongholds in the city. The localities of Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Gulistan-e-Johar, too, have a significant share in the Sindhi population, but that does not translate into electoral gains owing to the mixed demography of these areas. However, by virtue of being the largest party in the Sindh province, the PPP leaders want to have a larger share of the booty from the city as well -- an ambition that was hard to be realised in the presence of the aggressive MQM in the coalition government. The MQM was also a hurdle in the way of the PPP in doling out the provincial largesse to the PPP men in the form of government jobs and the allocation of development funds. Yet, keeping the MQM in its fold was a compulsion to save the PPP coalition government in Islamabad. The recent PPP’s alliance with the PML-Q at the Centre paved the way for the party to afford a cold shoulder to the MQM. The PPP has been planning
for some time to confront the overbearing MQM and cultivated MQM’s diehard Meanwhile, soon after the MQM parted ways with the PPP, the administration seemed to have allowed a free hand to the attackers on the Mohajirs of Qasba Colony, who spilled their blood at will for four long days. The blood line between the Pakhtuns and the Mohajirs was etched deeper. While the Mohajirs and the Pakhtuns were busy slugging it out on the streets of Karachi, the PPP struck with a set of legal and administrative changes it was aspiring for in the last three years -- the restoration of the old local body system of 1979, district magistracy and the 1861 Police Act, the division of Karachi into five districts and the unification of the old Hyderabad district by merging three new districts with it. The division of Karachi suits PPP’s interests as it would dilute the MQM’s stranglehold over the city government and would allow other ethnic groups to have a bigger say in the five separate districts and municipal government under the new local body system. Similarly, uniting the Sindhi-dominated districts of Matiari, Tando Allah Yar, Tando Muhammad Khan with Hyderabad district would loosen MQM’s grip over Hyderabad because its urban areas are dominated by the Mohajir population and rural parts by Sindhis. President Asif Zardari has
tried to protect his hardcore Sindhi support by reversing the administrative
changes Through the recent administrative changes, the PPP has achieved what it wanted to by pleasing its Sindhi-speaking constituency, but at the cost of peace in Karachi. It has denied any possible concession to the MQM, showing an inflexibility that could hardly lead towards a political settlement of disputes between the Mohajirs and the Sindhis. On the other hand, the MQM has been quite rigid in its dealings with the ANP (Pakhtuns), and considers Karachi its sole territory. Both the MQM and the ANP have resorted to violent means to achieve their goals. The PPP has control over the state institutions, but a limited gun power which is restricted to Lyari area. Since its formation in the mid 1980s, soon after the Sindhi agitation against the Gen Zia ul Haq regime, the MQM has been criticised for adopting violent tactics to subdue its opponents. In 1992 and 1996, two major operations were launched against the MQM forcing its workers to go underground. However, the fact remains that the party won a majority of Mohajir seats in every free and fair election. Despite all the MQM’s shortcomings, the Mohajir community has reposed its trust in the party and rejected alternatives like the Haqiqi (once patronized by the military establishment during the days of Gen Asif Nawaz) or the Jamaat-e-Islami. For the past 26 years, the MQM is the largest representative party of the Mohajir population in Sindh and no administrative action or behind-the-door conspiracy to split it into factions could deprive it of this status. It’s hard to imagine that the PPP in collusion with the ANP and the Sunni Tehreek could undermine the MQM’s position. Similarly, the MQM alone can no longer win its political battle for the rights of urban areas of Sindh without accommodating the demands of the 3 million strong Pakhtuns. So far as the urban Sindh’s interests are concerned, the MQM and the ANP could be natural allies if they shun the violence and act politically. For the time being, conspiracy and violence seem to have taken precedence over politics in Sindh.
