Adil Najam
Pictures on the television show Karachi burning. The city is at war. Morchas everywhere. Clashes, violence, firing, deaths.
The Chief Justice is holed up at the airport and the streets are ruled by mobs. Aaj TV is being fired at and Talat Hussain reports that the police and rangers are unable to get their to help because the roads are blocked (to stop the Chief Justice). Of course, these road blocks have not stopped the killers who are firing at the TV station. As of now 15 are reported dead. Over 100 seriously injured. Hospitals in Karachi have declared an emergency. The Prime Minister has called an emergency meeting of his own to respond to what the government is calling a ’security situation’ but which sounds, smells, looks and feels like the beginning of a war on the streets of Karachi. Flights in and out of the city are stalled. Train traffic is stopped. The city seems to have descended back to its darkest days of street violence.
Meanwhile, the petty blame game continues. But things are changing too fast for one to analyze them. But one thing is certain. Things have gone out of control. Totally out of control. Totally out of everyone’s control. It is a sad sad day for all of us.
I wish I had something more profound to say. All I can hink of right now is what someone wrote on our comments section recently: Khuda Khair Karray!
(Picture credits BBC and The News and pictorial story at Bilal Zuberi’s blog; great blog coverage at Karachi Metroblog).
Sir your picture of CJ in dark glasses so much reminds me of Altaf bhai’s pics in dark glasses.
OK, seems like MQM has now been able to reach “The News” and “Jang” newspapers. The leading headlines have changed from the accounts of the events to Shujaat’s condolences over attacks on MQM’s rally. Now they are trying to paint the attackers as the attacked. People who were paying attention during the 80’s and 90’s would not be surprised. We all know MQM’s blatant tactics to get the kind of coverage they desire from the newspapers.
So it’s back to the old ways for MQM. They are back to the tactics that have worked for them very well in the past.
Again a military dictator as the guardian angel for this terrorist outfit.
Will we ever learn?
27 killed, dozens wounded as Pakistan’s crisis erupts
Gun battles on Karachi streets as chief justice is trapped at airport
Peter Beaumont , foreign affairs editor
Sunday May 13, 2007
The Observer
At least 27 people were killed and dozens more wounded in the city of Karachi yesterday as Pakistan’s political crisis escalated into fierce gun battles.
The crisis, sparked by President Pervez Musharraf’s suspension of the country’s chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, on 9 March, exploded into lethal clashes on the streets of Karachi when Chaudhry tried to visit the city for a political rally of his supporters.
The suspension of Chaudhry over allegations of ‘misconduct’ has outraged the judiciary and the opposition, and rapidly turned into the most serious challenge to Musharraf’s authority since he seized power in 1999 in a bloodless coup.
Article continues
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The crisis coincides with the run-up to a general election and an anticipated attempt by Musharraf, a close ally of the US, to secure another term. Analysts say Musharraf’s main motive in seeking the removal of the independent-minded Chaudhry is to have a more pliable man in place in case of a constitutional challenge to his plans.
The chief justice has been outspoken in his criticism of the government and has made a number of judgments that have irritated the government.
As Musharraf yesterday ruled out declaring a state of emergency, hospital officials in Karachi said that at least 27 people had died in the violence and 55 were wounded.
Television pictures showed men with AK-47 assault rifles firing from behind cars. A man with a neck wound was shown crying in a bus and another wounded man lay gasping in a pool of his own blood.
The gun battles broke out as Chaudhry arrived at Karachi airport, for what organisers hoped would be the largest in two months of rallies by lawyers and opposition parties protesting at his suspension, after ignoring requests from provincial officials to postpone his visit because of fears of bloodshed.
Opposition activists accused supporters of a pro-government party, the Mutahida Qami Movement (MQM), of attacking them with batons and gunfire as they attempted to greet the judge at the airport.
Witnesses described MQM supporters calling for ammunition and firing from buildings, reportedly at supporters of the Pakistan’s People’s Party and Jamaat-e-Islami while opposition supporters were firing back. Later, a senior MQM leader, Farooq Sattar, said four of the party’s supporters died in the clash.
Chaudhry had earlier declined an offer from authorities to travel to the venue of a planned downtown rally by helicopter and so was stranded at Karachi airport - as were hundreds of passengers from earlier flights. He later abandoned his efforts to enter the city.
Wasim Akhtar, an MQM official with the provincial government, urged Chaudhry to return to Islamabad to avoid further violence. The MQM is a partner in a coalition ruling Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.
Arshad Zubairi, chief executive of the private TV network Aaj, said that its building elsewhere in the city had been fired on by MQM supporters who wanted them to stop airing live footage of the unrest.
The government’s failure to contain the unrest in Karachi, despite the presence of 15,000 security forces, will deepen the political turmoil gripping Pakistan.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2078 495,00.html
I am posting a news item in the Sunday Telegraph of London about the carnage in Karachi yesterday.
