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=”46990″]TV channels showed that the security agencies like police and rangers did nothing to stop the carnage in karachi. we are in an era where security agencies of the country have become a security risk for the people. remember bajaur, waziristan, baluchistan and the missing people from all over the country. so MQM was a fascist setup from the very start but now it is not only the MQM, it is the whole establishment that has developed terrorist proclivities.
SHAME ON YOU MUSHARRAF.[/quote]
The question is what is the solution? The Army has become part of the problem rather than the solution. But in my view the problem is Pakistan’s high population growth rate. Hordes of young un-employed go for the Army, Rangers, Police and if can’t find a place in any of these, or abhor their restrictive life, resort for mafias and gangs. These gangs and mafias are just like economic concerns. When their growth rates go down, they go for consolidations, and that is when the organizations like MQM come into being. Its a consolidated self of a large number of small scale gangs and mafias. But after growing into a political party it became a different entity. Now it even entices the likes of Meera and Salma Agha into its folds. The tricks that any large business concern would do. In short its nothing more than the evolution of economics in Karachi, that took on the ethnic and linguistic color.
TV channels showed that the security agencies like police and rangers did nothing to stop the carnage in karachi. we are in an era where security agencies of the country have become a security risk for the people. remember bajaur, waziristan, baluchistan and the missing people from all over the country. so MQM was a fascist setup from the very start but now it is not only the MQM, it is the whole establishment that has developed terrorist proclivities.
SHAME ON YOU MUSHARRAF.
What is hard to understand, for a non-Karachiite like myself, is why this Mutahida Bhatta movement, euphemistically known as MQM, has continued to have so much support in Karachi despite all its record of badmashi?
Can any Karachiite explain?
متØدÛ
It saddens me to see this. May Allah grant the victims of this act of terrorism (by MQM and other parties) a place in Janaat. Ameen.