not that i am denying what you said above, i have met families from both side, i.e. the people who suffered because they were either Muhajir or Pakhtun or Punjabi, there was one common thing in all these, they were poor, not much active in politics and often killed just because somebody high in power want to have some bloodshed to his gain... now... it is zardari who have planned all this and would continue to do so till the day Karachi joins the ranks of other districts in Sindh i.e. Mud-huts
Yes, exactly .. in the war of all these looteraas , be it ANP leaders or MQM leaders or PPP leaders .. the victim is always a common man.
That was more like propoganda rather than truth. Zia used his utmost resources to find any thing against great Bhutto, could not find anything. On the contrary he unleashed persecution on PPP supporters by lashing and torturing them just for saying "Jeay Bhutto".
This is exactly what MQM supporters say.
dude, you have to meet the families whose sons and brothers were picked up and disappeared forever. People want to put musharraf on trial for the disappearance of other Pakistanis. No one gives a damn to those who got disappeared in PPP (Benazir) times just because they were from Karachi. Its easy to call them terrorists, but do you have any proof that they were terrorists other than the words of anjahaani Naseer Babar?
Lets not go there man. The unjust just boils my blood sometimes.
Give me a credible source that 1000 died and i'll believe you. Do you only feel the pain of those who died in PPP regime or do you feel the pain of those who have died at hands of MQM terrorists as well? Does Babar's acts justify the killings of our brothers in Karachi?
Give me a credible source that 1000 died and i'll believe you. Do you only feel the pain of those who died in PPP regime or do you feel the pain of those who have died at hands of MQM terrorists as well? Does Babar's acts justify the killings of our brothers in Karachi?
Yaar agar credible source hotee to banday ko adalat naa pakar leti?
and no, one killing does not justify another killing. never.
I wonder when these 48 hours will be completed? Lets see what mqm can do to banish these two people out of Karachi. Aparently they can not touch these two people but perhaps resort to killing of innocent people.
I wonder when these 48 hours will be completed? Lets see what mqm can do to banish these two people out of Karachi. Aparently they can not touch these two people but perhaps resort to killing of innocent people.
see this the game Pee Pee Pee and AN PEE playing in karachi.
give them Panga and site down in house and watch the bloody game.
yeah you LET SEE.
I wonder when these 48 hours will be completed? Lets see what mqm can do to banish these two people out of Karachi. Aparently they can not touch these two people but perhaps resort to killing of innocent people.
before 48 hours ended - that coward racist - Zulfiqar mirza is called to ISB by Zardari and issued a video apology ...
For the kind information of all who were supporting Zulfiqar mirza on his stance against MQM and Urdu speaking community .... May you all be pleased to hear that your hero and the ultimate truth speaker , Mr mirza has asked for an apology in a video message , released an hour ago...
now please praise him for his ' mafa'himatte policy ' and the change of statement in the greater interest of pakistani nation....
Jo kaal sacha tah - wo aj Buzdil hai ...... Ajab dastor-e-zamaNa hai ....
This isnt freaking 1992 people - wake up and smell the coffee ... MQM is a reality ... learn to cope with it
The problem is that they will never except the MQM, despite the fact that they keep winning seats, and continue to get over whelming support from the Urdu speaking community. Zulfiqar Mirza let the cat out of the bag, but admitting his true dislike, which is not the MQM, a political party, but Urdu speakers. I met an Urdu speaker who supported Imran Khan, and went to Slough to attend his rally. He was shocked to see a whole range of anti Muhajir, not any MQM slogans. He was extremely disappointed. For any Muhajir living in Multan, Shujabad, Rawalpindi who actually buys this bs about people only attacking the party is living in cloud cokoo land. These attacks on the MQM are attacks on the Muhajir community. I was watching Capital Talk yesterday, and Farrukh Saleem, one of the panelists, said in black and white that the demography of Karachi has changed, and the Urdu speakers better except that, or else they will face military actions. Basically, the ISI and friends want to hand Karachi over to the Pathans. Hence the increase in target killings, always done by mysterious gunmen.
