The nationwide strike called by the FPCCI, the country’s leading trade body, on March 25th has incensed the government. “It was politically motivated”, charges Mr Ahmad Mukhtar, the commerce minister. Mr Mukhtar draws attention to the formal demand by the FPCCI that the Sindh chief minister should be sacked and the army brought back to Karachi under article 245 of the constitution (a sort of mini-martial law). The minister reminds us that the first businessmen’s strike came during US energy secretary Hazel O’Leary’s visit to Pakistan and the second has followed on the eve of Mrs Hilary Clinton’s two day trip to Pakistan. Mr Mukhtar’s argument is that the business community has badly hurt the “national interest” by consciously undermining the government’s efforts to attract much needed US private investment. In retaliation, the government has sacked four top dogs of the FPCCI and is planning to bifurcate the organisations into two bodies for industry and trade respectively.
Of course, the strike is politically motivated. The business community, by and large, detests the PPP and has consistently voted and agitated against it. But what is wrong with that? Businessmen have interests to defend, like every one else, and if they think (rightly or wrongly) that the PPP government is hostile to those interests they have every right to band together against Islamabad’s economic and political policies.
Some of their demands are also legitimate. For example, leading members of the FPCCI have been begging for a meeting with the prime minister to apprise her of their mounting problems. But this has not yet materialised. For months, terrorists have stalked the streets of Karachi and extorted large sums of money from businessmen. Yet the government has not been able to provide any security to them. If the traders are now using desperate measures to bring their plight to Islamabad’s attention, who can blame them? It is the government’s duty to maintain law and order in Karachi. Therefore, instead of taking refuge behind conspiracy theories and maligning/victimising the business community, Islamabad should reorder its priorities and give us good government (which is what taxes are meant for).
This raises the larger context of “law and order” in Karachi and how to enforce it. The FPCCI wants the army to take over the city. This is a baffling demand, considering that not so long ago Karachi-ites were resolutely opposed to the army’s presence in the city and were quite openly bad-mouthing the men in khaki for conducting operations to flush out the terrorists. If the Punjabi-dominated army has withdrawn from the city, it is only because it is afraid of provoking an ethnically-coloured public backlash whipped up by powerful vested interests in the Mohajir-dominated city.
The government has therefore gone half-way to confront the terrorist challenge as demanded by the FPCCI. It has recently beefed up the Rangers and given them powers to arrest and interrogate suspects. Islamabad is also trying to revamp the police forces whose efficiency was seriously impaired by large-scale political recruitments during the time when Sindh province was ruled by a Jam Sadiq-Altaf Hussain coalition (a terrorist government, by any standards) from 1991-92.
By itself, however, this administrative response will not solve the complex “problem” of Karachi. For a beginning to be made in that direction, a sincere dialogue between the PPP and the MQM has to be initiated. How can that be brought about?
Some people, including opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, believe that as a confidence building measure all the criminal cases and convictions against the MQM leadership should be withdrawn by the government unilaterally. It is argued that if, after decades of violent confrontation, the apartheid South African regime could reinstate Nelson Mandela, if the Israelis could embrace “arch-terrorist” Yasser Arafat, if the British could bring themselves to start talking with the IRA (and if the treason cases against Khan Abdul Wali Khan & Others could be withdrawn in 1978), there is no reason why a dialogue cannot be initiated with Altaf Hussain after withdrawing all the charges against him.
This is a forceful argument but it ignores one crucial point. In all the cases cited, a wide-ranging and prolonged dialogue (sometimes in secret) between the protagonists preceded rather than followed the withdrawal of charges by the state against the erstwhile “terrorists”. In other words, the “terrorists” had to offer a positive quid pro quo before they were formally “rehabilitated” in mainstream politics. In our context, this would imply that the withdrawal of charges against Altaf Hussain & Co should depend on the “quid pro quo” that the MQM is prepared to offer the government. But a “quid pro quo” cannot emerge (and therefore the cases cannot be withdrawn unilaterally) unless the MQM enters into a sincere dialogue without pre-conditions to end the decade long confrontation with the PPP.
A dialogue of sorts has, of course, taken place between the MQM and the PPP in recent months. But it has got nowhere because the MQM insists that the cases against its leadership must be unilaterally withdrawn as a pre-condition to further talks. The government, on the other hand, rightly wants a concrete “quid pro quo” from the MQM before it expresses a willingness to drop or dilute the charges against its leadership. On this front, therefore, the ball is squarely in the MQM’s court. Mr Altaf Hussain has to demonstrate greater political maturity, accommodation and sincerity than he has been willing to show so far.
