Pakistan News And Discussion-11

Naresh · 05-26-2007, 01:09 PM

At last a Pakistani proving the oft repeated Pakistani Leadershipsâ Lies that the Muslims of UP, Bihar, Hyderabad, Bengal etc. were forced to flee India at the time of Partition of India :

[center]The MQM phenomenon : Ishtiaq Ahmed[/center]

May 12, 2007 saw blood spilled on the streets of Karachi as the pro-Musharraf MQM and the supporters of the non-functional Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, clashed. In the next two days more people died in gun battles and the total came to 46 and more than 150 injured. Both sides have accused the other of recourse to violence first, but the figures suggested that casualties suffered by the pro-Chaudhry elements were far greater than the MQM.

I have spent a lifetime studying collective violence and know for sure that without backing and connivance of state functionaries open gun battles and firing sprees cannot take place. There must have been a compromised administration, 15,000 security forces men as was reported, on the streets of Karachi on May 12 that let the situation get out of control. Alternatively one can say that the functionaries had been instructed not to intervene, notwithstanding whatever they felt or believed themselves, and therefore the responsibility lies even higher up somewhere.

The Tehrik-i-Insaaf leader, Imran Khan, has expressed the view that British Premier Tony Blair should be charged in a court of law for permitting the MQM Supremo, Altaf Hussain, to 'abuse' his sanctuary in the UK when there are several serious cases pending against him in Pakistan. Critics of the MQM have questioned how someone with such a record acquired British citizenship. Unfortunately the US-British war on terror is about terror that strikes their interests and not terrorism as such.

South Asia has produced quite a few ethno-nationalist leaders in the last few decades. Bal Thackeray of the Shiv Sena, Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale of the Khalistan movement, Prabhakkar of the Tamil Tigers and Altaf Hussain of MQM have certain things in common. All of them made their way into politics when their ethnic group felt threatened by competitors and challengers from other groups. They resorted to questionable methods to crush perceived threats and thus gained a reputation of being men of steel. In the process a cult of adulation grew around them and they began to be surrounded by fanatical devotees but themselves became victims of megalomania.

In March 1990 I was in Karachi to research the ongoing ethnic conflict in Sindh. It was part of my comparative study of ethnic conflicts all over South Asia and was published under the title 'State, Nation and Ethnicity in Contemporary South Asia' in 1996 and again in 1998. The MQM at that time was labelled 'a neo-fascist ethnic party' by its detractors who accused it of running its own jails and practising all kinds of unsavoury tactics. It was also alleged by its critics of enjoying the backing of the ISI which had allegedly floated it as a counterweight to the PPP.

I approached the MQM for an interview and was invited to their Azizabad headquarters in Karachi, but instead of being granted an interview by Altaf Hussain it was Azim Ahmed Tariq, the formal president of the MQM, who spoke to me. I found him to be a very worried man. He kept looking at the bag I had with me as if I might pull out a gun and kill him. I sensed that and opened it so that he could see that it contained nothing but my recording equipment and notebook.

Afterwards he relaxed and gave me his litany of Mohajir grievances. He asserted that their elders abandoned their hearth and home in northern India not because they were threatened as Muslims were in East Punjab. Jawaharlal Nehru pleaded with them not to leave but the love of Pakistan, an independent Muslim country, was too great and so they came.

They established schools and colleges and worked hard to succeed whereas the Sindhi landlords, the waderas, opposed the building of schools and their peasants and other poor Sindhis going to school. Consequently the Urdu-speakers had done well in Pakistan by dint of hard work and merit and not by unfair means. The Sindhis and Punjabis were now oppressing the Mohajirs and that was highly unfair, he argued.

I made him realise, however, that the Sindhis opened their arms and welcomed them in 1947 and that is how they found a home in that province. To that Azim Ahmed Tariq agreed. Later in 1993 he was assassinated.

The fortunes of the MQM dwindled when they clashed with the military and one officer was allegedly kidnapped by them. At that point the army chief Gen. Asif Nawaz and the Corps Commander of Karachi Lt. Gen. Naseer Akhtar ordered raids on the MQM strongholds. The media reported discovery of torture cells and other incriminating evidence. By that time Altaf Hussain had fled to Britain.

In the subsequent years the MQM had increasingly acquiring the appearance of a secular, parliamentary party. It enjoyed strong electoral support and was represented in both the Sindh legislature and the Pakistan National Assembly. Therefore when in December last year I was in Karachi to deliver a keynote speech at the Karachi International Book Fair I was very surprised that it continued to be feared as a ruthless organisation. Many people I spoke to said that what they were telling me in private what they would never dare to say in their office or before their staff or strangers.

This type of culture of fear did not affect only Sindhis or Punjabis or Memons and so on, but cultured and civilised, law-abiding Urdu-speaking Mohajirs also lived in constant fear of the party. Who can forget the murder of Hakim Muhammad Said of the Hamdard Foundation? One day he was mercilessly gunned down. MQM activists were arrested and found guilty of that heinous crime.

When a democratically elected government committed to the rule of law is in power in Pakistan it may well demand from Britain that Altaf Hussain be extradited to face charges for his alleged crimes. Britain is opposed to extraditing people to countries where capital punishment is practised. This is worth keeping in mind.

On the other hand, there should be absolutely no move now or in the future to victimise the Mohajirs. They should be treated as sons of the soil as any other Pakistani. But in return they should desist from associating with organisations that employ force and terror.

The writer is an associate professor at the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University in Sweden. Email: ishtiaq.ahmed@statsvet.su.se

Cheers <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' />

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