KARACHI – Let’s get something straight: despite Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s musings on the world and its secure insecurity, the relationship between the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) is not a love affair. It is not even a watta-satta affair. It is purely arranged, and that too of the forced variety. And arranged marriages are beginning to lose their charm and fail more often in our urban day and age. “Two parties in any relationship must separate before a divorce,” were the wise words of MQM’s Faisal Subzwari during a press conference early Monday morning that overshadowed proceedings in the house. As it turns out, the PPP in Karachi is desperately trying to ensure that there is no separation between the Baloch and Kutchi communities that have traditionally served as its vote bank. The MQM is, understandably, the PPP’s not-too-loved wife, and certainly not an equal partner.
Mirza, as the senior vice-president of the PPP-Sindh, understands this better than most. The home minister is an old friend of President Asif Ali Zardari. In their youth, both men were associated with the Jeay Sindh movement – their bond has survived the test of times ever since Cadet College Petaro. Zardari and Mirza were also witness to Karachi’s violent decade of the 1990s. Back then, the MQM was considered a rogue party by the establishment, with its allegedly violent ways comprising its legitimate struggle to make space in national polity for those it represented. In the Karachi that the PPP inherited from the General (retd) Musharraf regime, the MQM was a democratic and progressive force – and violence was no longer its sole preserve.
The politics of Karachi, courtesy General (retd) Musharraf, were driven by armed mafias that had cover from political and religious parties. Not to be left behind, the PPP turned to its stronghold of Lyari to find support – something that Rehman Baloch, notorious as Rehman Dakait, could offer. Dakait was the undisputed king of Lyari – an area once prosperous due to the thriving culture of sporting activity. After all, it was from Lyari that an entire football team to represent Pakistan was selected. With the onset of privatisation – and the abolishing of sports teams from many national institutions, unemployment became rampant in Lyari. The result was youngsters turning to guns, and even the drugs trade, to find some sort of empowerment. The PPP, back then, had little tangible support to offer to these disgruntled youth.
Gang wars had their own dynamics in Lyari, of justice and of retribution. Legend has it that Dakait killed his mother after a man he was supposed to kill, Babu Dakait, told him that he had been having an affair with his mother. After many twists and turns, Rehman Dakait rose from within the ranks of one gang, ultimately dethroning the reigning king of Lyari of the time and establishing his regime.
In an area plagued by strife and government apathy, Dakait also emerged as Lyari’s sole benefactor. Schools, libraries and medical facilities were set up – all this meant that Dakait had become a political challenge to the PPP in Lyari, in some ways, even a reincarnation of the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that Lyari remembered. While Dakait’s ultimate death in a police encounter gave the PPP some space to recapture its territory, it also put into prominence the People’s Amn Committee – a group formed in both Lyari and Malir, with the participation of PPP activists, and one that served to reconcile the disgruntled with the PPP.
Long story short, the only way the PPP could appease the Amn Committee was to ensure that their activities were recognised and some legal impediments removed in times of crisis. The PPP’s bargaining with the MQM over men accused in the Shershah carnage case – documented in a story published by Pakistan Today – is but one manifestation of the amends Mirza is trying to make. Mirza’s declaration on Sunday that cases against the Amn Committee activists will be looked into again is another – designed to appease those implicated in criminal cases.
Divorcing the MQM is not the PPP’s ideal choice in the current scenario, but love necessitates defining priorities. At a time when elections seem to be a realistic possibility, the PPP is returning to its vote bank in Karachi. So is the MQM, by the way, for defending its turf against the Amn Committee remains Muttahida’s responsibility to its activists. The entire hullabaloo over the Amn Committee may end with the resignation of Home Minister Mirza, but change and not love is in the air. Can the patriarchs save the forced marriage?
Turf wars before the polls?