There was no control or writ of the state in the city during those 4-5 days and the terrorists struck their rivals at places of their own choice without fear of law or state By Saleem Waqar It was a bright sunny
morning in Karachi when the activists of Awami National Party (ANP) and
Pakhtoon Students The sudden increase in the strength of the ANP and PSF workers at the Urdu University campus created tension among All Pakistan Muttahida Students Federation and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) workers, who thought their rivals -- ANP and PSF activists -- had planned to attack them. It led to a clash between activists of both the groups at Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology (FUUAST), Gulshan-e-Iqbal. Within minutes, the clash engulfed the surrounding areas and a heavy gun battle ensued near Mikasa Apartments, close to Essa Nagri, where both the groups attacked each other with automatic and semi-automatic weapons. It is worth mentioning here that Mikasa Apartments is a multi-storey residential building where a large number of activists of PSF are living and are students of different varsities and colleges of Karachi. Some passersby were injured in the crossfire near Mikasa Apartments due to the clash between rival groups when some armed terrorists attacked Rahim Khan Swati, District West Information Secretary of ANP, in Qasba Colony, who was seriously injured and admitted to hospital. This attack on a senior
ANP leader and the ensuing rumour that he had got killed, resulted in an
armed gun battle Qasba Colony and Katti Pahari (a hill that has been cut to connect the neighbourhoods of North Nazimabad and Orangi Town) became the epicentre of violence where armed terrorists from both sides entrenched themselves and used all kinds of small-to-medium weapons including Kalashnikovs to RPGs and hand grenades to attack each other. Petrol bombs and other stuff to torch homes and residences of rival ethnic groups were used while empty houses of people who had managed to flee in order to avoid getting hurt were also ransacked and looted by breaking into their places. In some cases, holes were bored into the walls of residential compounds and, later, set on fire. But the violence was not
confined to Qasba Colony or Katti Pahari as within hours it spread to other
areas of Orangi Town including Kali Pahari, Banaras, Muslim Colony and
Bukhari Colony. And, thus began a series of ugly incidents of firing on public transport buses that claimed lives of dozens of people who had nothing to do with the ongoing violence or any political party as they were common people, labourers, factory and office workers, drivers and conductors, who were killed indiscriminately by the terrorists. The first such incident
was the hijacking of a minibus from Rashid Minhas Road by armed terrorists
who were riding The incident triggered a spate of violence and, in days to follow, several buses were attacked by armed terrorists in Qasba Colony, North Nazimabad and adjoining areas, killings over two dozen innocent people and, ironically, without any discrimination of cast, race and religion, as some of them were even Hindus who had nothing to do with any of the rival ethnic groups. The areas of Orangi Town
including Qasba Colony remained a battleground for five days -- from
Tuesday, July 5 to Saturday, July 9, 2011 -- and all activity in market
shops and petrol pumps etc came to a halt not only in these areas but in
most of the city. People in troubled areas were confined indoors without
electricity, water and food for The most ironic was the
role of the police, Rangers and other law enforcing agencies, which remained
unconcerned and didn’t even try to intervene to assist the people who were
caught in the crossfire. There was no control or writ of the state in the
city during those 4-5 days and the terrorists struck their rivals at places
of their own choice without fear of law or state. It was due to immense pressure from the media, especially the electronic media that was showing live footage of armed terrorists entrenched in different areas of the city, that the federal and provincial governments were compelled to take some action. But, by then, over 100 people, including 51 Pashtuns and 25 Urdu-speaking had lost their lives, while several hundreds landed at local hospitals. Eventually, Sindh Rangers, that had been under fire from the citizens and the rights group for the extra judicial killing of a youth in Karachi, took over the situation. They pulled out the trapped people from Qasba Colony and began to take control of Katti Pahari and adjoining areas where pickets of police and Rangers had been occupied by the armed terrorists that they were using to attack their rivals and innocent people from high grounds. This phase of violence subsided on Saturday, July 10, to a large extent but after claiming the lives of over 100 people and filling the hospitals of Karachi with injured, whose wounds would heal with the passage of time but the scars and memories of ugly incidents of lawlessness and violence will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.
