When Ghous Ali Shah took over as Sindh’s de facto chief executive last June, we feared that the province would go on the boil (TFT editorial “KKK of Sindh?”, dated June 25-July 1). Our predictions have unfortunately come true. Kidnappings have peaked, car-lifting has resumed and “police encounters” are on the rise. The MQM and the PPP are also up in arms. They know that the PML wants to rule the province, despite a minority of 12 seats out of 109 in the Assembly, with the objective of setting the stage for a Muslim League majority in local government elections, followed by general elections in 2002. And they won’t let that happen.
On July 14, the first of the many Punjabi-style ‘police encounters’ took place. Within a week, a dozen MQM ‘terrorists’ were killed while they were allegedly ‘assaulting’ policemen sent out on duty by the province’s new Punjabi IG Police. On July 28, the MQM struck back by opening fire on a police check-post in North Karachi; the next day, the MQM reverted to shutting down markets and burning down vehicles. The city, liberated from fear not long ago, was gripped by it once again.
Mr Altaf Hussain has complained of “state terror” but says he does not want a violent confrontation. But on July 1, seven ‘radical’ MQM leaders, including an ex-federal minister, a current MNA and two sitting MPAs, resigned from the party in London by declaring “dissatisfaction” with the Pakistan-based MQM Coordination Committee’s ‘soft’ policy in the face of the alleged centre-imposed violence in Karachi. On August 12, Mr Hussain’s London-based political secretary also resigned in protest against the Coordination Committee’s anti-confrontational stance. Interestingly enough, none of the rebels have challenged Mr Hussain. This suggests that the MQM leader is laying the groundwork for a new, albeit covert, policy of confrontation. His “isolation” has been reinforced by the inclusion in the Exit Control List (ECL) of his power base in Pakistan: 28 MPAs, 12 MNAs and 5 Senators. Therefore the “revolt” against the Coordination Committee is meant to absolve it of the violence that has erupted under Ghous Ali Shah’s administration.
Kidnappings have restarted in the province after a year’s reprieve. Employees of certain multinationals were recently picked up for ransom on the Karachi-Hyderabad highway, forcing the companies to close down their regional offices and plan a general cut-back of operations. Ordinary citizens have also been kidnapped and killed in Shikarpur, Khairpur and Larkana, once again creating the environment that doomed Sindh in the early 1990s. In Karachi, it is the MQM ‘responding’ to the appointment of Ghous Ali Shah; on the Highway, it is the PPP landlords who are sending out signals through their ‘protected’ dacoits. The press has published lists of scores of dacoit ‘gangs’ once again in business. And in Karachi, a citizens’ committee has listed 15 urban kidnapping gangs.
We are back in the old game. The triangle of MQM-PPP-Nationalists is girding up to face off the new political order imposed from Islamabad. The PPP’s Qaim Ali Shah is trying to cobble together a PPP-MQM ‘alliance’ which is bound to be no different from the one that brought misfortune to the urban people of Sindh in the past. The Nationalists, seeing an opportunity for their extremist doctrines, are spurning the PPP in favour of more radical action on their own. It therefore seems that Ghous Ali Shah is once again a catalytic agent for disorder as in 1987 when he was chief minister of the province. The hapless population is being compelled once again to take sides with forces that are far from being their democratic representatives.
The MQM’s terror of the past was based in great part on the sympathy it enjoyed among the ‘muhajir’ citizens who were despairing of the writ of the state. Mr Hussain relied on this support to become the arbiter of Sindh’s politics from London. But his stature began to decline when peace returned to the cities and economic activity began to look up.
The MQM was once in partnership with the PPP and it didn’t work. It was then wooed by the PML and given a ‘package’ for the restitution of MQM criminals to please the boss in London. But once again a compact based on opportunism and malice has come apart. And once again the people of Sindh will pay for it with misery.
The province desperately needs normal economic functioning. It is Pakistan’s economic backbone, but politicians who plan and prosecute wars abroad and use coercion at home in an endless pursuit of power, have had no time to think of the economy. In fact, after the collapse of 1996, nothing has gone right with the national economy. Now it is firmly set in a trough of recession. The entire country faces a terminal situation while the state-owned media, having swept the economy aside, is spewing a rhetoric of war. The establishment in Islamabad doesn’t realise that the final collapse will begin from Sindh. This is the internal threat Pakistan has ignored since May 1998 when it decided to go nuclear. In the event, Islamabad’s separatist nightmare could become a reality if the government doesn’t mend its modus operandi towards Sindh quickly.