EVEN tragedies of great magnitude tend to be quickly forgotten in Pakistan, overtaken as they are by the latest outrage. This has been the case with the May 12, 2007 violence, a day of infamy for Karachi, when the state either looked away or even, as some would note, encouraged the bloodshed on the city’s streets. The root cause of the mayhem was the growing rift between the then ‘suspended’ chief justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and the country’s military strongman at the time, Gen Pervez Musharraf. In a defiant mood, the chief justice arrived in Karachi on that fateful day to speak at a function of the bar. However, the general was in no mood to let him speak. After he had touched down, Mr Chaudhry could not leave the Karachi airport, as rival parties — the ANP and the PPP to welcome him, and the MQM to thwart this welcome — were out on the streets flexing their muscle. Considering the MQM’s close ties with Gen Musharraf at the time and its vice-like grip on Karachi, the whole city was held hostage by the party, and as the day ended, around 50 people had lost their lives in the violence. A decade after these gruesome events, hardly anyone has been brought to justice.

Mainly because of the MQM’s history of violence, even today people are hesitant to go on record and discuss the events. Perhaps this explains the lack of progress in the cases. While the issue was brought up during Friday’s Sindh Assembly session, there has been little action, beyond the usual rhetoric, to bring the perpetrators to book. Karachi in 2007 was a different place — arguably, a much more violent place. However, the MQM, now riven with internal dissensions, has largely been brought to heel by the state, which means that there should be little standing in the way of a transparent probe that can bring closure to the events of May 12. The probe must also examine why the police and Rangers, who today have succeeded in ‘cleaning up’ Karachi to some extent, failed to do their duty on that fateful day, and what role the military regime of the time had to play in the violence. The state must pursue the May 12 case and bring it to its logical conclusion without further delay. Otherwise, it will join the long list of other tragedies that have been swept under the carpet.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2017