KARACHI awoke to scenes of familiar mayhem on Tuesday morning, this time sparked by the murder of a political worker. Armed men reportedly barged into the house of Mansoor Mukhtar, an MQM activist in the city’s PIB Colony area, and opened fire, killing the Muttahida worker and injuring his brother who later dead. Following the incident, most localities reverberated with the sound of bullets. A number of people were reportedly killed by gunfire while several vehicles were set ablaze. Shopkeepers downed shutters and the normally bustling streets quickly emptied as the MQM announced a ‘day of mourning’, while walking out of the National Assembly in protest. Violence was also reported from other cities in Sindh. Karachi had been tense since Sunday night, when a firing incident marred a poetry recital organised by the MQM; one of the attackers, killed by the police, reportedly belonged to the ANP.

Tuesday’s events prove that peace in Karachi is only an illusion; it is not a permanent feature but a temporary arrangement between the various forces wrangling for control of the city and its resources. Organised violence has become part of the city’s culture. Before the latest incident, many people, unconvinced by the largely peaceful conditions that had prevailed for some months, had been debating when the next round of violence would break out. This kind of violence subsides as suddenly as it begins, while murders or other incidents of a criminal nature only serve as triggers; no one knows about the real causes of violence, perhaps apart from the city’s political players who cut deals behind the scenes and the federal government’s mystery man Interior Minister Rehman Malik. Is this cyclical, bloody nightmare the permanent fate of Karachi and its hapless inhabitants? An incompetent state and those who claim to represent Karachi are best placed to answer this.