during any martial rule in Pakistan, resistance to the state manifests itself in regional and linguistic identification. This happens more easily among the students and youth. In recent days, during and after Musharraf's rule, one such glaring example is the sentiment of the young in Balochistan.
On the college and university campuses of Karachi in the 1980s, the walls were painted with slogans of the Jeay Sindh Students Movement, the Baloch Students Organisation, the Punjabi Students Association, the Pakhtun Students Federation and the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, etc. Left-wing and secular parties like the National Students Federation or the Peoples Students Federation were weak, divided or disorganised. Student hostels were also divided on the same lines with provincial or linguistic identities being paramount. A majority of day scholars, who were not religious and had no organised voice or identity, were attracted to the APMSO. The Mohajir Qaumi Movement, renamed Muttahida Qaumi Movement, was to be born soon. The policy of General Ziaul Haq and his state machinery to switch sides from Jamaat to the MQM in the context of provincial politics in Sindh harnessed the potential of the new party further.
At the same time, progressive political commentators across Pakistan saw a lot of promise in a lower middle class youth movement which could challenge the supremacy of feudal and elitist order. But the MQM chose a different route for itself. The MQM and its militant arm brutally crushed any dissent from within or outside the party in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. There was unprecedented torture and bloodletting in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad. Riots broke out between different linguistic groups. The government had changed and an army operation began in Sindh. It also manipulated the split that had taken place in the organisation. Thousands were killed including innocent young men, both by the state and as a result of the MQM's infighting. With the advent of the military rule in 1999, the MQM was rehabilitated.
Overstated may be but no one can deny that the MQM has a significant following. The only way Karachi can be prevented from becoming a Beirut or Sarajevo is for the MQM to take lead in denouncing violence.
The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and rights campaigner. Email: harrisspopk.org