The unilateral revival of the old police and local bodies systems in Sindh is sure to reignite ethnic tensions For the political parties, the idea of democracy is limited to elections of national and provincial assemblies. Once a political party comes into power, the boss of the political party in power starts running the government in an authoritative manner even without consulting the parliament as can be seen in the hastily passed constitutional amendments through parliament, what to speak of consultation with the civil society. The same mindset and attitude seem to be at work in the recent administrative changes brought into Sindh province where the PPP government unilaterally restored the 1979 Local Bodies System and the 1861 Police Act, repealing the 2001 local government system and the Police Order, 2002. These changes have been made to the utter disregard of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) that represents the majority in urban Sindh. The political parties, especially those dominated by big landlords, have always been averse to a local bodies system as the third tier of the constitutional government with all necessary administrative and financial powers because the local bodies expend the participation of the people in the political system. During the early 1960s, the Basic Democracy (BD) system introduced by Gen Ayub Khan had, for the first time, provided an opportunity to the middle farmers in rural areas and the middle class people in cities to take part in politics because this system had a relatively smaller size of the electoral units compared to large electoral districts in the provincial and national assembly elections. Similarly, the 2001 local government plan involved a large number of people in self-government. Under the system, 13 provincial departments were devolved to the district level. When the political parties had opposed the system, one main argument was that without transferring powers from the centre to the provinces, the devolution to the districts would undermine provincial powers. Following the 18th Amendment, this excuse no more holds the ground as it has rested substantial powers with the provincial governments. Under the revived 1979 local body system, the elected municipal bodies in the urban areas of Sindh will have much-reduced powers than the 2001 system -- transferring powers from the representatives of the cities to the feudal lords representing rural areas. Since 2011, the greater powers to municipal governments of urban areas like Karachi had decreased the ethnic tension between the Mohajirs and the Sindhis. In the provincial assembly, the Mohajirs of Karachi and Hyderabad cannot beat parties representing the Sindhis because they (Sindhis) are in majority in the province. By assuming power in the city governments, urban communities had some sort of consolation insofar as sharing of power is concerned, though complaints of arm-twisting by the provincial governments were also there to a lesser extent. Similar is the case of the revival of the Police Act, 1861 in place of the Police Order, 2002. For long, there has been a debate about the 1861 Act being a colonial law that was framed by the British rulers to suppress the local population after the 1857 uprising. This system was different from the police commissionerate system enforced in the British residencies in Madras, Calcutta and Bombay. In major cities of India, still the police-commissioner system is in force. A major criticism on the 1861 act has been that it was modelled on the pattern of the Irish Constabulary and was not service-oriented unlike the police system in Britain. When the 1861 police order was enforced, there was no independent judiciary or democracy or the concepts of human rights. The police’s excessive reliance on violence was acceptable to the rulers. After Independence, the Pakistani rulers used this colonial police law to suppress the masses. During the rule of civilian governments, politicians further distorted this system through their massive interference in police administration as the feudal lords-um-politicians aspire to have monopoly over state power by making recruitments to police on political basis ignoring merit and posting and transferring police officials on key positions to serve their own political interests rather than look after public safety. When the 1861 police system was replaced with a new law in 2002, the framers of the the new law had the Japanese police model in their mind with the underlying principle that the police should be democratically controlled but politically neutral. The original version of the order had some positive features, such as public oversight bodies in the form of Public Safety Commissions and Police complaint Cells. The original Act had also envisaged a certain degree of police service’s autonomy vis-à-vis the provincial political bosses. In the original law, it was stipulated that the chief of a police force in a city or district would serve there for a fixed tenure, but this provision was violated from day one. The provincial governments made drastic changes in the 2002 Police Order in 2004 and 2007. The politicians, especially belonging to the PML-Q, did not allow the formation of Public Safety Commissions as they perceived them to be in clash with their narrow political interests. The officers of the District Management Group (DMG), with delusions of superiority, were also strongly opposed to the Police Order 2002 because it had curtailed their powers over the police. They used to find faults with the new order and shower praise at the older system as if the older system were epitome of all virtues and everything was hunky dory under it. Now the super-bureaucrats, with politicians in tow, have struck back with vengeance in Sindh and have revived the old district and sub-divisional magistrates. The process would be complete when the relevant clauses of the Pakistan Penal Code would be amended. The revival of the executive magistracy also runs contrary to the separation of executive and judicial powers as envisioned in the 1973 Constitution. The unilateral revival of the old police and local bodies systems in Sindh is sure to reignite ethnic tensions between Sindhis and Mohajirs as the repealed systems and laws had lessened this friction by accommodating the interests of the urban communities. It seems the rural gentry of Sindh have not learnt any lesson from the repeated military interventions. -- Adnan Adil What does the attempt to centralise the system of government really entail? By Saad Hasan In the run-up to the local government elections of 2005, Shabbir Ali had the chance of meeting local leaders of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) who visited different localities to woo voters. The road outside his
apartment building in Gulshan-e-Iqbal was submerged in water for days.
