The political chaos and unrest in Karachi is quantified in greater degrees than any other urban area in Pakistan. The uniqueness of Karachi’s unrest is that it usually starts from a statement issued by the democratic leaders and ends by a joint meeting or another political statement, but in the midst of democratic manipulations there are numerous who lost their lives, or made devoid in some other perspective. Similar to democracy, dictatorships also exploited Karachi for their political objectives. The incident of 12 May is great example in this regard, where the political war begins between the dictator and lawyers and numerous again spilled in blood for this purpose.

The recent political conflict and blood bath in Karachi started from a racist speech delivered by a government representative Mr. Zulfiqar Mirza, on which serious agitation took place and the city was halted and rinsed in blood, where numerous people had been killed, several injured and many vehicles put on fire. Although later it was confirmed by the ruling party that the hateful speech had no link with the party itself, and Mr. Zulfiqar Mirza also apologized over his hateful speech but in-between the political maneuvering there were many who lost their lives and many who were seriously offended but these victims of the democratic culture in Karachi are not our main subject of discussion and go unnoticed.

The Zulfiqar-led chaos is not a single incident in Karachi; there were many and perhaps several incidents that arose daily from the circles of formerly allied democratic forces like ANP and MQM. The victims of these political conflicts is always the innocent common citizens of Karachi. Mostly these conflicts arose in a time of some serious back-end games, probably to divert the media focus and to fuel innocent’s blood for this purpose.

In this case – the Zulfiqar-led massacre in Karachi diverted the media discussions from the sensitive meeting of Pakistan’s COAS General Kiyani with Gen. David Petraeus which was meant to specify the future fate of our nation and was perhaps substantially more important than the racist remarks of Mr. Zulfiqar Mirza.

S.M. Waqas Imam, Karachi

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