The MQM purge

The party’s two-faced character shall remain

“The MQM workers must reform or they risk losing me,” is the statement from the party’s chief Altaf Hussain that has been released from 90, its headquarters in Karachi.

The statement, carefully worded, appears to suggest that the MQM chief was ‘unaware’ of what the MQM workers were doing since the last decade or two. Altaf Bhai, settled in the UK since 1993, appears to have taken allegations of ‘wrongdoing’ by MQM workers seriously only post the May 11 election rigging allegations. But for those who understand the Altaf’s ‘colourful’ character would understand that it probably means something else – or nothing at all.

Such is the dual character of what the MQM mouths that almost any meaning can be ascribed to what they say. Bipolarity permeates the MQM’s political posture, from the fluctuating statements of its central leader down to the behavior of its workers, informing the party’s ideological bearings as well. Presenting itself as a party of the ‘educated, middle-class,’ its praxis is accused of reeking of a superiority complex that borders upon fascism.

This is why, for many a resident of Karachi, the week before was a scary one: with the MQM beginning with announcing a “boycott of the NA-250 election” followed up with “warning speeches” from Altaf Bhai and ending at a process of purging the MQM of “unwanted elements.”

When the PTI support base led a protest camp against rigging in NA-250 at the Teen Talwar on May 12, the MQM chief gave a chilling warning in a televised telephonic address, “Our workers know how to make the teen talwar alive.” Faced with criticism from television anchors, one MQM leader suggested that Altaf was not making a threat, but making a symbolic reference. He pointed to the “Unity, Faith, Discipline” written on the Teen Talwar’s and said Altaf was saying MQM workers can bring these to life.

In his own defence, Altaf spoke again the next evening, and left no room for such subtlety, “O television anchors, O the politicians of yesterday, do not taunt Altaf Hussain. If one of these millions of supporters loses his cool, then do not blame Altaf Hussain.” When two days later, and the night before the NA-250 re-polling, the PTI leader Zahra Hussain was shot down outside her house, the fingers were pointed in the direction they were supposed to.

The MQM went on a counter attack – with personality attacks made on PTI chief Imran Khan, clandestine threats made to PTI supporters while expressing sympathy with the murdered PTI leader and calls for a judicial inquiry into the matter.

The two faces of the MQM were on full display. The first, the face that projects its victimhood; the second, the face that threatens violence if the first face is not accepted.

One face of the MQM projects the solution, the other face of the MQM is the problem.

There a long list of examples that project such a dual face. If one remembers, in the midst of the 2010 Karachi violence, the MQM tabled a Disarmament Bill in the Sindh Assembly. Observers considered the move cynical as a bulk of the violence allegations were against the MQM itself. Similarly, faced with rigging allegations in the 2013 elections, the MQM was the first to call a press conference against ‘rigging’ and boycotted the NA-250 polls. When the current Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry arrived in Karachi on May 12, 2007, in the middle of his standoff Gen. Musharraf, the MQM was held responsible for the slaughter of over 40 in the streets of Karachi to “foil the visit.”

But none of this is strange for those who have studied the MQM, a party which projects itself as “middle-class, secular, anti-feudal and non-corrupt,” but engages in violence, patronage and a cultish loyalty to its head.

The origins of the party are murky and lay firmly in the possibility of “loss of privilege.” The early period after partition was one in which the mohajir community from the UP and the northern Indian provinces was able to allocate for itself both Karachi and a significant place in the bureaucracy.

It was when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto introduced the quota system in the bureaucracy that mohajir students gave rise to the slogan of ‘merit,’ since the so-called principle of merit was to their historical advantage. The All-Pakistan Mohajir Student Organisation (APMSO) was formed at Karachi University in 1977 with Altaf Hussain as its head and it began to fight the PPP support. Later, when the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) turned on the Zia regime in 1983, the then MQM was armed to fight the JI. To this period is attributed the “anti-mullah, anti-Pakthun” discourse of the MQM.

