Endless endgame

It is not that things have not changed in Karachi. They have. Significantly so. No longer do you see fear rule the roost. The command system that the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s core leadership used for holding sway over all that they wished to control is broken.
The dreaded militant wing is in most cases headless and its fragments are on the run. The combination of the Rangers in the front and the entire military and intelligence establishment at their back has wrested the city’s control back from those who lived and thrived in the dark lanes. The legal, administrative, and political structure – despite its divisions and incompetence – is for the first time on the same page.
For all its reluctance and foot-dragging the Sindh government has been forced to change its ways. The MQM’s political leadership that once dominated headlines at will and commanded total control over media outlets is running for cover, requesting shelter against wide-ranging critique. The compulsion of airing Altaf Hussain’s speeches is gone. It is now a crime to project his narrative and pass on its inflammatory content. The myth of 90 has been shattered. It has been raided, its aura pulled down to the ground.
It is no longer exceptional for the MQM’s political opponents to demand trial of those who are allegedly involved in heinous activities. The person of Altaf Hussain, whose super-size birthday cakes used to be cut with a sword and a word spoken against him entailed life threats, gets berated and belittled every day. The Iron Giant now looks like a tragic tin-pot figure whose utterances defy logic and reason.
Materially, Karachi has become a far more secure place to live in. Residents speak of declining crime rate and businessmen feel more assured than before. While new investment hasn’t made much of a statement of arrival nor is there sizzling development activity driven by the private sector, the general environment for conducting business affairs has stabilised on account of the ransom mafia’s loss of power. Intelligence agencies estimate that cases of illegal (protection) money extorted by gangs have become rare. There is a sudden stop in the relentless gobbling up of government and disputed private land and most kings of land theft have either run away or gone underground.
By any stretch of imagination and on any scale of analysis this is a remarkable turnaround in the fortunes of a city that not long ago looked hopeless and at the complete mercy of thugs and goons.
But this change is precariously placed and if it is not protected and nurtured in the right way, might soon be lost. The reason behind such thoughts is fairly simple: the public face of Karachi’s problem – law and order, killing, mayhem, politically protected gangsterism – often distracts attention from the real issue: politics.
Karachi did not fall into a long death trap just because of bad luck. It slowly descended into the hellish pit of destruction and chaos because of the way its balance of political power shaped up (or was shaped by central and provincial rulers) over the years, making Altaf Hussain its central focus, and his party the fulcrum of provincial and national developments.
This centrality too has been deeply damaged on account of the establishment’s decision to withdraw its life support to the MQM’s main leaders. But the party has not been knocked out of business completely. Making the MQM’s members and numbers in the National Assembly, the Senate and the provincial assembly redundant in national decision-making is one thing; surpassing and replacing its political weight in the urban areas is quite another.
Put differently, the Karachi operation’s success on the public side of the problem is far more pronounced than progress on the real and more critical issue of the flow of provincial politics, which is running pretty much along traditional lines. There has not been any forward movement on discovering a real alternative to the choices the vast majority of the province has had to live with for decades. That is why one of the biggest defences MQM representatives offer in support of their stance on any matter is that they speak for the Urdu-speaking population and, other than them, there is one out there who can do this.
This narrative gets challenged in talk shows and press conferences by MQM opponents but on the ground it has not seen a real counter come up.
The PTI has created significant ripples in the MQM’s calm waters but it is yet to become the tide that could alter the course of Sindh’s politics. In fact its internal battles and jockeying for power and prominence are so widespread that organisationally it is in a ruinous state. Its chairman, Imran Khan, has seasonal interest in managing his party in Sindh and seems quite happy in outsourcing leadership to the local tier that is incapable of strategic thinking.
The PPP is in a slow and steady decline. It is facing challenges as grim as the MQM is but it is also in the government. Its co-chairperson is caught up in a complex web of issues and is effectively part of the problem in Sindh but its government is required to be part of the solution. This is totally ironic.
The Jamaat-e-Islami, on account of its ideological bent, has not benefited in any significant manner from the political fragmentation that Karachi’s operation has caused so far.
Sindh’s nationalist parties remain brilliant only in oratory and in beating the drum of being wronged and discriminated against. The work that is needed to create party structures at the grassroots level besides articulating an agenda that beckons different classes towards one platform is sadly missing from their politics.
The PML-N remains a distant bystander as far as Sindh is concerned. Its leadership sees the province primarily from the prism of trouble-shooting and crisis management. It has not developed any sense of the political needs of the province, nor does it seem interested in becoming politically involved in an effort to fill the emerging vacuum. In fact its leadership would not mind the present balance of political power in the province as this equation, technically, keeps the PTI away from the prospect of dominating urban politics.
With this setting in view the only alternative available to Altaf Hussain’s hold on the MQM is leadership-change from within. The names of those who have been selected for this job is Karachi’s worst kept secret and have been in currency for years now. Yet nothing of importance has happened on this front. All have been eerily quiet. They don’t seem to be convinced that the MQM’s present lords are going anywhere anytime soon.
This is a messy picture. On the one hand, big things are happening in the province and there is exceptional excitement in the chatter about history being made. On the other hand, deeper political currents seem unaffected by this storm at the surface.
Even the most prominent players in this game (and I have met quite a few in the last week in Pakistan and in London) don’t know where it is all headed. They think a revolution is in the making but they don’t know whether what they think is correct or not. They hope that Sindh’s politics may soon see structural changes but they don’t know what will replace the present lot and, more crucially, how effective the replacement is likely to be. The endgame seems to be somewhat endless at the moment.
The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.
Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com
Twitter: @TalatHussain12