A love-hate relationship

Legal eye
What is most striking about the BBC’s report that the MQM’s militants are trained in India, which also funds the MQM’s purchase of weapons? That key sources of the story are Pakistani authorities and yet Pakistan has never taken a formal position on the MQM’s alleged links to India. There is nothing newsworthy about what has being reported by the BBC. What is newsworthy is that a credible broadcast agency is backing what SSP Rao Anwar and others have alleged: the MQM is mixed with terrorism and is funded and assisted by India.
The MQM is the most popular political party in urban Sindh. It continues to win by a landslide in all elections that it contests in the province. Anyone who assumes control of the centre invites the MQM as a coalition partner (the present PML-N government being an exception). The governor of Sindh, who belongs to the MQM, has been the longest serving governor in Pakistan. While appointed by General Musharraf as federation’s representative, he was retained by the PML-Q, then by the PPP and now by the PML-N.
Notwithstanding the MQM’s strong political credentials and it remaining a part of almost all governments since 1989, the MQM probably remains the most hated political entity outside urban Sindh and the most feared within Sindh. The MQM rejects allegations that it is linked with crime and terror and pleads a grand conspiracy and ethnic prejudice to explain the animus against it. The most common counter-argument is that where there is smoke there is fire. Neither the allegations nor the denials seem to explain the whole picture.
Isn’t it time for the military to settle its love-hate relationship with the MQM? Why is it that when politicos are in power the military wishes to clean Karachi up and when khakis are in power they find themselves allied with the MQM? It was under the watch of General Asif Nawaz that the GHQ-backed Rangers launched Operation Cleanup. That is when MQM-Haqiqi was launched and Pakistan first heard of Jinnahpur. His predecessor General Waheed Kakar continued the operation (was it called Operation Blue Fox then?).
Notwithstanding the intermittent operation from 1992 to 1996, the party was back in the PML-N government in 1997. Things changed with the murder of Hakim Saeed and the allegations that MQM workers were involved (later rejected by the courts).
After Musharraf grabbed power he vowed to clean up the political stables and introduced laws to provide the state with the required tools. One such law was the Political Parties Order, 2002, section 15 of which states that, “where the federal government is satisfied that a political party is a foreign-aided party or has been formed or is operating in a manner prejudicial to the sovereignty or integrity of Pakistan or is indulging in terrorism” it will forward a reference to the Supreme Court seeking the party’s dissolution.
The same year in December Musharraf appointed Dr Ishrat-ul-Ebad as governor Sindh. Dr Ebad had gone ‘underground’ to avoid arrest when Operation Cleanup was launched by the military in 1992. His fortune stood reversed within a decade of being appointed the youngest governor of Sindh despite a number of criminal cases pending against him.
Around the same time, Altaf Hussain reportedly had Nirj Deva (later a nember of the European Parliament) deliver a letter (dated 23.09.2001) to Tony Blair, offering (among other things) street protests in favour of the west’s war on terror and human intelligence in Pakistan in return for (among other things) equitable participation in running Sindh and the federation and shutting down the ISI, which if not disbanded, according to the alleged MQM letter, would “continue to produce Osama Bin-Ladens and Talibans.”
In 2007, Musharraf had also promulgated the infamous National Reconciliation Ordinance. The MQM and its leaders, including Altaf Hussain and Dr Ebad, were key beneficiaries of the law till the Supreme Court struck it down for being unconstitutional.
In September 2011, Zulfiqar Mirza had alleged that Altaf Hussain wrote to Downing Street seeking the ISI’s dissolution. The MQM denied the allegation. In July 2013, the British government reportedly confirmed that Altaf Hussain had written to Tony Blair. In 2013, then Major General Rizwan Akhtar (now DG ISI) had appeared before the Supreme Court in the Sindh law and order case and reportedly stated that militant wings of political parties were responsible for violence in Karachi.
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) reports submitted to the apex court during its proceedings also included gory details about the alleged involvement of political parties, especially the MQM, with violence and terror. Earlier this year Rangers submitted a JIT report to the Sindh High Court in the Baldia factory fire case, which included the allegation by a self-professed MQM worker that the MQM was responsible for the arson attack on the Baldia factory, triggered by failure of factory owners to comply with the MQM’s extortion demands.
Then we witnessed the melodrama surrounding Saulat Mirza’s confessional statements implicating the MQM and its top leaders in all things ill and evil. Inspector General Prisons Balochistan ordered an inquiry to determine how the statement of a death row prisoner made it to primetime TV leaving no fun in guessing who could possibly have managed the leak. In March, the Rangers raided MQM headquarters, recovered illegal weapons and arrested some of its leaders.
Two suspects in Imran Farooq’s murder case (allegedly MQM workers), Mohsin Ali Syed and Khalid Shamim, have reportedly been in the ISI’s custody for years. This week they were reportedly ‘arrested’ by the FC while entering into Balochistan from Afghanistan. The interior minister also announced that British authorities have been allowed to interrogate them in relation to the Dr Imran Farooq case.
It is in this backdrop that the latest BBC report has been released. But notwithstanding the BBC’s credibility, can such reports sway opinion in the one place where it primarily matters – that is, the MQM’s constituency in urban Sindh?
General Asif Nawaz had reportedly proposed Operation Clean Up in 1989 in his capacity as corps commander, which was shot down by General Aslam Beg, the then army chief. General Beg was ethnically ‘Urdu-speaking’. The Karachi operation commenced in 1992 after Asif Nawaz took over as army chief. The next time the MQM was back on the right side of the military (since its creation in General Zia’s days) was during Musharraf’s time. General Musharraf, ethically, was also ‘Urdu-speaking’.
There is now a new military high command in place and the MQM is once again in the dock. The point being made is not that the MQM is innocent (even if it ought to be deemed innocent until proven guilty as a legal matter). There are gruesome allegations and plenty of anecdotal evidence that make it hard to give the MQM the benefit of the doubt. The point is that the perception that the fate of MQM depends on the transient political interests of military leadership or the ethnic identity of the civil-military elite in power is inimical to Pakistan’s cohesion.
Whether it is the broadcast of Saulat Mirza’s allegations, leaks to the BBC or orchestrated arrests of Dr Imran Farooq murder suspects, the games being played in trying the MQM are further undermining the credibility of our state’s law-enforcement paraphernalia. If MQM leaders are to be tried, they must be tried on the principle that we must show zero-tolerance for terror and violence in all its manifestations. And for that the process must be so trustworthy that even those sympathetic to the MQM agree that justice is not just being done but is also being seen to be done.
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad
Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu