Pakistan on brink of disaster as Karachi burns
Pastor Dale Morgan
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
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.
Victims lie next to a car during clashes between rival activists in
Karachi, Pakistan on brink of disaster as Karachi burns
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.
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.
A Pakistani policeman passes burning vehicles, Pakistan on brink of
disaster as Karachi burns
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.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Pakistan on brink of disaster
as Karachi burns
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.