Haqiqi left in the lurch?

As the latest band of dissidents — now under the ‘Pak Sarzameen Party’ banner — 
rise up against the MQM, future again uncertain for Afaq’s resurgent group  

Karachi

The Mohajir Qaumi Movement - commonly known as Haqiqi, a title it no longer uses - is seemingly in a position where it does not fit into the current scheme of things, with Mustafa Kamal and his band of dissidents replacing it as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s major rival.

As such, Haqiqi leaders concede that they have been analysing the city’s politics after the emergence of Kamal and his group, which was christened ‘Pak Sarzameen Party’ at a ceremony held in the metropolis yesterday. 

“We appreciate that Mustafa Kamal and Anees Qaimkhani have dared to speak the truth, but our leader Afaq Ahmed has been saying it since 1991,” said a key Haqiqi leader.

“Now we have to see whether Kamal and the other dissident leaders will expand their activities to the Mohajir-populated neighbourhoods of Karachi, or will they opt for the comfortable confines of that Defence Housing Authority bungalow, where they enjoy speaking to reporters and taking selfies.”

On March 3, Kamal and Qaimkhani, two key leaders of the MQM, had levelled serious allegations against the party chief Altaf Hussain and announced that they were forming a new, as-yet unnamed, political party.

So far, five more MQM leaders, Dr Sagheer Ahmed, Raza Haroon, Waseem Aftab, Anees Advocate and MPA Iftikhar Alam, have jumped ship. 

It is expected that more MQM leaders will defect to their side in the near future and there are also speculations that Haqiqi’s Afaq Ahmed might join Kamal and Qaimkhani in the coming days.

However, Haqiqi leaders refuted these rumours.

Shamshad Ghauri, the Haqiqi’s central vice chairperson, refused to comment on Kamal’s party. However, he said his party was carefully observing the developments.

“Our main focus is on the PS-115 by-poll where our candidate, Jamil Qadri, is contesting,” Ghauri told The News.

Lines Area and its adjacent localities, neighbourhoods considered Haqiqi strongholds and which remained ‘no-go areas’ for the MQM for 11 years, fall in the constituency PS-115, from where Arshad Vohra, an MQM MPA, resigned for contesting the local government polls and has since been nominated by the party for the slot of Karachi’s deputy mayor.

Interestingly, Waseem Akhter, who has been nominated for the seat of mayor, was also elected in Lines Area in the local government elections.    

“We are not in touch with Kamal and Qaimkhani,” said another key Haqiqi leader. He advised the leaders of the party to join them as over 500 members, including its central leaders, have been killed since 1992 by the party they had recently left.

“We are against stopping someone from engaging in politics in certain areas of the city. Kamal and Qaimkhani should follow us and go to all parts of the city, open party offices and take part in electoral activities,” he added.

Different from the 1991 split?

Political analysts, who covered the formation of the Haqiqi faction, believe that today’s situation is entirely different than that witnessed in the 1990s.

In 1992, the then government had launched a military operation against the MQM after the alleged involvement of its men in the abduction and torturing a serving army official.

Two key MQM leaders - Afaq Ahmed and Aamir Khan – had formed a dissident group, the MQM-Haqiqi, which grew in strength because of the operation.

At the time, many of the party’s key district heads and sitting MNAs and MPAs had joined the Haqiqi faction, and the areas of Landhi, Malir, Shah Faisal Colony, Lines Areas, and some pockets in Liaquatabad and New Karachi had fallen completely under their control.

“The MQM was present in these areas but, on the organisational front, the party had no influence there and these became no-go areas for them until 2003.”

Hundreds of activists and supporters were killed in violent clashes between the two factions.

However, the situation is different now even in the wake of a Rangers-led operation in Karachi that started in September 2013.

“We cannot call it an operation like the one that was carried out before. In the 1992 operation, the MQM exploited the sense of ‘victimisation’ as the death toll was much higher at that time,” said Riaz Sohail, a journalist who covers the city’s politics.

Even the MQM’s own statistics show that the number of its activists killed, or those who went missing, is very low in comparison with that in the 1992 operation.

Insignificance of Haqiqi

After its complete influence in some areas of Karachi for over a decade, the Haqiqi faction has been losing strength since 2003, when the MQM, after supporting General (Retd) Pervez Musharaf’s military regime, used government machinery against its rival, expelling it from its strongholds and putting the two key leaders, Ahmed and Khan, behind bars. Then a split occurred within Haqiqi after differences developed between Ahmed and Khan while they were in prison, causing violent clashes between their supporters. Later, Khan and his colleagues rejoined the MQM in May 2011. 

Analysts say Haqiqi had now become irrelevant in the city’s politics today.

“The Haqiqi has significantly lost its strength because until the operation started in September 2013, their workers remained underground for around a decade and the return of Khan, along with his team, to the MQM affected it badly too,” Sohail told The News.

Although the ongoing Rangers’ targeted operation provided a safe environment in local government polls, the Haqiqi could not win a single councilor seat from the areas it once dominated, such as Landhi and Lines Area, he maintained.

Impact on MQM 

On March 18 – its 32nd foundation day – the MQM showed its strength against the backdrop of the recent rebellion in the party by Kamal and Qaimkhani.

“Our successful rally was in fact a message to those forces which want to divide the party and disregard the people’s mandate,” said Aminul Haque, the MQM’s spokesperson. “The conspiracies of 1992 are being repeated even today. But they won’t be successful”.

Although the MQM’s vote bank and support at the street level are still intact as indicated in the recent local government polls and the NA-246 by-election, political analysts believe that the ongoing operation has weakened the party’s muscle group, as members of the party’s ‘armed group’ have either been arrested or forced into hiding. 

That is also reason that the MQM could no longer shut the city down within minutes and failed to stop the Haqiqi men returning to their areas, including Landhi and Lines Area, hoisting party flags on main roundabouts, and contesting the polls from those areas, a police officer told The News.

Qaimkhani has served as the MQM’s main man in dealing with the party’s original organisational grid, including sectors and units that supervise the daily and local activities of the party.

“He could try to woo the in-charges of some sectors and units by persuading them to move away from their militant past after giving them assurance of the government’s amnesty,” said a senior police official.

Instead of tackling the rivals through violent means, the MQM has also changed its strategy and using ‘soft’ methods, including organising public rallies and running a city clean-up campaign, to consolidate its support base on the ground.

For MQM’s Haque, these efforts would make it even more difficult for anyone to dent his party’s popularity. The jury, though, is still out on whether the strategy would bear fruit.