I knew coming to Karachi could be dangerous. It is Pakistan's largest and most volatile city, and it has a reputation for being chaotic and unpredictable. As a journalist who is interested in covering the world, I knew I could not be in a better place.

In the three months that I have been here, I have noticed that this can be a beautiful city with great culture and flavor. But anyone who lives here will quickly remind you that Karachi was a killing field in the 1990s. Political and sectarian violence ruled the streets and most foreigners would not dare to travel here.

The mayhem and madness of the old days took over again last weekend. The flare-up was rooted, most recently, in the suspension earlier this year of Pakistan's chief justice by the country's president, General Pervez Musharraf. For most of Saturday, parts of Karachi looked and felt like Baghdad, Beirut or Sarajevo. The line I have always hated in local television news was finally accurate: It truly looked like a war zone. And the saddest part is that most people, from the shopkeepers to the rickshaw drivers to leading journalists, knew it was going to happen, but there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Traveling around the city last Thursday night I could feel something was different. I told my wife I thought the city felt more tense, and she agreed. You could see it on people's faces; they could predict that a dangerous political confrontation was on the way. We have not been out on the streets since.

I am in Karachi working as a consultant, helping to launch a 24-hour English-language television news channel for GEO-TV. As I watched video of the violence coming into our newsroom and tried to get a glimpse from the hotel, I could think only of the correspondents and photographers out there whom I have been training for the past eight weeks. Journalists in this part of the world seemingly have no fear. They don't wear helmets or flak jackets. They just go out there with pen, pad and camera and do the best they can. One of the courageous things I saw was one of my trainees, GEO correspondent Faheem Siddiqui, dodging bullets to separate a group of men fighting in the middle of a street.

Monday I went to work, which doesn't require me to leave the hotel grounds, to act as news director or editor for the English bulletin. That broadcast will be the centerpiece of the new channel. Part of my job was to go through every piece of video to make sure we used the most compelling pictures. In the process I came across the most graphic and powerful television news image I have ever seen. It is an interview with a man lying on the side of the street after he was shot several times. He is lying next to a dead man, and before he takes his final breath he is able to give his name, Bahadur. In his native Urdu language, the name means powerful and brave.

He says he was working as a bus conductor when he was shot. He dies with blood streaming from his head. You would never see this on a U.S. television network, but here in Pakistan, editors will consider using the video to show the impact of the madness. I know that a lot of editors would disagree with me, but I think this piece of video had to be shown. And it was, but it was cut before showing the moment of Bahadur's death. Being a street reporter in Minneapolis cannot prepare you for this; it is an entirely different world.

So here we are stuck in our hotel and quite frankly glad to be in a seemingly safe place. With me is a team of other consultants including former NBC News correspondent David Hazinski, who has covered many armed conflicts. He now leads The University of Georgia's broadcast journalism school and runs his own broadcast consulting company, which is what brought me to Karachi. Also on the team is veteran ABC News producer Mike Tuggle, who works for the network in Baghdad.

Tuggle suggested that we develop an evacuation plan. We have now done that. The hotel backs up to a channel of the Arabian Sea and it would be possible to jump on a boat. Still it is uncomfortable to think that we my have to be ferried to Dubai or another city in Pakistan. Nobody here believes this will happen, but this is Karachi and you have to ready for anything.

We don't know when we will be able to leave to go to the store or the gym as we had been doing for the past few months. Of course this small inconvenience doesn't compare to the agony and devastation some people here are experiencing. The fighting has slowed down a bit now that the Pakistani Army Rangers are in the streets, but journalists and others I have talked to here believe this is just the beginning.

Karachi is always a so-called hot spot because anything can and will happen here. At the moment, all of Pakistan is as hot as it has been in years. The entire country from Quetta to Peshawar to Karachi is experiencing some sort of conflict. After the carnage in Karachi of the past several days, I wonder what the future holds for Musharraf, who is arguably America's most important ally in its war on terror, at least in this part of the world. Some political analysts here believe he has been severely weakened.  

My heart breaks for Karachi, a city by the sea that would be one of the great cities of the world, if only the people here could find peace and security.