World | Pakistan
Karachi blasts 'targeted ethnic peace'
Authorities in the Pakistani city of Karachi blamed on Tuesday "undemocratic forces" trying to stir ethnic unrest for seven small bombs the previous day that wounded 43 people.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:07 July 9, 2008
Karachi: Authorities in the Pakistani city of Karachi blamed on Tuesday "undemocratic forces" trying to stir ethnic unrest for seven small bombs the previous day that wounded 43 people.
There was no claim of responsibility for the low-intensity blasts that went off in different places in quick succession on Monday evening, most in ethnic Pashtun neighbourhoods.
Pakistan's biggest city and its commercial capital has long been a tinder box, plagued by sectarian, ethnic and religious militant violence.
But some analysts said the blasts did not bear the hallmark of Taliban or Al Qaida militants blamed for a wave of suicide bomb attacks, and instead suspected old rivalries between city factions were behind the bombs.
That has raised fears of a return of the ethnic enmity that ravaged Karachi in the 1980s and early 1990s, and could present another huge problem for a fragile federal coalition government grappling with an economic crisis and Islamist violence.
Provincial Interior Minister Zulfiqar Mirza told a news conference the people of the city had matured since the old days of violence, when a traffic accident could spark ethnic bloodshed, and those differences could no longer be exploited.
Immature
"Undemocratic forces or those who are enemies of Pakistan think the people of Karachi are still immature. So it was an effort on part of those people," Mirza said.
He did not elaborate on who he thought was behind the blasts but thanked the city's two main rival groups, Pashtuns and mohajirs, Urdu-speakers whose families moved from India upon the partition of British India in 1947, for their patience.
Urdu speakers are represented by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which has been the dominant party in Karachi for years and is in an uneasy provincial government coalition led by assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's party.
This week, exiled MQM leader Altaf Hussain was reported warning of a conspiracy to "Talibanise" Karachi by people from the northwest, which analysts said was thinly veiled criticism of his Pashtun rivals.
Shahi Syed, a leader of the main Pashtun party, the Awami National Party, which is also a member of the provincial coalition, did not blame the MQM for the blasts.
But he said there was a connection between the bombs and violence in May last year when the MQM was widely blamed for gun battles in which about 40 people were killed.
"These people want ethnic war," Syed said.
But senior MQM leader and member of parliament Haider Abbas Rizvi said he believed the blasts were the work of Taliban militants and were a follow-up to a bomb attack on police in Islamabad on Sunday in which 18 people were killed.
"Islamabad is the political capital of Pakistan and Karachi is the financial capital. They are trying to attack from both angles," he said.
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