In the Line of Ire: Free Speech and Civil Society in Pakistan (Towards Freedom) 

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In recent weeks, the movement against military rule has turned bloody. On May 12, armed gangs put up barriers in Karachi and shot at political party workers and ordinary people who came out to receive the Chief Justice at the airport. Analysts describe it as the fall out of the political blunder by Musharraf, who has allied himself too closely with the armed ethnic party, MQM with which he rules in a coalition government in Sindh.

On that bloody Saturday, the MQM came to the violent rescue of their patron by blocking supporters of political parties who traveled in caravans to the airport to greet the Chief Justice.

When I questioned the MQM’s thin, wiry bespectacled leader, Shoaib Bukhari as to why Karachi was the only location where the rally for the Chief Justice turned violent, he attempted to explain the uniqueness of the situation. In his words, the Chief Justice had made a mistake to ally himself with political parties who had no popular mandate and who merely wanted to assert who controlled Karachi.

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