I wonder when these 48 hours will be completed? Lets see what mqm can do to banish these two people out of Karachi. Aparently they can not touch these two people but perhaps resort to killing of innocent people.
Exactly.
More innocents will be killed by the MQM, more damage done to Karachi by MQM.
so by the time it all ended, 15 begunah killed during all this protest by MQM. Another feather in their cap. What a shameful act by MQM and Mirza has every single bit of responsibility in it too.
Here is what jang has to say about it. As per jang, it was not ‘out of no where’, it was all ‘planned’ by Mirza/Zardari
I was watching Capital Talk yesterday, and Farrukh Saleem, one of the panelists, said in black and white that the demography of Karachi has changed, and the Urdu speakers better except that, or else they will face military actions. **Basically, the ISI and friends want to hand Karachi over to the Pathans. **Hence the increase in target killings, always done by mysterious gunmen.
Demoghraphy has changed because of floods and war on terror in the tribal areas which has brought the economy of those areas on its knees.Thats why more pathans have migrated to karachi in recent years.
When Karachi stops, the whole of Pakistan suffers economically.. The ability of one man Altaf Hussain to bring the whole city to a stand still using his militant goons against the writ of the state should be dealt with full force of the state without taking in to account his ability to win seats in the city. No single person should be allowed to challenge the state authority no matter how popular a leader he is..
If Karachi is to be normal again
Babar Sattar
Saturday, July 16, 2011
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.
If democracy is government of the people, for the people and by the people, why do the people of Pakistan under democratic rule feel so desperately helpless? Why is it that after every decade or so a self-proclaimed messiah is able to usurp state control and the people do not prevent such a khaki saviour from appropriating their right to rule themselves? Let us dismiss at the outset the desirability or viability of khaki rule, controlled-democracy, a government of technocrats, the Bangladesh model, or any other concoction of the sort. Let us also reiterate that, no matter how excruciating continuing to suffer the present dispensation might seem, there is no sustainable alternative to supporting continuity of the constitutionally prescribed political process.
But does this automatically mean that we ought to settle for a farce in the name of democracy? Can the majority of a nation meaningfully distinguish between khaki saviours and civilian despots, both of whom unleash dogs of praetorianism upon them? If democratic rule doesn’t translate into a system of governance ensuring municipal services to the ordinary citizen, why should he care about it? Will our unquestioning support for civilian autocracy strengthen or weaken democracy? Will we not be liable for complicity if we allow despots to proclaim territories of our country as well as political parties as personal fiefs and lord over them while masquerading as democrats? Will such politics of provincialism and tyranny not discredit the notion of self-governance and rule of law?
How will the ordinary citizen be empowered, his rights upheld and his interests served when political parties are treated as personal estates by their top leadership, sky-high barriers to entry within the political arena pre-empt the emergence of viable alternatives, and law and administrative machinery of the state is used to strengthen the hegemony of existing power brokers? And who will secure the rights of citizens to life and liberty, when patrons of parties already entrenched within a monopolistic political landscape unabashedly claim proprietary rights over territories they believe ought to fall within their dominion?
The mayhem in Karachi is yet another reminder of how our ruling political elites are primarily committed to adding more turf to their respective fiefs by acquiring greater control over state power and means of patronage, abusing power and exploiting public resources to nurture networks of personal patronage, and then using the state’s administrative machinery and patron-client networks to protect and defend personal fiefdoms. Karachi is in the throes of an ugly turf war between the MQM, the ANP and the PPP over the extent of exclusive and shared rights to own and exploit Karachi at will. And across Sindh’s political spectrum the conduct of actors pointing fingers at one another is hardly distinguishable.
