May 12, 2007, will live long in infamy. A dictator fending off a populist challenge from a deposed chief justice had turned to his political allies to stage a show of strength.

Rawalpindi saw Pervez Musharraf address a rally alongside the PML-Q leadership and punch the air in defiance. But it was Karachi that witnessed tragedy and violence as the city appeared to be under siege from the very political party that was running the provincial capital at the time, the MQM.

Waseem Akhtar, the swaggering provincial home adviser to the chief minister, played a frontline role in the May 12 catastrophe and surely has many questions to answer.

But the manner in which Mr Akhtar was recently arrested and has now been accused of orchestrating attacks that led to the deaths of a number of individuals on May 12, 2007, is wholly unsatisfactory.

Once again, it appears that politicians are being made the scapegoat for the misdeeds of a military misadventure.

To be clear, and to reiterate the obvious, the MQM has a great deal to answer for when it comes to May 12, 2007.

The party may have been in an alliance with the PML-Q at the centre and in Sindh at the time, but May 12 was about a personal favour to a political patron fighting for survival. Had Iftikhar Chaudhry been allowed to lead a rally in Karachi that day as the lawyers’ movement had intended, it would surely have added to the momentum to reinstate the deposed chief justice.

But the extraordinary violence unleashed that day after law enforcement was virtually suspended set a new low even for a city that has witnessed grim and endless bloodbaths in recent decades.

May 12 stands out as a day that politics, always fierce and competitive here, was turned into a nakedly violent struggle for ascendancy.

It should not be forgotten and the perpetrators should not be allowed to escape justice. Nine years on, the absence of justice has only reinforced the need to draw a line again that politics must not cross.

Yet, whatever the role of the MQM, it is undeniable that Karachi was plunged into chaos on May 12 because Pervez Musharraf desired that Iftikhar Chaudhry not enter the city.

The now-retired general’s speech in Rawalpindi on the night of May 12, after a day of violence in Karachi, and his comments in the days after, made it clear that he had no regrets about what had occurred in Karachi on May 12 and, indeed, saw it as necessary to protect his rule.

Mr Akthar may have been one of the protagonists, but he was neither alone nor remotely the most senior of officials involved in the planning and execution of the violence.

So, by all means, investigate May 12 — but start with those who instigated and cheered that violent day, Pervez Musharraf and his henchmen.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2016