The battle for Karachi

The Mutahidda Qaumi Movement founder Altaf Hussain wants an impartial army crackdown in Karachi to cleanse the city of armed terrorists. He has also warned that no one can steal the MQM vote-bank. The ANP also wants Karachi handed over to the army for a month and as per the party’s federal minister, Haji Ghulam Bilour, the city should be de-weaponised during the operation.

The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party has rejected demands for army deployment and has authorised the president, Asif Ali Zardari, to bring all the political parties, including the MQM, together to restore peace in Karachi.

Meanwhile, the city continues to throw up dead bodies. Given the reasons for violence, chances are that it will not abate, despite lull periods.

The MQM knows it is losing control of the city. The demographics of the city are changing with continuing influx of the Pashtun. That is a cause for worry for the MQM. But the MQM’s fear factor goes beyond having more Pashtun. What makes it worse is that the party is convinced that the ruling PPP is embarked on a plan to reduce political space for the MQM in urban Sindh. This is where three more factors come in.

The foremost is local bodies. The Musharraf devolution plan worked greatly to the MQM’s advantage. It allowed the party to retain that plinth on which the other two levels of its vote, provincial and national assembly, are placed. That system is gone, replaced with the commissionerate system. Not only does the new system bring in a bureaucrat where the MQM had, and would have had, its mayor, the five towns under the system, without the MQM mayor at the apex of the pyramid, mean segregation of the MQM’s local government and political space.

This, if the MQM were to allow, would mean the party’s vote disaggregation over time. And it won’t just work at the local level but also manifest itself at the provincial and national levels. For the MQM, this becomes a matter of life and death. At the operational level, the Sindhi influx into the city following the 2010 floods also plays out in favour of the PPP.

At this stage, the PPP also finds itself in alliance with the Awami National Party. The ANP, given the rising Pashtun population in the city, justifiably wants a share in the city’s resources, including capturing the Pashtun vote. Its revisionism finds affinity in the PPP plan. In this trilateral struggle, the PPP and the ANP are loosely affiliated against the MQM.

There are guns on all sides and there are motives too. Karachi has seen much violence since 1984 and the early- to mid-nineties were bad. But what is different this time round, as Zahid Hussain pointed out to me, is the near-complete collapse of law enforcement. “In the nineties, whether it was the Sharif government or Bhutto’s second tenure, they acted as the government to quell violence. This time round the very parties in power are also actors challenging each other on the streets and killing,” Hussain said.

He is right. Another dangerous development is the introduction by the PPP of the until now dormant Haqiqi element. With Afaq Ahmed’s release, we now have the prospect of the administration reviving the MQM versus Haqiqi mortal combat. Not surprisingly, the recent round has seen violence in the eastern parts of the city, traditionally Haqiqi hubs.

Altaf Hussain’s call for army deployment has thus to be seen in light of the pressure the MQM is feeling. Some sources also say the army has been signalling to the MQM to not rock the boat for the PPP. If it is true that the British government played a role in getting Altaf Hussain to accept the reinstatement of Governor Ishrat-ul Ibad, then we have reason to believe that Altaf Hussain fears the PPP is encircling the MQM.

The ANP, for its part, wants an electoral presence commensurate with the rising Pashtun vote, but it would not like to get locked into a persistent confrontation with the MQM. Recent violence, as also previous rounds, have seen many Pashtun killed. This is why the ANP also desires limited army deployment. And while it might play on the side of the PPP for now, it does not appear that the ANP wants anything more than an acceptance by the MQM of its legitimate share of political space.

The PPP is embarked on a more ambitious and ruthless game-plan. It has decided to do unto the MQM what the MQM up until now has done unto others.

This is what I wrote last August in The Friday Times:

“I had a chance meeting over lunch with Interior Minister Rehman Malik at Peshawar’s Bala Hisar Fort on July 5. Among other issues, the situation in Karachi came under discussion. Because some of the details were off the record, let me just say that he believed – and I agreed with him – that if a compromise formula were not worked out soon, Karachi could see a bloodbath.

“But while agreeing with him that efforts were needed to defuse immediate tensions, I pointed out that no compromise formula was likely to hold for long unless some basics were addressed. To that he agreed.”

The basic issue is MQM’s acceptance of the fact that Karachi is a multi-ethnic city and that must also reflect in peoples’ political choices. While the MQM is within its legitimate mandate to canvass anyone for more votes, it cannot continue to hold the city in its iron grip. The PPP must realise that this war may have unintended consequences. If the MQM wants an impartial purge of the city, let the PPP take it up on that demand. The ANP, which was fierier last year, has come to rationalise the situation much better. That’s a good beginning for a dialogue and accommodation.

But most importantly, let no one pull the Haqiqi genie out of the bottle. A return to the early nineties is to no one’s advantage.

The writer is Contributing Editor, The Friday Times.