December was a very scary month for the city of Karachi, thank god we are past it now but the scars will linger on for a number of years. The scars are obviously due to the horrendous attack on the 10th muharram juloos of the shiate community and the carnage that resulted thereof as 3 entire blocks of the precious real estate of Karachi was burnt.
As the initial shock wore off, the familiar faces surfaced on Tv to lead a campaign of tie the bell around whomsoever’s neck they could find. It started with shiates and taliban and ended on blackwater and then offcourse the old favourite MQM. Some papers even went as far as to say that blackwater and mqm were working togather under the cdgk to clear up unwanted shops so that new prime land could then be given to party favourites.
Sounds like something out of a movie script does it not? The sad part is that many people less aware of things are duped into absorbing some of it as the gospel truth by our so called fair and free media. The free part i certainly agree with as they can castrate whomever they feel like on that particular day but fair is a far cry from these gents. So after dragging MQM’s name through whatever muck they could get, everyone went “haw hai” at the city nazim’s livid response on TV. Well lets consider this, if say your office was on fire and you had been standing on the spot throwing buckets of water on it for 2 days and failed to save it and then were accused all over national tv of being involved in setting the fire itself what would you do?
If you ask me i would have smashed the bucket I had been supposedly using over the persons head close to me. Mustufa Kamal was gracious enough to use words to express his anger and helplessness. Yeah yeah i know politicians are supposed to behave in a cool manner always, well what about someone who really gives a shit about this city and saw it burn? You would expect him to be a little angry no? Obviously the fact that he was the only politician on scene during the whole crises and was present throughout the raging destruction going on, and was also the key provider of all the footage everyone was barking about was never mentioned. The fact that Altaf hussain was the only politican who demanded from the government the rights of the people affected in this carnage was forgotten and the reality that almost all the people affected are pro mqm supporters as well as members of the businessman community was also lost to the wind.
Instead every attempt was made to set off Karachi’s ethnic violence volcano once again. Muhajirs were repeatedly accused and tarnished so that they would lose control and plunge into the war on the streets which our media loves. vultures always need carcasses to pick you see and MQM’s past has been a point of contention with many. Things actually came to a point where members of the religious bodies of Shiate and Sunni clans had to issue warnings and calls for peace within their sects or else mayhem might have broken out.
Sadly our countries religious Jamaat was not far behind in all this incitement, and are now currently left with nothing to say as a group of terrorists(jhundullah) has accepted full responsibility for this blast yet again yesterday. Strangely the police and the rangers backed off as some sort of well planned scheme to let the looters do as they wanted whom after the arson melted quickly away. As for the argument of MQM wanting land in that area? I find it totally silly and sorry but I do not buy it. If a shop is in violation of the building zones of the city a notice is issued against it, this does not mean whoever is in the city goverment want to do qabza on the shop. This means the tenant has been flouting the laws and if you dear reader have ever visited these areas you would know what i am talking about . Lets not go into that because even if many of the shop keepers were actual illegal squatters they lost their livelihoods and income so their cases are horrific as it is. Lets however accept reality and stop blaming one another for something which was too insidious to have been carried out by a party on its own followers. Today the Chamber of commerce has stated that they recieved more than 3000 claim forms out of which 1560 were termed bogus and will thus not be compensated. So if there are some 1440 true claim forms how can 3000 shops be torched? Get the picture?? If you still do not let me illustrate, the truth is not always as it is heard on tv, that is a version of the truth, the real version however exists out there on the streets, where no one bothers to go and do any reseach before they become “analysts” on tv.
The people left behind to pick up the wreckage and restart their lives can be asked who has helped them the most in this time of crises on them. Whose camps dot the boulten road and provide free food to the shopkeepers effected, whos workers are with them side by side as they whitewash their burnt shops once again to restart. The people on that street will tell you the truth, because it is the party of the street which backs them up, the party of the people of this city.
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