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).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6650445.stm
From BBC. Otherwise, I am hard pressed to find any descriptions of the counts of the PPP dead; the ones who suffered the most. There are also amazingly no interviews of activists from City hospitals; where you could easily gather a lot of information. All this explains how the MQM thugs have now censored the media by coercing them into reporting what they want them to report. And all this when some of us are hailing the openness and freedom enjoyed by the media under the great dictator. Freedom of media is under a grave threat already.
To spread more love, tolerance and strength, I designed “I love Karachi” banners for anyone’s use.
Please visit “I love Karachi”
While some of the visitors seem to hold the notion: It was done before, It will happen again.
May be, May be Not.
Only YOU (as a nation) can stop this. We have seen that Army can’t say anything against its dictator, we have seen that MQM will continue its ignorant, senseless and inhuman tactics. But what I want to mention and you must all agree that today’s Pakistan and Karachi is very different. How many of you in 90s or 80s could get to SOME PLATFORM in public and voice your opinion? How many of you could call your dictator whatever you can call NOW? How many of you could openly say you despise the very existence of a man who betrayed his own best friend and killed him?
The change is already in the air, whether or not you can smell it.
“Zara Nam Ho To Yeh Matti Bari Zarkhaiz Hai Saqi”
This morning I received a message from a friend of mine wh lives in Karachi:
[quote]Yes Karachi was very bad yesterday. We stayed indoors. Now our CJ has become a monkey in jugglers’ hands. They carry him from door to door and are using HIM as a MASCOT. He has lost almost all honor. Even NAWAZ Sharif who attacked Supreme Court earlier is sporting freedom of Judiaciry. We had seen on the TV that CJ Sajjad Hussain Shah has to hide himself under the DESK. It is all political jugglery between exploiters. Both sides are almost the same.I do not find any qualitative change among them, except for the Mullas who are continuously putting the backgear and dragging it as far as 1500 years back.[/quote]
No particular hard feelings against one Party, all of them are dishonest and they are almost equaly bad.
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. I forget who it was but some prominent American had to say this about Saddam during the Iran Iraq War where over a million muslims died on both sides, “He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
i used to be a believer in tnt but in the light of evidence here i may have to change my opinion. pakistanis and indians both possess some sort of mystical sherlock holmesian deductive abilities which enables them to identify perpetrators of terrorism two second after an incident takes place.
seconds after the blast on samjhota express, indians had evidence on isi/lt involvement. similary just by watching the likes of kamran khan yesterday, people have been able to conclude that mqm/govt was the bad guy. note also that just as in india, all violence is caused by muslims even when muslims are target themselves, all violence in pak is caused by the govt even when target is the govt itself. musharraf plans suicide attack against himself and shaukat aziz and mqm rains violence on the very people who vote for it. yesterday, mqm infiltrated opposition dominated areas like patel para and started firing on opposition rally. there was absolutely no cross fire. only mqm firing on opposition from all sides. note also that other parties in pakistan are completely peace loving. karachi under bb/ns in the 90’s was as peaceful as a small town in scandinavia.
as for the chief justice, it is his right to do whatever he pleases including disregarding govt pleas for public safety. in democracies, citizens have absolute freedom and all responsibility lies with govt. so if karachites drown while swimming in the sea during monsoon despie govt warnings, it is the fault of the government because it is the responsibility of the govt to provide life guards for every single individual who wants to swim during monsoon.
i think what you see on this website and on pakistani media is that pakistanis have no ability to analyse events without using the crutch of politics. actions are categorised as good or bad depending on the politics. people have very little knowledge of subjects like history, economics, international affairs etc because it takes too much effort to read on these subjects. much easier to only read dau takkay kay newspapers like dawn and regurgitate the bakwaas here. i have always mainted that pakistan’s backwardness is explained by the stupidity of its educated people rather than by our literacy rate. what i see on this website simply confirms my contention.