Mr Altaf Hussain is no fool. In the tinder-box that Karachi has become he surely knew that his strike call last Wednesday would detonate like a Molotov-cocktail, leaving only death and destruction in its wake. Why then did he go ahead with it? What did the MQM hope to achieve?
Clearly, Mr Hussain was not flexing his muscle in order to intimidate the PPP into relinquishing financial and administrative control over Karachi. The unprecedented COP rally was more than ample proof, if indeed further proof were required, of the MQM’s massive power base in Karachi. Even if we grant Mr Hussain these obviously dubious methods to force urban decentralisation, why would he, in the same self-righteous breath, ask President Ishaq to suspend all legislatures, including those of the MQM, by imposing President’s rule in Sindh? No, Mr Hussain is no fool; his actions do not contradict his words.
As we predicted last month, the COP will not rest until it has seen the back of Benazir Bhutto. Its strategy has been obvious: accuse the PPP of unabashed corruption, increase the tempo by provoking bloodshed in Sindh to disable and discredit the government and pressurise the President to force Ms Bhutto out. Therefore it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see this strategy unfolding mercilessly in the run-up to March. The MQM’s decision to provoke butchery in Karachi last week fits nicely into this context, notwithstanding Mr Hussain’s accusations against the PPP.
However, a new dimension has entered the equation which threatens to disrupt the COP’s calculations to oust Ms Bhutto. This is the possibility of war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Against this backdrop, there is increasing consensus among the people, the PPP and the armed forces that the country should not be unhinged by internal upheavals while tension with India remains high.
Mr Altaf Hussain’s fatal mistake lies in the fact that he has jumped the gun at the COP’s misguided behest. He has failed to perceive a growing feeling in the country that the boat must not be rocked under these circumstances. That is why the PPP has not buckled under the MQM’s latest onslaught and that is why the federal interior minister, Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, has threatened a showdown with Mr Hussain’s militia. This argument also explains why, fearing an unnecessary adverse effect on Indo-Pak relations, the PPP confidently terminated the debate on Kashmir in Parliament last Sunday. It is unlikely that without the concurrence of the armed forces the PPP government would have displayed such confidence.
The MQM will now pay for its rash and arrogant behaviour. It will have to deal with a public backlash, and not only in Karachi. About time, we should think. For too long it has behaved like a state within a state, unaccountable to anyone, terrorising the people, the press and the legitimate government, putting its own warped interests above those of the country and democracy. Far from acquiring a national stature, it has retreated into the worst form of sectarianism.
After the Karachi rally in January, the COP’s Syeda Abida Hussain gushed: “It was a unique and beautiful experience … it is bound to have an effect on the future course of events … I see a great future for the MQM and its leadership … the only thing is that Altaf Hussain will have to choose the right allies for his national politics”. In more than one sense the lady has been proven wrong by the subsequent carnage in Karachi: the ‘unique and beautiful experience’ has been replaced by urban strife of the utmost savagery, casting a grim shadow over the future of the MQM and its present leadership. Mr Altaf Hussain, by choosing friendship with the Syeda’s COP, has diminished his chances of becoming a leader of national stature.