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Pakistani businessmen are veterans of political crises, but this time they say it's different.
From self-employed truck drivers to wealthy factory owners, no one can recall anything like the violence that shook Pakistan after last week's murder of former premier Benazir Bhutto.
"This is the worst situation we've ever faced," said Barkat Ali, surveying the charred remains of a petrol station and restaurant he and his brother-in-law set up in Karachi four years ago.
"Right now, the security is present," Ali added, eyeing a few soldiers patrolling nearby in an industrial area of Pakistan's largest city. "But if they leave the area, the fear is there. It's never happened before."
The Korangi industrial estate looks like a war zone: dozens of trucks have been torched and their remains flank both sides of the main street. Two trucks laden with wheat were still smouldering five days after Bhutto's assassination.
Her murder at an election-campaign rally unleashed a whirlwind of anger, especially in Karachi, capital of Bhutto's home province. Mobs torched buildings, vehicles and trains. Businesses were looted.
"They burned our factory. It's a total loss," said Rashid Ali Warraich.
Hundreds of rioters attacked the small factory a day after Bhutto's assassination.
"This is the first time they have come in the factory and burned, in all history," said Warraich who, like other Karachi businessmen, admits to having been shocked out of his previous stoicism about Pakistan's history of political unrest.
"We think this could be the beginning ... we are afraid for next time."
Industrialists up and down the country are counting their losses. Though only a dozen or more small factories were burned down in Karachi, the worst-affected area, fear brought virtually all of Pakistani industry to a halt: for at least three days, workers stayed home; roads, railways and ports were deserted.
There was no one to either make or move goods.
The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates losses in the first four days after Bhutto's killing amounted to almost US$1 ($1.3) billion - equal to about half of a percentage point of gross domestic product, based on official GDP data.
"I have never seen ... so many cars burned," said chamber chief Shamim Ahmed Shamsi.
Rukhsar Ahmed, who part-owns a small roadside cafe for workers in the Korangi estate, agrees. His modest two-storey building, which doubled as his home, was looted and torched.
"It scares me that someone might come and do the same thing tomorrow," said Ahmed, who has few possessions left. "But you have to earn your living."
Ahmed and his partners, all rural villagers trying to make their fortune in Karachi, are starting again. He has already borrowed money from a relative to re-equip the kitchen.
Barkat Ali, who estimates he and his brother-in-law lost almost 30 million rupees ($637,041) in the attacks on their petrol station and restaurant, thinks he, too, will have to start again from scratch.
- Reuters
