Sindh’s missing universe

Since Ashura, the mothers of Sindh have been sitting in at Babarloi Bypass through suffocating heat and humidity, with one demand: return our missing and abducted children. For a mother, a child is her entire universe — and for years these women have lived in psychological anguish searching for theirs. Fazila Sarki of Thul vanished nearly seventeen years ago; her father named the local Wadero he says orchestrated it, yet she was never recovered. Priya Kumari of Sangrar is entering her fifth year missing — committees formed, updates promised, and still nothing, as if the earth or sky simply swallowed her.

Sindh’s landlords and chieftains have built a parallel state, one that operates above the law. If not, why would fourteen children currently be missing, why would the soil be stained with young blood over trifles, why would mothers go blind from weeping and cemeteries keep expanding? Innocent young women are still declared Kari and honor-killed — denied even a ritual bath, shroud, or funeral prayer, sometimes dumped in rivers. The law exists on paper; hundreds of thousands of officials draw salaries and perks from public taxes to enforce it — yet ordinary people have no protection at any level. The papers are full of these stories daily. The law exists, but it is locked away in books. Are the hands meant to enforce it helpless, or simply indifferent?

Sukkur Civil Hospital — the teaching hospital for Ghulam Muhammad Mahar Medical College, and once a lifeline stretching from Balochistan’s Sibi, Nasirabad, and Bhag Nari to Kandhkot-Kashmore, Shikarpur, and Ghotki — has sunk to the level of Shikarpur’s Rai Bahadur Udhodas Hospital. Department heads sit in name only; real control rests with a handful of favorites who have run these institutions into the ground. Road accidents are a daily occurrence on the highways, and while the Orthopaedic Department stays busy, its facilities inspire only regret. With Nasir Shah and veteran politician Khurshid Shah both present, this hospital ought to be a model for Northern Sindh — instead it is anything but.

Law and order, and justice, are the pillars any civilized society rests on. Where they hold, life, property, and honor are protected, and social harmony follows. Where they fail, fear, distrust, and unrest take their place — and our own society is proof enough of that; little more needs saying.

An educated person lifts not just himself but his society; where ignorance and social ills grow instead, it is education that has failed first. Healthcare here tells the same story: women give birth in Qingqi rickshaws, medicine is scarce, and families buy even a disposable syringe out of pocket — though the budget for it exists. Doctors draw government salaries while absent, some working in Qatar or Saudi Arabia, others running private clinics. A friend recently told me PPHI, on taking over a government health unit, found a stockpile of medicines for heart disease, diabetes, and stomach ailments — worth a fortune, and only months from expiry. What tyranny is greater than this: medicine sitting unused while the needy go without? It is nothing short of an atrocity against the public.

Hunger, disease, unemployment, lawlessness, and ignorance have battered Sindh until its people’s capacity for critical thought is paralyzed. The state, along with conscious citizens, politicians, and the well-off, must turn to this crisis — urgently.