Giving succour to the scorned

Abdul Sattar Edhi is picking up the pieces from the country's security and economic crises by collecting the bodies of the dead and providing succour for the poor.

An orphan plays with the dupatta of an Edhi worker at the Edhi orphange in Karachi.

Click here for a slideshow of images from The Edhi Foundation.

KARACHI // Pakistan's most prominent humanitarian worker is picking up the pieces from the country's security and economic crises by collecting the bodies of the dead and also providing succour for the poor. Abdul Sattar Edhi, 85, a humble, white-bearded guardian of those who have fallen through Pakistan's flimsy social safety net, and who runs a 60-year-old charitable foundation, is at the forefront of his country's woes.

He is viewed as something of a sainted figure as Pakistan, a front line state in the US-led "war on terror", is facing an economic crisis that has hit the poor hard and worsening security as the military clashes with militants in its border tribal areas. During an interview with The National at his Karachi headquarters, Mr Edhi clutched a grey patchwork bag bearing an airline tag showing that he had just come back from northern Pakistan where he provided food for refugees who have fled fighting between the army and pro-Taliban militants in the tribal area of Bajaur.

Mr Edhi did not mince his words about the ills of Pakistani society. "Here everybody is a tax thief. Most of the politicians are corrupt. Nobody is sincere with the country. That is why the country has gone from worse to worse. "There is a shortage of water, wheat, electricity, and people are increasingly jobless. We are providing meals for 30,000 people in Karachi alone." Mr Edhi, a small man who habitually wears a grey shalwar kameez, is determinedly low key. He has refused to enter politics, eschews Pakistan's religious factionalism and takes pride that his organisation is overwhelmingly funded by small donations from Pakistan's poor majority.

"I don't depend on the government. I am independent," he said. The Edhi Foundation runs a national ambulance network, morgues, soup kitchens, orphanages and homes for people suffering from mental problems and drug addiction and for women in danger. As Pakistan's troubles have multiplied, his ambulances and staff have cleaned up the human debris. Tragedies have buffeted the country with increasing intensity since the regime of the former president, Pervez Musharraf, began to slide in March last year.

On May 12 2007, when Mr Musharraf's allies in Karachi attacked a convoy of demonstrators and killed 42 people, it was Edhi ambulances that picked up the dead and wounded. One of his ambulance drivers was killed by a sniper's bullet. In July last year, the government asked Mr Edhi to send his ambulances to pick up more than 100 bodies after a commando assault on Islamabad's radical Red Mosque. The last time The National met Mr Edhi was in October last year as he sat on a dais in apparent calm in one of his morgues as his workers ferried in the bodies and body parts of some of the 140 people killed in Karachi during an assassination attempt on Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister.

"I am a Muslim, but my work is for humanity," Mr Edhi said. "People, the funders, believe in me. They are satisfied with my work. This is the creation of the public. "I am not a communist," he said with a laugh. "But I like Karl Marx and Lenin." His wife, Bilquis, two sons and three daughters help run the foundation. He whipped a bundle of notes from under his waistcoat that people spontaneously had donated during that day's flight. "I am a beggar," he said ruefully.

At the Karachi office in Mithadar district, it was obvious the Edhi Foundation is a last port of call for the city's scorned and rejected. It was here that he started his charitable work when he brought back "bloated, drowned bodies from the sea". During the interview, a young boy approached Mr Edhi and presented himself as "missing". He had run away from the town of Multan after being "abused by some people".

On the office's walls some of the mechanisms of the fund-raising were visible: donors can pay 2,000 rupees (Dh93) for a goat to be sacrificed. The hide will be sold and the meat will go to the poor. Then there is a box for voluntary fines - 60 rupees - to be paid for missing religious obligations such as fasting and prayers. Halfway up a staircase on a landing at the back of the office stood a metal cradle with a small, battered leather mattress. Here mothers leave unwanted babies.

Above the cradle was a placard that read: "DON'T KILL. Leave the baby in the cradle. Do not kill the baby. Do not do another sin to keep secret 1st sin." Upstairs, rows of abandoned children slept under sheets. "If I am satisfied with the family after one month the babies are given up for adoption," Mrs Edhi said. "We have received a child in a bad condition recently. She was dumped on a rubbish tip and a dog ate her left cheek," she said.

The Edhi Foundation had paid for the baby, Amna, to be treated at Karachi's Aga Khan hospital. "She is one month old and was found in a junkyard," said Dr Rehan Ali of the Aga Khan hospital, looking over the baby's wriggling body and bandaged face. "There are no words for Edhi. They are doing an amazing job. Pakistan is a country that spends less than two per cent of GDP on health. In our society, the government is simply not available and Edhi is one of the philanthropists that takes its place to help the poor," he said.