Having said that, it needs to be stressed nonetheless that the onus of providing peace and security to Karachi ultimately rests on the current PPP government. Islamabad cannot shrug away the crisis in Karachi by arguing, however correctly, that it is rooted in past non-PPP government policies. Nor can it absolve itself of responsibility simply because the MQM remains unreasonable and intransigent. What should it do or not do?
1. For a start, Benazir Bhutto and her ministers should stop giving contradictory statements about what is going on in Karachi. These mock our intelligence and hurt the government’s credibility. For instance, while admitting that Karachi is infected by a “mini-insurgency” with brooks no simple or early solution, Ms Bhutto has had the audacity to compare it with everyday criminality in New York or Rio. On several occasions Ms Bhutto and her ministers have laid the crisis exclusively at the door of the MQM. Why then are they now accusing the “drug mafia” of provoking the disorder?
2. The government’s policy prescriptions should not be lukewarm, wayward or inconsistent. For instance, Ms Bhutto told us last November that the army was being withdrawn from Karachi because the para-military forces, police and civil intelligence agencies had been suitably geared up to take care of the city. Four months later, however, we are informed that the Rangers need extra powers and the police is still in the process of being restructured and shuffled. We were also assured some months ago that the army had been withdrawn from Karachi because “everything was under control”. Now we are shocked to learn that it may take many months before any meaningful peace and administrative order can be brought back to the beleaguered city.
3. The government must seek ways and means to demonstrate that it cares deeply about Karachi and is doing everything possible to alleviate its suffering. Most Karachi-ites have come to believe (rightly or wrongly) either that the PPP government isn’t worried about what happens to them or that it is deliberately prolonging the crisis (by pitting the Haqiqis against the Altafis) in order to punish them for voting for the MQM. They are bewildered by the statements emanating from Islamabad which either claim that all is well (so nothing special needs to be done) or it is very bad (so bad, in fact, that it will take months to resolve). They see no tangible signs of the multi-billion rupee economic package promised by the prime minister to prop up the city’s crumbling infrastructure. And they want proof that the provincial government is moving to uproot the extortion-mafias which have crippled the city’s civic institutions (like KESC, KMC, WASA, etc) and wrought anarchy in everyday life.
4. The intelligence agencies must be radically overhauled so that credible information is available (and can be presented to Karachi-ites) about the many “hidden-hands” in the city. The unfortunate fact is that many Karachi-ites have come to believe that they are being held hostage to a war between the “agencies”. This perception has to be removed quickly. And it can only be done if the intelligence agencies demonstrate their will and ability to track down the terrorists and present credible evidence against them to the public.
5. The Haqiqis, who were originally nourished by the intelligence agencies to cut the Altafis down to size but have now acquired a criminal agenda of their own, must be forcefully reigned in. If the Altafis are extorting money from one half of Karachi, the Haqiqis are mopping up in the other half. Many Haqiqi cadres are also involved in purely criminal activities for mercenary reasons. Others are said to be executing “contracts” on people targeted by sectarian groups, drug mafias and anti-American terrorists.
6. The government must establish an accountable “power centre” in Karachi so that its decisions can be implemented quickly and efficiently. The existence of multiple “decision making centres” reflecting provincial, federal and army interests (Chief Minister, Chief Secretary, IG, Directorate-General Rangers, 5th Corps Command, Directorate General-IB, Directorate General-ISI, Special Branch Police, FIA, FBI, etc), which sometimes have separate perceptions and priorities and may therefore pull in different directions, has seriously impaired the process of restoring law and order to the city.
7. Every effort must be made to enlarge the scope of popular representation at local and provincial levels. But this cannot be done without an expression of generousity by the PPP governments in Islamabad and Sindh. National, rather than provincial-ethnic or party-political interests, should play a greater role in determining solutions to Karachi.
The people of Karachi cannot continuously live in a state of despair, drift and anarchy. Nor can the rest of Pakistan sit back and pretend that the crisis of Karachi doesn’t affect them. We hope that this message has got through to Islamabad. Ms Bhutto has already wasted precious time blowing hot and cold. If she thinks she still has six months to sort it out, she is sadly mistaken. Karachi remains her Achilles heel, whether she likes it or not. When she returns from Washington, she should concentrate all her energies on finding some workable and worthwhile prescriptions to the plague which torments the heart of Pakistan.