Karachi, our beautiful, dangerous and certainly sprawling metropolis of some 18 million people, is no stranger to the phenomenon of violence, especially when it is of a political character. The current wave of targeted killings and assassinations has been plaguing the city for nearly two years in which some 1,500 people have lost their lives. However, yesterday’s assassination of MPA Syed Raza Haider of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) seems to be the breaking point of all the lawlessness that Karachi has patiently, if not resiliently, endured.

The MQM has called for three days of mourning in the wake of Mr Haider’s murder which the party has categorically blamed on the “armed terrorists of the Awami National Party”. So even before one could begin to mourn the MPA’s death, the standard cycle of blame game has been initiated and the city has already been thrown into the throes of violence and bloodshed. As of now, at least 35 people have been killed and 80 have been wounded with dozens of shops and vehicles burnt down. The dead also include an ANP activist who was gunned down in the city’s New Karachi area. Given this reaction, one is forced to wonder if we have become so accustomed to using aggression as a form of expression, that we have simply lost the faculty to discriminate between the concepts of mourning and violence?

In this context, another question that we Karachiites have been wrestling with, for years, is that of security and law and order. If a member of the provincial assembly can be so easily targeted by “unknown” assailants and that too inside a mosque, then what level of protection can an ordinary citizen expect from the government? And what of last week’s deliberations and back-to-back negotiations over the menace of targeted killings spearheaded by none other than the esteemed Interior Minister Rehman Malik? Were they not meant to achieve some level of stability? Or did these high-level meetings merely amount to eyewash?

Karachiites spent the whole of last evening and night, making sure their loved ones were all right. Soon after Mr Haider’s murder, the hours-long traffic jams forced people to “abandon their vehicles on roads and walk miles to reach their destinations”. And as for today, the streets and even the main thoroughfares of Karachi stand nearly deserted. Yes, this is the picture of a terrorised city; a city which has suffered in scare and silence; a city that mourns quietly for all the peace that it has lost. This is Karachi in its most dignified — in mourning and shying away from even the possibility of violence and only, simply hoping for peace.

Lastly, however, given last evening’s immediate, aggressive reaction to the murder and certain elements’ readiness to resort to violence, it is hard to figure if we will really be allowed to devote some time to grieve, not simply the murder of MPA Raza Haider and countless others who have been targeted for their political and religious affiliations, but also our terrible failure to deal with such situations with maturity and dignity.

Illustration by Feica