Sindh Diary: The MQM factor: myths and realities
Part 1
By Saeed Minhas
KARACHI: From the days of the Balochistan uprising to the Karachi riots, from blossoming of the jiyala culture to the rise of Zia-ism, from the debacle of East Pakistan to the free will of successive dictators, from the politicians’ corruption to the submissions of the judiciary, from the media’s agenda-setting role to the hijacked civil society, this nation has gone through so much that many of these things don’t raise eyebrows anymore.
The reason is that the ruling elite has always preferred to form commissions to erase the effects of the omissions of the few blessed ones and all this is done at the cost of nothing but truth and the resilient masses.
A visit to a barricaded (thus out-of-bounds for several others) headquarters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, known as Nine Zero, and interaction with the workers and leaders devoted to the vision of Altaf Hussain, was an effort to find a needle in the haystack or so to say to find out the real face of the MQM amidst all sorts of myths and realities surrounding this rising political force and its ever-imposing exiled leader.
A party or movement to push Altaf’s vision of grinding down feudalism and elitist power clubs from the political citadels sounds revolutionary, yet the tenor surrounding both the leader and the party remains covered in thick layers of mistrust. To clear the mist, I had to travel and spend some time in that environment, which has given birth to one of the most noticeable political realities of our times since the late 70s.
If the Muslim League attracted all opportunists, the Jamaat-e-Islami all conservatives and jihadis, People’s Party the liberals during the late 60s, then the MQM was the one in the late 70s, which assembled all schools of thought from a certain linguistic group in the only cosmopolitan city and economic hub of the country, Karachi.
The Mohajir Qaumi Movement – as it was initially called – was not the first one to emanate from a student organisation called the All Pakistan Mohajir Student Organisation (APMSO), but certainly was unique in the sense that it became prominent when Ziaul Haq was injecting the seeds of jihad on the borders, biradaris (communalism) in politics and Islam in the nation.
Having seen two major army operations in 1993 – during Benazir Bhutto’s second tenure – and 1997 – during Nawaz Sharif’s second tenure – and with a list of over 15,000 documented dead bodies and 28 missing persons, this political entity seems to have matured through evolution, hence renamed itself the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in 1993.
Currently, they have 25 seats in the National Assembly, six in the Senate, 51 MPs in the Sindh Assembly, nazims in two major urban centres of Sindh – Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur – besides having taluqa – town – nazims in 14 out of 18 towns, 1,136 councillors in Karachi, and 104 Union Council nazims, besides having a noticeable presence throughout various towns and union councils of Sindh. Not only that, they have earned their presence in AJK by getting two members elected in the legislative assembly and one in the Gilgit-Baltistan Assembly. So how can anyone write them off as a rising political force?
After their first major attempt to launch in Punjab during Gen (r) Musharraf’s tenure, which was thwarted by their political ally at that time – the PML-Q – they are at it again. With a possible quid pro quo arrangement with the obvious custodians of the Punjabi pugg – turban, an element of pride – they plan to venture into Punjab’s electoral politics through the upcoming local bodies’ elections, thus establishing their bases in a province that is considered an epicentre of Pakistani politics, after Sindh.
With over 54 percent of the political clout, Punjab remains a target for the MQM, but the question remains that with all their baggage, ranging from tainted perception regarding sending bags of dead bodies to Punjab to their alliances with past dictators, from their emergence as a political reality to their opposition on their ethnic prudence, will they be able to translate their dreams into a reality by reaching out to Punjab? Will they be seen from the prism of the past or will they be judged from their revolutionary political philosophy in other federating units, so they can bridge the trust deficit they have developed or have become a victim of since their creation. “Of course we are a victim of propaganda and being the custodian of an urban middle-class, which represents not only the highest literacy rate in the country bu also the highest per capita income graphs, our forward march has never been welcomed by the establishment,” commented a group of senior MQM leaders while sitting in the party headquarters. “The reason is that Altaf Bhai has challenged the authority of those who have ruled this country for years without giving anything to the people, so how would they allow a revolutionary leader with an agenda for a real change to rise above the personal agendas and deliver to the common man,” questioned a senior member of the party’s Rabita Committee. No matter who opposes them or who lures them to their side to ensure smooth governance, the party’s vocal leader, Altaf Hussain, living in self-exile in London since 1993, continues to create ripples in the country’s politics with his political clout in Karachi and its adjoining districts Hyderabad, Sukkur and beyond. How they plan to force their political march forward will be discussed in our next column.
* To be continued