Students react to former Pakistani prime minister’s death

Dec. 27 started out normal for freshman Aoun Jafarey. He played tennis at a club in his home city of Karachi, Pakistan, got in his car, turned the radio on and started his normal 10-minute drive home. That’s when he learned about former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad. It had been exactly six minutes since her death. \n“Within 13 minutes, everything went crazy,” Jafarey said. “What happened was the traffic was stopped because they didn’t want anything else organized, so it took me two hours to get home. We all got stuck in traffic and a stray bullet hit my car. I heard an explosion a few miles away.”\nThere is a 710-mile difference between Karachi, dubbed the “New York of Pakistan” by residents, and Islamabad, where Bhutto was killed during a political rally. However, Jafarey and freshman Adanir Hussain witnessed the impact of Bhutto’s death in Karachi, where Bhutto’s family lives. \n“The political violence lasted for a good five days,” Hussain said. “More people took advantage that the shops were closed and went out to loot.”\nWithin one hour, Jafarey said, about 200 banks were robbed. ATMs were broken and left strewn in the road. Businesses, including food markets, were shut down for three days and vendors sold meat for three times the normal price. Gas prices soared to almost $10 per gallon, a major burden in a third world country, Jafarey said. People burned Suzuki car showrooms and broke into BMW dealerships, driving off in the cars.\n“They broke into all of the big electronic stores and took refrigerators and TVs,” Jafarey said. “They broke into shoe stores and burned everything; no one wants shoes. I mean, they took the good shoes and destroyed everything else.” \nWhile Lahore, Pakistan, located about 643 miles from Karachi, did not experience violence or riots, businesses also ceased to operate. Junior Omar Memon, who is from Lahore, Pakistan, did not travel outside the city during his break. The shutdown, he said, lasted about five days and complicated his plans to get together with friends.\nIn addition to the looting and political unrest, Memon said, flights were delayed and the parliamentary elections originally scheduled for Jan. 8 were rescheduled, adding more pressure to what Memon called an “already tense political scene.” \nBefore her assassination, Bhutto had recently returned to Pakistan after eight years of self-imposed exile and had been warned by intelligence reports that she might be in danger of an attack, Hussain said.\n“When she left the rally, there was a boundary to where security can protect you,” he said. “Then you come to one point where only normal people are around. That’s where Benazir was told not to get out of her car. But she took the risk.” \nBoth Hussain and Memon said they were shocked when they heard about the leader’s assassination. \n“When it had happened there was confusion on TV about if she was dead or not,” Memon said. “It was pretty shocking. She was truly a leader of the people and pretty popular. She had that support. It was a tragic event. It’s really, really sad that she died.”