Past revisited

Politics of violence threatening Karachi again

Back in the 1990s, my parents, both doctors, used to work at one of the city’s largest private hospitals in Nazimabad. They were usually home by 7 pm; any later, and we knew something was not right in the city. One night, they hadn’t returned till well past 10 pm. Those were the days when mobile phones were a luxury. Incommunicado, my grandmother had taken to the prayer mat from Isha prayers onwards. My parents eventually arrived after 11 pm, with a sordid tale of having been trapped in the midst of a skirmish between the Altaf wallahs and the Haqiqi wallahs.

More than a decade has passed since that episode but strangely, there’s a sense of déjà vu in 2011 Karachi. The only difference is that the Altaf wallahs are no longer ‘rogues’ and that, all parties now bear the establishment’s stamp of approval. In the 1990s, the blame for violence was usually on the MQM or the security forces, depending on who one supported; in 2011, I find it hard to absolve any party from the blame. The myopia of immediacy has taken the PPP, MQM and ANP all hostages, and the city is left to burn.

President Asif Ali Zardari’s policy of reconciliation postured the PPP as the elder sibling, bringing together younger, more volatile siblings to the same table. This assumption meant that the PPP was privy to all faults and drawbacks of the young ones but was ignoring them in larger interests. Of course, it also meant that Karachi would not be dragged into the violence of the 1990s.

The direction being taken by the PPP now is one decided upon by Zulfiqar Mirza and Pir Mazharul Haq, two men who will vie for the post of chief minister come next elections. The anti-MQM sentiment, especially in areas other than Karachi and Hyderabad, is one that the PPP is banking on for its electoral strategy. It is because of this element that the PPP is keen for the MQM to not only remain in a state of limbo but also to act in a manner that reinforces its perception of being a violent party.

But while not many expected the PPP-MQM relationship to last five years, the PPP’s desire to ‘expose’ the politics of MQM is meant to buttress its own support both in Karachi and the rest of Sindh along ethnic lines. In its attempt to show up the MQM as a fascist organisation, the PPP is turning to a fascist policy in Sindh – a policy which is likely to sharpen the ethnic divide in Sindh. Afaq Ahmed, chief of MQM-Haqiqi, was condemned to the dungeons by Gen Musharraf at a time when he needed Muttahida. Zulfiqar Mirza meeting Afaq – and he did so, for his word is more reliable than Sindh CM Qaim Ali Shah’s – is meant to neutralise the MQM’s clout over Karachi. With the Urdu-speaking populace divided, ANP controlling a rather emotional constituency of Pashtun in Karachi, the PPP is left with an open field to unite the Sindhi-speaking and the Baloch in Karachi.

The pretension that the MQM is the sole perpetrator of violence in Karachi, however, is not accurate. The PPP, through its clout in the gangsters of Lyari and other areas, has been violently contesting urban space with the MQM. The ANP, the most consistent partner of the PPP, has been able to provide a voice for the Pashtun – both through violent and non-violent means, and often as a defence mechanism for a populace not entirely accepted by the MQM or the Sindhi nationalists. The Sunni Tehreek has provided an umbrella for Haqiqi activists not willing to operate within the framework of their parent party. The Jamaat-e-Islami, the first beneficiary of Gen Musharraf’s local government system, is now being given more importance by the PPP due to its history of antagonism against the MQM. Sindhi nationalists operating in Karachi have not yet taken a position on the PPP-MQM divide, but their ethnic affiliations and past history with the MQM make them comfortable partners of the PPP.

The uncomfortable truth is that the lesson learnt from the decade of the 1990s by all the forces mentioned above is that power will only be achieved through the barrel of a gun. This policy is a vicious cycle: no party is willing to be a purely political force, for they all realise that abandoning violence simply means ceding space to a political rival.

It is also in this framework that the bureaucracy-run local government system needs to be understood: in the absence of a democratic framework for dispute resolution, the fault lines of conflict are bound to widen. The local government system instituted by Musharraf, while very problematic in some respects, ensured that at the very least, political cadres of the MQM were accommodated in the state machinery. Job creation translated into reduced crime and killings figures. No party, barring the MQM, is now willing to bet on this system, not because they don’t trust another but because they are reluctant to change the power structures within themselves.

As news of the Nine-Zero phone lines being disconnected were flashed last night on television, Ambassador Hussain Haqqani and Faisal Subzwari entered into a sparring match on Twitter, only that it was a bait baazi of sorts. Sadly, Twitter is not Karachi and the age of bait baazi seems to be a thing of the past.

The writer is Deputy City Editor, Pakistan Today, Karachi.