KARACHI burned, bodies littered the streets, ambulances, hospital staff and media workers were fired upon like criminals, while civilians remained besieged in their houses. But the ruling commando did nothing to save his people. This was the ‘reigning’ party’s method of showing strength against the people supporting judicial values. We all grew up knowing that life was never fair, but till now we had never seen such a grim example of ‘might is right.’

“This is not a civil war,” said a veteran journalist, responding to a comment declaring Saturday’s happenings as the beginning of a civil war in Karachi. “This is sheer murder of civil society. And while the bloodbath continues, not one media organisation has been able to courageously declare the main culprits of today’s war.”

While the city turned into a replica of present day Baghdad, at the Karachi airport events began taking a bizarre shape even before the date changed at midnight. Clueless passengers, who had made plans of arriving in Karachi much before the chief justice did, landed at the airport to find themselves blockaded. All road exits to and from the airport had been cordoned off since 9pm on Friday, more than 15 hours prior to the CJ’s scheduled arrival.

As scheduled flights continued to land at Jinnah Terminal, the group of stranded passengers started to increase. Their families could not reach the airport to receive them, nor were other means of transport available for them to find their own way to their destination.

Hussain, whose flight landed at 4.30am said: “Upon landing, we were first a little bemused that we could not leave the airport and thought that perhaps this was just exaggeration. But then we realised that there were others waiting in the lounge, hours before we had arrived. The enormity of the situation then dawned on us.”

Hussain was still stranded at the airport 14 hours after arrival (till the filing of this report).

By late afternoon, rations had depleted at all the restaurants at the airport, and women passengers with children were close to hysteria. Samina, putting up a brave front for the family waiting frantically at home said: “It’s ok mom, I just bought biscuits from the duty free shop, so even if the rations are not replenished by the authorities, I can survive till the morning.” Till 7pm Samina, too, like hundreds of others, was still stranded at the airport and the food situation had not changed.

When wars take place, contingency plans are made to stock food, oil and other essentials. When the ‘agencies’ or the Karachi ‘faction’ of the government was busy sealing roads from the night before, the least that could have been done was to warn the airport authorities and the officials of the airlines of the impending emergency that would arise as a consequence of their plan to keep the CJ confined to the airport. This would have enabled passengers to cancel takeoffs from their points of departure.

But with pugnacious frenzy consuming their minds, every civil institution was brutally assaulted by the government’s ruling party in Karachi and civilian rights were damned. Taking full advantage of the circumstances, mercenaries jacked up their price for desperate passengers trying to find any way out of the situation. Those wanting to go to hotels in the vicinity of the airport had to pay ‘facilitators’ large amounts for a distance of hardly a mile.

“I had to pay the driver of the van taking the crew to the airport hotel Rs200 to allow me a seat. And then on reaching the hotel I had to pay another bribe to get a room (besides the room charges),” said Tariq, who was also still stranded at the hotel 15 hours after his arrival.

It is evident that while Karachi is a haven when it comes to revenue generation, civilian life means nothing to the president, prime minister, or their allies from the PML-Q and MQM ruling this city. While the two highest officers mused over the destruction in Karachi from their palatial abodes in Islamabad, the stranglehold maintained by the local government throughout the day over law enforcing agencies on Saturday put us to shame. We thought Karachi belonged to us. We were so wrong!