MQM in time and space

Much praise has been heard from different quarters to the effect that the Rangers-led operation has been undeniably successful in reducing violence in Karachi. Hundreds of target killers are said to have been arrested and all political parties and criminal gangs have had action taken against them. There has even been less ‘collateral damage’ in the form of police encounters than during previous operations. But what has also been pointed out is that there are still lessons that may not have been learned from the 1990s. The action against the MQM seems to have gone beyond eliminating the criminal and violent element in the party and the perception is growing that there is an attempt to actively sabotage its future. Just as the Haqiqi faction was created in the 1990s to break up the MQM, now Mustafa Kamal’s Pak Sarzameen Party is understood to have been put forward as an alternative. Such groups need to emerge organically. When they are imposed on the people artificially, we end up seeing the kind of brutal turf battles and violence which accompanied operations in the past. Right now, offices of the MQM are being sealed around the country and Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has said action can also be taken on any office where there is suspicion of illegal activity even if most of its work is legitimate. The result of this will be to alienate MQM supporters and sympathisers. The MQM leadership in Karachi is clearly asking for space and trying to redefine the party. It has clearly distanced itself from Altaf Hussain and his descent into madness. The MQM leadership in Karachi deserves that chance because, whether some like it or not, it is still an authentic representative of its constituency and has a sizeable presence in the assemblies. The party must turn a new leaf and this it should be allowed to do so with fairness and political sagacity without any a predetermined agenda to kill off the party.

The ongoing operation has caught target killers affiliated to every political party. It has been pointed out by media commentators that in Lyari, for example, the PPP used the Amn Committee of Uzair Baloch as a proxy. That did not lead to calls for the PPP to be banned, for its offices to be sealed and for factions within the party to denounce its entire national leadership. Rather, the PPP was given a chance to end its association with the Amn Committee. Those of its members that swore allegiance to gangsters and assassins are still in the assemblies and the Senate. While the parallel, like any other, may not be exactly the same, a similar approach should be taken with the MQM. None of this, it should be clear, is meant to blur the MQM’s well-documented fondness for violence and we hope that a lesson has been learnt not only by the MQM but by those who, for a very long time, patronised the violent MQM. We should also not ignore the dynamics of the Altaf-MQM equation in the MQM’s impulse in the past to resort to violence. What is really meant here is clear in the lines above. What should be said even more clearly is that this is not a matter of the MQM begging for space and ‘commentators’ and ‘analysts’ drawing perverse pleasure from it. This is a matter of there being a level playing field in Karachi to avoid bloodbaths in the future and for politics here to grow organically without political and social engineering from above. Because that has always led to devastating consequences for the city and its people.