People gathered at Others gathered there started to voice their demands too. “Soon MQM leaders were jotting down our concerns in notebooks and making phone calls... I guess it was easy for us to communicate with local politicians who we knew,” he said. In any case, road was rebuilt in a matter of days. The hallmark of the three-tier local government system introduced by President Pervez Musharraf in 2001 was election of union councilors at the grassroot level. Supervision of matters related to civic life was devolved from provinces to cities, towns and further to the union councils. Various departments including education, health, works and services were handed over to the local governments. The bureaucracy started reporting to the elected representatives and each town had its own funds to spend at will. The recent move of the Sindh government to strip the local government from its financial autonomy has caused much uneasiness in Karachi -- where MQM has used the system to its advantage. The Sindh Local Government Ordinance 2001 has been repealed. Senior bureaucrats have been appointed in place of town nazims and the city redistributed into five districts. Imtiaz Shaikh, the civil servant-turned politician, says that the system of local government is still in place. “Elections will be held for the councilors who will come from among the people. The only difference is that now commissioners will take decisions on matters of revenue and expenditure.” Karachi underwent unprecedented development in the past decade as development budget was directly transferred to the districts and towns. Bridges, public parks, a better water and sewage system have all become visible. But Shaikh insists the districts don’t have the capacity to handle the workload. “Transfer of functions of 17 departments was too much. The schools and health facilities run by the towns are in tatters. The powers have been used to recruit political favourites.” In parts of Sindh, some town nazims were illiterate and mistreated their subordinates. “This affected the working of different departments as political interference was too much,” he reiterated. The tribal culture in Sindh and problem of ethnicity, which divides Karachi, has been another problem. Shaikh cited the problem was Sheikupura where the Jatoi and Mehar tribes have been at loggerheads since ages. “If you have a nazim elected from one tribe, the other is victimised,” he said, adding, “Just like that, a Pashtoon will never go to MQM’s elected representative with the water problem prevailing in his neighborhood.” The reappointment of sub-divisional magistrates (SDMs) is also part of the change. In the last local government system, officials miserably failed to check price hike, encroachments and other small disputes. Shaikh said that the judicial magistrates working under the local government are from the judiciary. “SDMs know ground realities. They actually go out, inspect and take action.” There is another sore point in the whole change: The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government has decided to demarcate Karachi into 1000 wards instead of towns. The modalities of the demarcation are yet to be decided but it has made the MQM uneasy. Former Karachi nazim and a MQM leader Mustafa Kamal said that the attempt to centralise the system of government makes “no sense -- for more than 50 years we had the commissionerate system. What did it do for us?” The commissionerate system is the remnant of British rule when civil servants were used to suppress the locals, he said. “All these claims about the change being good for the citizens are rubbish. People want the power to choose who serves them.” Most importantly, he said, the towns were financially independent. “Once the budget was approved and money was transferred, town administration used it as per its own needs. There was no interference from the city government.” Union councilors also say that Sindh government has demolished a system, which took years to be built. Thousands have been hired by city governments for different functions. The impending layoffs will create more problems. PPP Karachi leader Taj Haider says the Sindh Local Government Ordinance was in conflict with the constitution since the city mayor was indirectly elected. “The first issue that comes up is the fact that financial matters are handed over to a person who is not elected by the people. Then the provincial autonomy also gets undermined,” he said. Since the district octroi tax was abolished, the district governments directly release funds from the federal government, he said, which means loss of revenue for the Sindh government. He explained there has been no audit of the way funds have been used by the local governments -- “All these projects for roads and bridges were awarded to favourite contractors. Can you recall seeing any tender advertisement for all the projects?”
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after Mirza’s statement, live on many private channels late at night,
miscreants took over the streets of Karachi, setting vehicles ablaze and
resorting to aerial firing and target killing, resulting in the death of
over a dozen innocent civilians.
Movement (MQM-Altaf), the MQM-Haqiqi, the Awami National Party (ANP), the
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Sunni Tehreek
are the main political actors active in the field. The smaller groups of
Sindhi nationalists and a few sectarian groups are in addition to them.
opponents -- the Haqiqi, led by Afaq Ahmed, and Sunni Tehreek, led by Sarwat
Qadri. PPP’s Zulfiqar Mirza has publicly confessed to his meetings with
Afaq Ahmed in the prison house.
made by the Pervez Musharraf regime, which were in the interest of the
Mohajirs and the MQM. The vitriolic remarks of Zulfiqar Mirza against the
Mohajir community have served to add insult to injury.
Federation (PSF) started gathering at the Federal Urdu University,
Gulshan-e-Iqbal campus, located on main University road. They had planned a
protest demonstration against the police officials for their highhandedness
towards their colleagues and party workers.
in the Qasba Colony and adjoining areas of Orangi Town for at least four
days that resulted in the loss of over 100 lives, mostly unaffiliated
Pashtun and Urdu-speaking people who had nothing to do with either MQM or
ANP but were attacked for their respective ethnic origins.
motorcycles and ambushed the mini bus in an uninhabited part of
Gulshan-e-Iqbal, killing five persons -- four Pakhtuns and a Baloch.
the
length of these days and nobody came to their help.
the meeting were scared. But, “one old man was very vocal and he insisted
that votes will come only if demands of the area people are met,” recalled
Ali.