by MARK MAGNIER
Abdul Sattar Edhi, head of the Edhi Foundation, collects donations for flood victims in Sindh province during a demonstration in Hyderabad, Pakistan, last month. PHOTO/Nadeem Khawer/European Pressphoto Agency
Reporting from Karachi, Pakistan—
He owns a single set of clothing and often sleeps in a storage room — even though millions of dollars pass through his hands annually. At 83, creature comforts don’t matter much to Abdul Sattar Edhi. He is far too busy caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, burying the dead.
Known to some as Pakistan’s Mother Teresa, Edhi is a humanitarian light in a violent and troubled land. The vast majority here struggle daily in a moribund economy. Natural disasters are common. Poverty, political instability, corruption, and attacks by Islamic militants, criminals and political enforcers are facts of life.
In this environment, a shrinking violet won’t make much headway, he says. You’ve got to be tough.
Gruff and confident, Edhi refers to himself as a bhikhari, or beggar, and he wears his worn black tunic as a badge of honor. He has a picture of Karl Marx, as well as Mother Teresa, on his office wall. He has been condemned by some Pakistanis as a communist, a madman, an Israeli agent or a bad Muslim for his work with “infidels” — his charity does not discriminate by religion, race or gender.
He counters that his true religion is human rights. That the government is hopelessly inefficient, and most social workers corrupt. That politicians and religious leaders know they can exploit the poor. That foreign contributions usually come with unacceptable conditions.
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