Soccer holds the key, the only key, to Lyari's peace and prosperity. It was so in the past when there was an East and a West Pakistan and it has been proved again by fifteen-year-old Munir Aftab, captain of the triumphant Pakistan Under-16 football team, which won the inaugural South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Under-16 Football Championship title in Nepal.
He is a Lyari lad whose story illustrates how the down trodden, browbeaten, politically and criminally exploited people of this beleaguered sector of Karachi can be pulled out of the quagmire of crime and poverty. Lyari is the motherbed of soccer for the whole of South Asia. Lyari players were in demand in India and both wings of Pakistan until the 1971 war tore as under the sporting relationship along with one wing of our country to create Bangladesh. India's first prime minister Nehru was honoured to be photographed with Captain Umar a Lyari lad, while his daughter, prime minister Indira Ghandi who presided over the 1971 war, may not have even realised that the war would kill Lyari's prospects to prosper from football for ever and ever.
The reason for the decline in Lyari football prospects was that the great venues of football happened to be in Calcutta in India and Dhaka in newly-created Bangladesh. Neither India nor Bangladesh was likely to give Lyari lads a visa to come and play and earn a professional fee and to be showered by thousands of rupees by the fans because now Lyari was in enemy country, and the enmity had morphed into enmity in real terms. That ended the golden age for Lyari football and footballers.
The pride of Lyari soccer are now mere legends. World-class footballers like Abdul Ghafoor AKA Asian Pele, Hussain Killer, Captain Umar and Ali Nawaz Baloch. Other players were stars too, such as Qadir Bux Baloch. Which the disappearance of their source of wealth, some became taxi drivers, some port labourers but most of them who simply lost pride in themselves, become drug addicts and drug pushers because it generated big money like football use to. Others who had hoped to become football stars sank even deeper into evil ways by becoming gangsters, killers for hire, thugs and thieves. Thus the evils that swamp Lyari rose in direct proportion to the downturn in football as a profession.
The golden age of football is gone but the natural talent for the game and the passion for it live ever bright in every Lyariite's heart and home. And the Federation International Football Association (FIFA) desiring to relight the glory of South Asian Football looks to Lyari with eyes of hope. If only our city fathers and politicians realised the tremendous economic potential of Lyari football. Alas they do not. They think there is more to be had from encouraging and financing gangsterism of Lyari than from encouraging prosperity of the people at large.
Even CDGK's state-of-the-art 18,000 capacity stadium is more a vote-getting ploy then a help to revive world class football in Lyari. There are 150 registered football clubs in Lyari but they do not get financial help; these clubs exist by the will of the people alone.
Young Munir Aftab has an older brother, who would have been as a great player, but their mother had kidney failure and the brother donated one kidney to her. Now he works as an ordinary labourer. Munir's father is a rickshaw driver. Like many families in the area they try not to fall into the hands of gangsters and drug pushers and to earn an honest rupee. But they also know the family's prosperity will come from football. So Munir is their hope. Both elder sibling and his father have told Munir he must study, he must play and make a name. He has done that.
But it would still not have been. However, much the family wished it, their finances could not have supported Munir's sporting career. He was lucky to be picked up by KPT, which has always been a patron of football, and now gets a stipend of six thousand rupees per month which made it possible for him (and his family) to have a regular diet, even if it is just daal and roti, and free him from working at a job and to concentrate on the other thing important to progress, education. He is among the few Lyari lads to receive regular schooling.
Munir is not an exception; there are thousands of Munir's in Lyari with the same excellence in soccer. But they do not have his luck or his opportunity. A leading morning paper in its editorial mentioned an important point. In all games in which Pakistani youth show talent they soon fade away as they mature. Why does that happen? It happens because their days of playing are nipped in the bud. They must work to feed their families. What work they do depends on their exposure. Some will work as labourers, a few fortunate will drive a taxi or rickshaw but the majority will be sucked into the black hole of crime which defines Lyari today.