The MQM under Altaf Hussain is a tough nut to crack, as General Pervez Musharraf must have realized these past few days. But he should have known better. The MQM was spawned by the military’s agencies in 1979 to protect General Zia ul Haq’s flanks from the PPP. But like all the other proxies created by the military (Jihadis in the 1980s and Taliban in the 1990s) the MQM has also assumed an autonomous life and exclusive interests of its own. This was made clear when MQM terror laid Karachi low from 1990-92 and compelled Nawaz Sharif to unleash the army against it. Benazir Bhutto faced much the same sort of blackmailing terror in 1994 and was forced to sic General Naseerullah Babar’s Rangers on the MQM. Mr Altaf Hussain slipped out of the country in 1991 and has since been hosted by London, despite the fact that he is charged with over 50 counts of criminality, including murder and terrorism.
General Musharraf’s rank opportunism led him to mollycoddle the MQM once again in 1999 on the basis of the twisted logic that my enemy’s (Nawaz and Benazir) enemy (Altaf) can be my friend. Now, seven years later, after having retaken Karachi from the religious parties and entrenched itself in urban Sindh, the MQM wants a still larger chunk of the action in Sindh and Islamabad, even if it means encroaching into the electoral and administrative domain of General Musharraf’s mainstay PMLQ. It is significant that the MQM’s most recent spat with General Musharraf over the spoils of power comes at a particularly vulnerable time when he is facing the threat of a street movement by the MMA and a vote of no-confidence in parliament by the ARD as a prelude to a noisy election next year. Is this brinksmanship or what?
Mr Hussain’s provocative moves are doubtless based on the following calculations: (1) With Karachi and urban Sindh in its pocket, the MQM must consolidate its position while trying to make gains in the next elections in rural Sindh, Islamabad and possibly also in Punjab. (2) This is the time to extract meaningful concessions from General Musharraf in all these areas because he seems vulnerable for the first time since 1999 on both the domestic and foreign front. (3) This is all the more necessary since current talk of some sort of deal between the PPP and General Musharraf closer to the elections cannot be discounted. Such a ‘deal’, if it happens, would inevitably enable the PPP, which even now has the largest number of seats in the Sindh provincial assembly, to hog the Sindh government and pit it against its old politico-ethnic rival MQM, quite apart from reducing the MQM’s “quota” of federal ministries in the post-2007 election government.
On the other hand, the PMLQ in Sindh led by the chief minister, Arbab Rahim, sees matters differently. Mr Rahim wants to strengthen his party’s roots by buttering up his supporters and spreading the spoils of power to potential turncoats from the PPP in the run-up to the next elections. Should he fail, the PPP could rout the PMLQ in the next elections, especially if General Musharraf is compelled to give it a level playing field in exchange for support in the centre over the issue of his presidency and uniform. So for Mr Rahim and the PMLQ it is a matter of life and death. Any more concession to the MQM would eat into the Sindhi vote bank and push Sindhis into the lap of the PPP. So what will the two erstwhile partners in Sindh do?
The PMLQ would benefit if President Musharraf were to install Governor’s Rule. Although Mr Rahim would lose his job, the PMLQ would still get Islamabad’s patronage to beef itself up for the next elections. The MQM, however, would lose out by having to fend for itself against the MMA, PPP and PMLQ in the next elections, an unsettling prospect especially if it finds itself on the other side of General Musharraf. That’s why Sindhi PMLQ stalwarts have dug their heels in and are refusing to be blackmailed by the MQM any more. The only negative fallout of Governor’s Rule would be that, with nearly 18 months to go until the next elections, it would show up the fragility and lack of sustainability of General Musharraf’s political dispensation and embolden his detractors in the PMLN, MMA and PPP to redouble their efforts to destabilize and weaken him. Therefore it is not logically in the political interest of the MQM or General Musharraf or even Mr Rahim to fall back on the device of Governor’s Rule, except as a measure of angry desperation in the face of mulishness by one or other of the contestants.
Altaf Hussain is known for playing hardball. But General Musharraf is no pushover himself. Fortunately, it is just as well that nagging personal affronts rather than significant political factors seem to have muddied the waters between the MQM and PMLQ. It would be plainly stupid if they didn’t pull back from the brink and quickly get down to business as usual.