close
Tuesday March 19, 2024

Monsters made

By Kamila Hyat
September 01, 2016

The sequence of events in Karachi involving the MQM and its chief, Altaf Hussain, a man who may well have parted ways with sanity, leaves a chill in the air.

It reminds us that many Frankensteins with their laboratories have been at work in our country over the years, conducting their uncontrolled, dangerous experiments. The monsters they created still walk with us, unleashed from the masters who once instructed them and as such able to wreak terrible havoc. They operate now on their own, challenging those who once commandeered them.

For over two years now, as the Karachi operation has continued, the MQM has been locked in battle with the establishment. From London, Altaf has used venom and open verbal abuse as a weapon, lashing out at the ‘enemy’.

Amidst the vitriol and drama it is easy to forget that three decades ago, in the mid-1980s, it was the same offices that created the party based along lines of ethnicity as a means to expand and consolidate their own power that are directing force at MQM targets as a part of the ‘minus-Altaf’ now.

Altaf Hussain was used for power purposes and subsequently as a handy partner in other games. When there were strains in the relationship new MQM factions were quickly created as a counter-force, contributing to the criminalisation of Karachi and the anguish of its people as mafias took a growing hold on lives.

The tactics today have not changed. Yes, the increasingly instable Altaf is now a declared enemy. But there is almost no talk of how he was elevated to the position of Don, or of the years through which he and the establishment remained wrapped in a close embrace.

The belief of the establishment that it is destined to manage the country and run its affairs has in many ways shaped us, and created the problems we today confront. Other monsters too stride across our land. These include the Taliban and other extremist groups, set up, funded and trained for strategic purposes and for the policies devised by leaders who through most of our history have donned the familiar khaki uniform that we associate with power and authority.

Even sectarian divides are believed to have been deliberately and maliciously formulated under General Ziaul Haq’s evil policy of creating a fractured society which could resist his dictatorship less effectively.

Today we live under the darkness these doctrines created. We have seen massacres of Shias in Karachi, in the Kurram Agency, of Shia Hazaras in Quetta and much more. The Taliban of course have turned their guns and bombs and suicide vests on us. Our children have died; so have our brave soldiers.

It is important to discuss the degree to which establishment intervention has affected our country. While today the issue of corruption surrounds Nawaz Sharif, it should not be forgotten that an entirely corrupt act involving the distribution of vast sums of money by the ISI in order to ensure a victory at the 1990 elections for Sharif and his PML-N brought the man to power as prime minister for the first time. He was an establishment puppet, the strings attached under the supervision of General Zia when he first took over as chief minister of Punjab and then used for many years afterwards.

Similar attempts to manipulate events have taken place at other times. The PML-Q and the Chaudhry family were pushed into the limelight under another dictatorship; that of General Musharraf. Without this backing, it is unlikely they would have risen to power. Today, with the prop pulled away, they have sunk back into virtual irrelevance. But the repeated efforts to remove decision-making from the hands of people and instead follow plans drawn up outside parliament and without the consent of people has created the warped political entity we today try to understand and to manage.

There has never been any acceptance of responsibility for all that happened. Even after the Supreme Court passed down a judgment in 2012 in the Asghar Khan case, ruling that the 1990 election had indeed been stolen, those responsible lost none of their swagger and none of their poise.

The ground shook under no one and there has been very little questioning of institutions’ role role in our political system despite the evidence put forward before the court of how the results of an entire election were stage-managed, duping people, ensuring the PPP was kept out of power and in effect making the process of balloting which lies at the centre of any democratic system essentially meaningless.

We feel and note intervention in other ways at virtually every juncture. There appears to be little doubt that had monsters not been created we may have been able to establish a more secure and more stable country.

There is every reason to believe that people everywhere in the country know what is best for them and through an unfettered democratic process may have been able to bring to power political parties better suited to their needs. Instead, we have a state of chaos. Much time is lost trying to control individuals and groups which have run amok.

Amidst the war against the militants, the operation in Karachi, the pressure on Nawaz Sharif that leaves his government increasingly crippled, parliament and the assemblies themselves lie mainly helpless as other forces determine the course of events. We have seen how damaging this has been over the decades.

Surely it is time we learned some lessons from this and understood that institutions (or elements within them) ill-suited to the purpose of democratic governance stepping in for different interests and different purposes has never worked well in any country. It has certainly not worked well for us.

Institutions need to occupy themselves essentially in performing the functions for which they were set up and in which they should specialise. Their insistence on movement outside these realms has created a kind of quagmire which is becoming harder and harder to wade through.

The latest fiasco in Karachi with the wild diatribe, Altaf Hussain, is simply proof of what has gone wrong. The question is whether we possess the ability and the acumen to correct the damage and make a new start before further losses are inflicted or whether we are going to see more robotic monsters let loose from the work units which usually manufacture them.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com