Let us start with the MQM. Here is a political party whose importance and strength emanates from its stranglehold over Karachi and its ability to unleash violence and bring the commercial hub of Pakistan to a grinding halt at will. That MQM chief Altaf Hussain continues to manoeuvre like a puppet this major political party with such significant representation in the Sindh and National Assemblies should be a case study in political science. Unless Altaf Bhai is a saint with unfathomable charisma, the reverence exhibited during his jocular telephone addresses and the complete absence of disagreement and dissent within his party ranks can only be understood in terms of fear.
**Speaking to Karachi-wallas in private settings, you’ll hear umpteen stories of barbarism attributed to MQM goons and the familiar allegation that this is a “fascist party” whose sustenance lies in its ability and willingness to use violence and extortion as instruments of policy. But you will neither read about concrete allegations that can be brought before a court of law nor hear about them on any of the few dozen news channels. Anyone critical of the MQM and Altaf Bhai is unable to set foot in Karachi, as experienced by Imran Khan during the Musharaf regime. Criminal cases implicating the MQM do not go anywhere. Remember May 12, 2007, and the 45 innocent citizens who lost their lives as violence suddenly erupted across the city while the whole country watched in disbelief?
Continuing to mollycoddle the MQM is no prescription for Karachi’s malaise. But the joint PPP-ANP game plan of beating the MQM at its own game by raising competing militias and supporting them by appropriately tweaking Sindh’s legal and administrative structures is the recipe of an even bigger disaster. It is claimed that the PPP-MQM alliance was unnatural from the word go. It was only a matter of time that the PPP would try and push the MQM back to its pre-Musharraf zone of influence in Karachi and Hyderabad, a move that the MQM would bitterly resist. And then there is the ANP, whose constituency and power within Karachi has grown manifold over the last decade without a proportionate enhancement of representation within government.
The unfortunate lesson that the PPP and the ANP seem to have learnt from the MQM’s rise is to raise their own militant wings, arm them to the teeth and be ready and willing to fight pitched battles across the city in a bid to acquire and control more territory. To add fuel to fire, the PPP has also unleashed the hate-and-prejudice-spewing Zulfiqar Mirza upon Karachi: he not only stands accused of transforming the PPP’s Aman (peace) Committees into instruments of violence but also represents the feudal mindset that perceives the title of “badmash” (goon) as a mark of honour. Keeping such a character at the helm could only mean that the PPP-ANP alliance in Sindh has decided to expand the terrain of their respective fiefs within Karachi by cutting the MQM down to size through use of force. **
In this backdrop, the logic of introducing retrograde legal and administrative changes by reviving the commissionerate and discarding the Police Order, 2002, becomes obvious. All our political parties supported the 18th Amendment and wrote in Article 140A of the Constitution that each province shall “devolve political, administrative and financial authority to the elected representatives of the local governments.” Article 32 of the Constitution already mandates the state to “encourage local government institutions composed of elected representatives of the areas concerned.” Now, in utter disregard of these unambiguous provisions, provincial governments in Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh have revived the commissionerate system that is based on the conviction that the citizen is unworthy of self-governance.
Be it disregard for an elected local-government system, scrapping a law conceived at transforming a colonial police structure into a citizen-friendly, service-oriented police, or abolishing the constitutional requirement to introduce democracy within political parties, the contempt exhibited by our political party heads for any instrument capable of empowering the ordinary citizen is all too obvious. And this, in turn, underscores the tragedy of democracy, constitutionalism and rule of law in Pakistan.
The only lasting solution to Karachi’s ailment is an agreement between all political parties to (i) deconstruct fiefdoms and the reign of terror that sustains them, (ii) de-weaponise and begin to function within the realm of law, and (iii) compete for political control on a level playing field on the basis of superior service delivery. Karachi as the commercial and industrial hub of Pakistan will keep attracting people from all over the country and its demography will continue to change. Unless the MQM, the ANP, the PPP (and even the Jamaat-e-Islami) realise that dividing this sprawling metropolis into fiefs and allocating control and ownership of territories and people on the basis of ethnicity will no longer work, this wretched city will continue to bleed.