Post the 1986 riots at Pakka Qilla in Hyderabad, the MQM was said to have undergone transformation: both in popularity and its local-level leadership. Anthropologist Oscar Verkaik in the book, Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan, charts how local leaders changed from those who could be identified with the ‘salariat’ to those affiliated with ‘urban masculinity.’ By the early 1990s, the MQM had its unit structure in place which gave refuge to a new breed of urban militants; whose power was based on bhatta, land grabs and fear.

The 1992 Operation Clean Up was launched by the Benazir Bhutto government, fully aware that it had to ‘clean up’ Karachi to preserve its political power in the city. What followed was most certainly another inhuman military operation on militant proxies built up by the state itself. Not that the mohajir militant was a tame entity.

In the book, The Mohajir Militant, reportedly banned in Karachi by the MQM, Nichola Khan, another anthropologist interviews and charts the MQM’s trajectory for committing brutal violence.

While on the one side, it traces some of the revenge violence against law enforcement officials and MQM-Haqiqi faction members involved in the 1992-93 Operation Clean Up, and on the other, it charts the more fearsome edge to the MQM’s militants: they would go out and shoot Pakthuns who would sleep on Karachi’s footpaths in the droves. Some MQM militants admitted to killing over a hundred people.

The words of Altaf Hussain delivered during his six-day hunger strike in 1992 against the military operation against the MQM reverberate in 2013: “O Benazir, you are also the mother of Bilawal. Would you like me to let my supporters loose?” Later, it was when the Benazir government fell in 1996, that the MQM celebrated and began to re-group as its old leadership came out of hiding. It also aligned itself with the next Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government, as a way of protecting itself.

The same strategy continued into the Musharraf period where the MQM was perhaps the most firmly aligned party to the dictator’s government. The alignment allowed it to use the local bodies system to its advantage, and with Mustafa Kamal as mayor of Karachi, it was able to “modernize its image.” The practices of collecting bhatta and land grabs continued on the side, however, violence (apart from a few incidents, including May 12) was at a low until the next elected government came in on 2008.

Again, aligned with the PPP in both the province and the centre, the turf wars inside Karachi continued, with the “threat of MQM violence” reportedly used as a bargaining tool. The result was that the People’s Aman Committee was established with the aid of the PPP and Rangers as a militant response to the MQM’s ‘rule by fear’ motto. Known gangsters such as Arshad Pappu, known to have supported Musharraf in the 2002 elections, were thought to be linked to the MQM, and other ethnic groups, including the Awami National Party (ANP), also raised their own militias.

The reason for the current purge, which has claimed amongst others MQM’s de facto Pakistan head Farooq Sattar, is speculated to be three factors. One, that it ceded space to the new Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). Two, that it was unable to spread beyond Karachi and Hyderabad, despite a significant push towards entering Punjab. Three, the local organizations “inability to protect Altaf Hussain from attacks.” The third factor is the one that is the most fearsome. The question is: what form of “silencing criticism” does Altaf Bhai prefer? Does he wish that the MQM’s local leadership eliminate the critics or the causes for criticism?

With press releases from the MQM’s reshaped Rabita Committee suggesting that the “causes for criticism” are being factored in; with admissions that MQM members were involved in bhatta and land grabs. But with the process of cleansing the MQM still as secretive as anything else about the MQM, no one from the outside is in a position to comment about the intent of the MQM’s apparent facelift.

But there is another lesson for the MQM’s detractors. Whatever their opinion of Altaf’s antics may be, they resonate with the MQM support base. One must also look at the fate of the three political parties that supported the Musharraf dictatorship. The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) were voted out in the 2013 elections, while the MQM has still survived. The fact speaks something of the resilience of the MQM; built up in the 80s, butchered in the early 90s, tainted in the 2000s, but it is still up and running.

The current MQM facelift may lead to a few months of relative calm, especially with pressure up on Altaf Hussain after thousands of complaints to the British Metropolitan Police forced them to start an inquiry, but without greater transparency in the party’s internal processes, its two-faced character is set to continue into the medium-term future.

The writer is the general secretary (Lahore) of the Awami Workers Party. He is a journalist and a researcher. Contact: [email protected]