Pakistan on brink of disaster as Karachi burns
By Isambard Wilkinson and Massoud Ansari in Karachi, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:37pm BST 12/05/2007
In pictures: Violence in Karachi
Chaos gripped the streets of Karachi yesterday as gun battles left at least 31 people dead and hundreds more injured, threatening a complete breakdown of law and order in Pakistan’s largest and most volatile city.
With plumes of black smoke billowing over the city of 12 million people, there were extraordinary scenes as gunmen on motorbikes pumped bullets into crowds demonstrating against Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf, while police stood by and watched.
Gun battles left at least 31 people dead and hundreds more injured
In images more reminiscent of Baghdad, bloodstained corpses lay where they had fallen in the streets and bodies piled up in hospital morgues. As the sense of crisis deepened, a crisis meeting between Gen Musharraf and the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, resolved to send in paramilitary troops to restore order, and to place the army on standby. The men agreed that a state of emergency would be imposed if the first two options failed.
It was the bloodiest escalation of the two-month long saga which began when the president attempted to sack the country’s chief justice in March. The ensuing challenge by lawyers and opposition parties to Gen Musharraf’s eight-year rule has left the president - a key Western ally in the “war on terror” - desperately clinging to power.
Opponents believe he had hoped to create a compliant judiciary ahead of elections which he has promised to hold later this year. But what started as a political confrontation has now lit Karachi’s tinderbox of ethnic rivalry.
Yesterday’s violence erupted as Iftikhar Chaudhry, the suspended chief justice, flew in to Karachi Jinah International Airport to address a rally.
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Many of the 15,000 police and security forces deployed in the city stood idly by as armed activists from Karachi’s ruling party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a coalition ally of Gen Musharraf, blocked Mr Chaudhry’s exit from the airport and took control of the city’s central district.
The movement’s leader, Altaf Hussain - who lives in self-imposed exile in London - co-ordinated opposition to Mr Chaudhry’s arrival and addressed crowds gathered on the streets of Karachi in a mobile phone call relayed by loudspeakers.
He called on supporters to be peaceful but to show whose city it was. Instead, violence reigned.
Gunmen tore off on motorbikes after brazenly firing AK-47 rifles at opposition supporters. One report described MQM gunmen exchanging gunfire for an hour with activists from the exiled former premier Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.
Road blocks, including trucks with deflated tires, prevented most of Mr Chaudhry’s supporters from reaching the airport to greet him. But a few dozen lawyers who reached there on foot chanted, “We are with you. Down with Musharraf.” Dozens of vehicles and petrol pumps were set alight by the angry mobs.
b Vehicles were set alight as clashes broke out between political activists
Inside Mr Chaudhry’s intended destination, Sind’s high court, hundreds of lawyers, some of them bloodied after being beaten up by MQM supporters, milled about chanting slogans and receiving news on their mobile phones about the trouble engulfing them. Outside, MQM activists with pistols tucked into their jeans, blocked the entrance.
Lawyers railed against the government. “This is a shocking attempt by the government to suppress the people,” Iqbal Haider, a human rights lawyer and former senator, told The Sunday Telegraph. “Musharraf is making all sorts of mistakes to save himself from sinking.”
As fans stirred the humid air, news poured in of unrest spreading to other parts of the country. Convoys of buses, cars and rickshaws festooned with flags of political parties careered through Karachi’s main thoroughfares.
Tension has been simmering in Karachi for the past week, with rumours swirling round that Mr Musharraf had allowed conflicting rallies to go ahead to create the requisite level of disorder to justify the declaration of an emergency. The prelude to violence was familiar to Karachi, where hundreds of people were killed in ethnic violence in the 1990s.
Exacerbating the political furore in Karachi over the sacking of Mr Chaudhry is a decades-old and simmering feud between the MQM, a movement supported by the city’s mohajir population who migrated from India at Partition in 1947, and ethnic Pathans, who were originally from Pakistan’s North West Frontier province.
Opponents of the MQM claim that its actions yesterday were ordered in micro-detail by the movement’s autocratic leader, via telephone, from Edgware in north London.
Lawyers surround suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry
Altaf Hussain wields great influence from afar over Karachi, a city of 15 million. Amid the chaos and bloodshed, the MQM chief addressed tens of thousands of his followers gathered along one of Karachi’s main streets.
As his speech echoed over its audience, in other parts of the city gunmen from both heavily armed factions took up positions on rooftops and sprayed streets with automatic gunfire. Dozens of wounded were treated in hospitals.
Last night paramilitary troops were preparing to be deployed in the city as the possibility of a curfew being imposed grew.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2007/05/13/wpak13.xml
So there was dance of death in Karachi. MQM showed its true colours. The habits die hard. It is quite amusing to listen from the leader of MQM that his organisation believes in peace and has never used and will never use violence. Right when he was delivering his comical address, his thugs were busy in pumping bullets on their opponents.
MQM, with support of Musharraf, was successful in thwarting address of the Chief Justice to Sindh High Court Bar Association.
[quote comment="47013"]Now that everyone else is hating MQM, MQM needs the General even more. The General now has MQM where he wants.[/quote]
very interesting,
and i guess no more united opposition either.
Imran Khan and co stranded.
Can someone upload aaj tv footage on youtube ?