When Karachi stops, the whole of Pakistan suffers economically.. The ability of one man Altaf Hussain to bring the whole city to a stand still using his militant goons against the writ of the state should be dealt with full force of the state without taking in to account his ability to win seats in the city. No single person should be allowed to challenge the state authority no matter how popular a leader he is..
First all Karachi is the economic and business centre because of the Urdu speakers. Secondly, your community shouts so much on the Blasphemy law, but when there precious businesses suffer in Karachi, you start screaming and shouting about military action and martial law. Kayani is a sensible and honorable man, who will never send the army to Karachi. If you want to reduce violence in Karachi, you need to give the people of Karachi, and I mean everyone including Mr Avari, the right to govern their city.
Respect the democratic wishes of the Muhajir community.
First all Karachi is the economic and business centre because of the Urdu speakers. Secondly, your community shouts so much on the Blasphemy law, but when there precious businesses suffer in Karachi, you start screaming and shouting about military action and martial law. Kayani is a sensible and honorable man, who will never send the army to Karachi. If you want to reduce violence in Karachi, you need to give the people of Karachi, and I mean everyone including Mr Avari, the right to govern their city.
Respect the democratic wishes of the Muhajir community.
I think you are little bit over-driven from the recent events, either by taking part in them or being the party who suffered from it... in any case, you should know that Karachi has been governed by the Karachi people??? Mustafa Kamal, Naimat Ullah Khan were from Karachi??? did they changed any thing ( making roads and other thing is not the only requirement) the city still is sitting on a bomb with the fuse in the hand of few ( 2 or 3 ) political leaders, i.e. if on a given day, any of these leaders feels like, they can create mayhem in the city... is that what is called development.????
Just for your info, Many businessmen have shifted their businesses from Karachi either to other cities of Pakistan or to UAE and Bangladesh, thanks to all the communities, now they no job and have lots of time in hand to kill each other...
If the leadership of Sindh had any sanity in their mind, they might have build/developed other cities in Sindh, they may have developed Thatta, Hyderabad, Larkana etc to counter the effect of one city on the national politics and giving the people options to settle in other cities as well... but nobody here cares for Pakistan or distribution of wealth.. everyone including your community leaders whoever they are, have their on vested interests.. which required human blood every now and then, which seems to be the only thing Karachites are good at
**First all Karachi is the economic and business centre because of the Urdu speakers. **Secondly, your community shouts so much on the Blasphemy law, but when there precious businesses suffer in Karachi, you start screaming and shouting about military action and martial law. Kayani is a sensible and honorable man, who will never send the army to Karachi. If you want to reduce violence in Karachi, you need to give the people of Karachi, and I mean everyone including Mr Avari, the right to govern their city.
Respect the democratic wishes of the Muhajir community.
You are beginning to sound that Urdu speaking/muhajir community is some racially superior life forms compared to other communities residing in our country. I am sure you are one of the negligible minority from this community, who are specially known to carry very balanced views..!!!
Karachi is a business center because of karachites.. including urdu speakers...!!!
What has blasphemy law to do with all this.. whose business interests you are talking about.. which community do you have in mind..???
Aren't we listening to a deeply confused person..!!!
First all Karachi is the economic and business centre because of the Urdu speakers. Secondly, your community shouts so much on the Blasphemy law, but when there precious businesses suffer in Karachi, you start screaming and shouting about military action and martial law. Kayani is a sensible and honorable man, who will never send the army to Karachi. If you want to reduce violence in Karachi, you need to give the people of Karachi, and I mean everyone including Mr Avari, the right to govern their city.
Respect the democratic wishes of the Muhajir community.
Karachi is the economic and business hub because of its geographic location and money that government of Pakistan (and british prior to that) has invested in it. If all of the urdu speakers stop working, it will still remain economic hub. We have no problem with who governs the city but we have a problem with your mafia running exortortion rackets, target killings and shooting. Put your arms down and you will not have to hear this.