Pakistan's riveting sideshow

The impact of the incredible support enjoyed across the board, by suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in Pakistan is certain to impact not just the presidency but the fortunes of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) that has stood by the President.

This is a party that shed its ethnic identity as a representative of Indian immigrants or Mohajirs, dropping the tag of the Mohajir Quami Movement, to acquire a more mainstream image in a clear bid to share the political space occupied by the country's Punjabi elite and to a lesser extent, the Islamist parties.

In 2002, for the first time in Pakistan's history, Altaf Hussain's party headed a government in Sindh province as a full-fledged ally of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML). It had won 42 seats in the 168-member Sindh assembly and 19 in the 342-member Pakistani National Assembly. Its party officials were ministers in the cabinet, chief minister and governor of Sindh.

For a group whose humble beginnings can be traced to the poorest Urdu-speaking quarter of the multi-ethnic smorgasbord of political interests (that is Karachi), it was the culmination of over 20 years of political struggle for recognition.

Long seen as a party that indulged in political assassinations and separatist rhetoric while upholding the rights of female emancipation and a secular polity, the last five years in government was its much-needed stamp of legitimacy.

But its move to block the entry of suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry to their stronghold and thereby, validate their support for President Pervez Musharraf, a fellow Mohajir, may have dented the party's image.

Insiders say, that May 12 was meant to be a show of force to Pakistanis to demonstrate the party's control over Karachi. This came as a response to their ally at the centre, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid who had rebuffed requests to participate in the grand rally, that President Musharraf was scheduled to address the next day in Islamabad. Plans that were later scrapped, except May 12 backfired.

While the MQM has been implicated in the assassinations and instigating ethnic violence for years, this was the first time television brought the searing images into people's homes. In the ensuing violence, MQM party workers were filmed on rooftops of buildings armed with AK-47s shooting at activists from the Awami National Party (ANP), the Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), and Tehreek-e-Insaaf (TI) participating in anti-government street demonstrations.

It was not one-sided, protests the MQM. There was retaliatory fire in which at least 13 MQM activists reportedly died, claims MQM lawmaker in the National Assembly, Khalid Younus accusing private television stations of "journalistic dishonesty". "The cameras didn't show Pakhtuns firing at us in Patel Para and Guru Mandir," Younus said. "Not one opposition leader was leading the demonstrators. Where were Imran Khan, Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Qazi Hussain Ahmad? Why did they stay away?" In a sign the party has been hurt by the negative publicity, Younus insists, "We are happy to welcome the Chief Justice, but not the political parties who back him."

But with 48 people dead and over 200 injured, the tactics employed by the MQM was "counter-productive" says Dr Aisha Siddiqa, author of Military Inc, Inside Pakistan's Military Economy. "The resentment in the country against the MQM is a far greater dent in the party's future than it might have anticipated," Dr Siddiqa said.

"May 12 was the equivalent of 9/11 for the MQM, for President Musharraf and his government," said Sabihuddin Ghausi, president of the Karachi press club who says the MQM leader Altaf Hussain would have been better off allowing the pro-Chief Justice rally to take place.

Embittered past

Hussain, whose party was synonymous with the bloody violence that pitted Mohajirs against other ethnic groups through the Eighties and Nineties, was originally used by the establishment to limit the influence of the PPP's charismatic Benazir Bhutto. Subsequent deals with both, PPP and PML prime ministers and the army were short-lived and led to military crackdowns in the mid-Nineties that, Younus says, claimed over 15,000 lives. The Martyrs' Wall at their headquarters in Nine Zero is a grisly reminder of those years when the MQM and its rival, the breakaway Haqiqi headed by former Hussain acolyte Afaq Ahmad held the city hostage.

When it was formed in 1984, the MQM struck a chord with Urdu-speaking immigrants. The immigrants were educated and had more experience with governance in the new nation. Mohajirs cornered the majority of government jobs only to find that laws enacted by landed elites who dominated the new government barred them from earning a livelihood.

Hussain was from Karachi's dirt-poor town of Azizabad. But his sudden rise to prominence in 1982 to a hero's welcome as the saviour of the Mohajirs, and his powerful oratory - now, from his overseas headquarters in London where he lives in exile — holds millions of Karachi's Mohajirs in thrall even as the intimidatory, fascist terror tactics ensure their unquestioning obedience.

But, while the MQM moved swiftly in the aftermath of May 12 to mend fences with the ANP, its relations with the other opposition parties, particularly Imran Khan's TI, is a portent of future trouble. "He wasn't even able to file a case against Altaf Hussain," says Younus dismissively.

"Every time something happens in Karachi, they blame the Quaid [Hussain]. People like Imran Khan have anyway always hated the Urdu speaking people. His rivalry with Javed Miandad, a Mohajir is a case in point. The Pakhtuns have sworn to fight us. Now, he is cashing in on May 12 because he is a one man, one seat party."

The issues before the MQM may well be a riveting sideshow at best, to the real battle that has been taken up by the political parties against the military. But, if as Ghausi believes, the alliance with the MQM's last patron, the military-led government is also close to fraying, then the party may be back to square one again.

Clearly, the MQM's bid to reverse 60 years of ethnic discrimination has once again stalled at the altar of political expediency. The series of short-term, ill-fated alliances has served little purpose.

Unable to shed its ethnic roots as Mohajirs remain their only support, and running out of partners in the musical chairs that marks politics in Pakistan, Siddiqa says "what is required by MQM is to calculate the astronomical cost of ethnic politics". And adds, "May 12 may be a watershed in Pakistan's history."

Politics of ethnicity through the years

2007– Stops suspended Chief Justice from entering
Karachi. Ensuing violence kills 48.

2002 – Allied with ruling PML-Quaid at centre and Sindh province

1998 – Present-day Muttahida Quami Movement founded by Altaf Hussain as the broadbased successor to the Mohajir Quami Movement

1998 – Breaks with Sharif's PML after being implicated in the killing of Sindh Governor Hakim Saeed. Federal crackdown on MQM.

1992 – Army deployed in Karachi. Altaf Hussain flees to London on self declared exile.

Meets Nawaz Sharif, head of Pakistan Muslim League to sign accord

1992– Army encourages breakaway MQM-Haqiqi to be led by Afaq Ahmad, federal crackdown on MQM

1988 – MQM backs Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party at centre and Sindh, signs Karachi Accord

1987 – MQM sweeps local body elections in Sindh

1986 – First public rally in Nishtar Park is marred by firing, violence

1984 – Altaf Hussain founds Mohajir Quami Movement

1978 – Student leader Altaf Hussain forms the All Pakistan Students Mohajir Students Organisation in response to the mushrooming of ethnic groups such as Sindhi Mahaz, Punjabi-Pakhtun Mahaz and Balochi Mahaz which represents the Urdu-speaking descendants of Indian immigrants who settled in Karachi and other urban centres after 1947.

Source: US Department of Homeland Security