Nationally, the political temperature is rising with the advent of winter. November is set to begin with a bang, with proceedings that will be launched in the serene precincts of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the riotous agitation that is to be staged on the broad avenues of Islamabad. And the leading players are making their moves against the backdrop of visible tension between the civilian and military arms of the ruling establishment. It is a time for nervous speculation about what might happen in the coming weeks and months.
But my sights are set on Karachi. This week has underlined the prospect of a new and possibly violent episode in the saga of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). The breakdown of a party of the stature and the history of the MQM is bound to create a monumental mess in a city that is already seething with civic and social disorder.
I say this in spite of the gains that have been made during the Karachi operation continuing for more than three years. The Rangers have led a concerted attack on the MQM militants and the Lyari gangs, sometimes with questionable means. The pall of fear that hung over the city has considerably been lifted. A number of target killers have been arrested or killed in encounters.
In addition, the Sindh government is aiming to take command and the new chief minister has demonstrated the kind of dynamism that one no longer associates with the leaders of the PPP. He has partially succeeded in energising the provincial administration. That the PPP is striving to establish its foothold in the city was demonstrated by the rally last Sunday, led by Bilawal Zardari Bhutto.
Karachi is a battlefield where a fateful contest for power will be decided during the next general elections. Because the MQM is losing its veto power – and that is how it should be also for demographic reasons – the PPP has an opportunity if it plays its cards well. But the party of Imran Khan had a better chance to provide the traditional MQM voters a parking place, after the elections of 2013. But you can always trust the PTI to spoil its own chances.
In that sense, the battle for Karachi is fairly open at this time. The big question is whether any break-away faction of the MQM will be able to recapture the party’s original constituency. The catch here is that the power that the party had exercised emanated, so to say, from the barrel of a gun. Just look at the charges that the former stalwarts of Altaf Hussain are levelling against each other. This, specifically, is the focus of my column this week.
I am referring to one specific confrontation. In one corner, we have Mustafa Kamal, the former mayor of Karachi who cast the first stone, from within the party, on Altaf’s leadership in March and formed his own Pak Sarzameen Party. In the other corner, incredibly, is Isharatul Ibad, the serving governor of the province who is comfortably lodged in his seat for 14 years, having initially been nominated by Altaf. His capacity for survival is astounding.
Yet, he lost his cool on Wednesday and pounced upon Mustafa Kamal with the ferocity of a tiger. However, he expressed his regrets on Friday night and said that he was stepping out of the ring. But the statements he made on Wednesday, first to the media after an official ceremony and later in late-night talk shows cannot be disavowed. All that was not possible without a purpose.
It is true that the first punch was delivered by Mustafa Kamal on Monday by making some serious allegations against Ishratul Ibad. How the governor reacted is, if you consider the significance of his remarks, beyond belief. It amounted to not just spilling the beans but also implicating himself in some of the most heinous crimes committed in this country.
Read this headline of the story in this newspaper on Thursday: “Kamal is mean, low, bipolar person: Sindh governor”. This is how two former colleagues in a party, both equally obedient to the leader, are interpreting their shared past. Of course, Kamal retaliated with the same venom and questioned Ibad’s loyalty to the country – alleging that he had dual nationality.
A quote from the published report: “He (Ibad) said that elements involved in the killings during the mayhem in the city on 12 May 2007 would be hung at roundabouts”. This from a person who was the governor of the province at that time and so accountable for what happened. He is saying this now, nine years after the event and he has been the government during this entire period.
Mustafa Kamal said that Ibad is a key suspect in the Nishtar Park bomb blast in 1906 in which the entire leadership of the Sunni Tehreek was wiped out. Obviously, both leaders are connecting the other with some major acts of terror in which MQM militants were allegedly involved. It is remarkable that Ibad said that weapons recovered from a house in Azizabad, the MQM stronghold, were meant to fight against the army. He also invoked the murders of Hakim Said, one of the great luminaries of the city, and Azeem Tariq, the MQM leader who defied Altaf.
There is more that is happening on the MQM front and I am not taking up the conflict between the MQM Pakistan led by Farooq Sattar and the party that the London office has sponsored. Though the party is deeply wounded and is critically divided, there is no way of knowing the strength of the militants who have not been arrested or located. Can they still be called to action? The MQM was virtually an army and Altaf, until recently, led it with brutal authority. Every member had to take an oath to be totally loyal to Altaf and critics within the party were known to have been summarily executed.
With this record, Kamal and Ibad have a lot of material to throw at each other. For that matter, Farooq Sattar and all the top leadership of whichever faction of the party are a party to how the MQM exercised its power in Karachi. But no one has made a candid confession of his own culpability in the crimes that the party had committed. No one has shown that courage.
Thus, Karachi is waiting for its moment of catharsis. It is yet to be purged from the ghosts of a bloody phase in its history. Are more battles still in the offing?
The writer is a senior journalist.
Email: ghazi_salahuddinhotmail.com