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).
[quote comment="47070"]I hve been glued to the TV the last two days and I GEOs coverage has been outstanding as usual.[/quote]
Yeah, especially the “apology” by the government to dear-old Altaf Bhai which is the headline on The News’s website.
Tell me, where do you buy your denial pills?
They were holding MQM flaq, BBC specially showed that.
I saw Geo showing terrorists firing with AK-47 from Baoch Calony bridge to relly of opposition, later same clip was repeated from BBC, it was really shamefull for MQM leaders and for Musharraf.
Ham kaise begairaz hukumrano gulami mein hein, afsoos.
[quote comment="47050"]The West has gotten hundreds of “terrorists” extradited from Pakistan. While the biggest terrorist of them all, Altaf Hussain lives opulently in London. Why the double standards? They protect a man who has more blood on his hands than any person in Gitmo.[/quote]
You stole the words right out of my mouth!! According to the BBC, the governor of Karachi remained on welfare from the UK government while he was in his current post for almost a year!
What a bloody legacy Zia has left us….created both religious and secular terrorists…may God give him the hell he so rightly deserved.
On every TV channel we saw pictures of gun wielding men firing indiscriminately. So far no news channel has reported any arrests of these men(except maybe a few) by the security agencies.
Were they from the security hence no action against them?
MAD, your are quoting wikipedia as if it is a credible source of something!!!! Wait a few minutes and one of the MQM jiyalls will go and change it to sing Altaf’s praises…
P.S. I suggest this site bans all references to WIkipedia which is really a joke and can be manipulated by anyone. Lets raise the level of discussion to something more intelligent than that.
Here is what wikipedia says about the current status of Altaf Hussain !!!!!!
“Altaf Hussain faces murder charges in Pakistan. It is perhaps ironic that MQM holds many seats in the current government at the same time when their party leader is in exile for the protection of their leader from enemies as so many times he has faced attemps of killing him but still he want to stay but his party request him to go outside from Pakistan therefore he went to London just to obey his party’s decision.”
interesting how MQM and anti-MQM wallahs are trying to force their views here through narraas instead of analysis. Maybe that is just the nature of Karachi politics and Karachi people. As a Karachite myself I think we have lost all tolerance and cannot even argue properly. Even if you look on earlier threads some of teh people who lose their temper the most and mostly needlessly are from Karachi.