Quote by Laurent Gayer

““This fragmentation of public authority went even further in Pakistan than in India. In Pakistan, state power never permeated society as deep and far as in India, as the dissemination of highly technological forms of violence within society and the inability of state authorities to enforce a national system of taxation exemplify—two developments that have no parallel in neighbouring India. The evolutions of Karachi’s society over the past four decades bear testimony to this. The proliferation and ever-increasing power of these non-state sovereigns, claiming for themselves the right to discipline and punish but also to protect, tax and represent local populations, has turned the city into a ‘zone of unsettled sovereignties and loyalties’,122 where the access to arms has become the privileged if not the sole venue towards power and wealth.””

— Laurent Gayer