On 12 May, Karachi relapsed into chaos, recalling the dark days of the early 1990s, when armed gangs affiliated with ethnic political parties could openly threaten, beat, kidnap, torture and kill dissenters. Law and order remained problematic but Pakistan's largest city and commercial hub had regained some normalcy over the past decade. It was once more a brash, lively megalopolis with shops and eateries open till the wee hours, despite a few 'no-go areas' that cabbies would refuse to enter at night and a high crime rate marked by muggings, phone snatchings, car-jackings and armed robberies.
Then, on 'Black Saturday', armed members of opposing political parties converted the streets of Karachi into a battle zone. Almost 50 were dead by the end of the carnage and hundreds wounded. The Karachi killings became a sideshow in the running battle of nerves between General Pervez Musharraf and Iftikhar Chaudhry, the chief justice he is attempting to oust. A lawyer-led mass movement has emerged against the president, with the chief justice as an icon and rallying point. Despite heavy-handed police action against lawyers' demonstrations and fundamentalist-engineered diversions, the tide of support for Chaudhry has not slowed.
As the secular political movement around the chief-justice issue gained momentum, the government seemed to have decided that enough was enough. The administration warned Chaudhry against going to Karachi, where he had been invited by the Sindh High Court bar, on the grounds that doing so would create security problems: the Islamabad government's coalition partner in Sindh, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), had a pro-Musharraf rally planned for the same day. Following the Karachi killings, the government and the MQM have assigned responsibility for the violence to Chaudhry and his supporters.
Out on the streets, Karachi witnessed what many term as orchestrated mayhem. Live television cameras captured the situation for all to see: government tankers blocking routes from the airport to prevent Chaudhry from reaching the lawyers' meeting and the police and Rangers, mostly stripped of their arms the day before, standing by idly if not participating in the onslaught perpetuated by hordes of armed men. The security plans chalked out for the day were abandoned overnight. Rangers abandoned key positions on the flyovers on the main airport road; instead, armed men in civilian clothes took up these positions, firing into the crowds headed out to welcome the chief justice.