Going by the optics of the raid at MQM’s famed HQ Nine Zero and its aftermath the exercise was as much about enforcing the law as it was to demonstrate who is now calling the shots in Karachi.
And Round One goes to the army-led Sindh Rangers. Simply so because the raid not only yielded some men wanted, others convicted, in serious criminal cases including murder, but it also left the party which is known to combine popular politics with a vice-like physical grip over the city in discomfort and disarray.
This disarray was evident in different explanations emerging for the presence of the wanted men in and around Nine Zero as well as different leaders offering conflicting accounts of the recovered weapons — from ‘planted’ by Rangers to legitimate licensed arms to address security concerns.
That in Round One, the Rangers came out on top could be seen in their aggressive stance in a number of areas. But most of all that the MQM was finding itself on a tricky wicket could be gauged from the absence of any aggression in the tone and tenor of the usually bellicose leadership. From the top down, many leaders, most notably Altaf Hussain, appeared surprisingly subdued and reflective.
That in Round One, the Rangers came out on top could be seen in their aggressive stance in a number of areas. Firstly, their commander rubbished the charge without any inquiry whatsoever that they could have been responsible for (I suspect accidentally) killing an MQM worker.
This position was taken by the Rangers when any plausible explanation for the killing of the young man would have had to include the possibility that the bullet fired by one of the many handguns the Rangers were firing at different angles in the air (seen in TV footage) could have felled him.
Also, the allegation that among the recovered weapons were some reportedly stolen from Nato containers. (The State Department later said that the US “and Isaf have never used the Karachi port to transport weapons/explosives”.) This, of course, was a reference to the bizarre claim the Rangers had submitted in 2013 to the Supreme Court inquiry into the Karachi violence led by former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry that thousands of Nato containers carrying weapons had gone missing without a trace from the port.
This is supposed to have happened when MQM’s Babar Ghauri was the ports and shipping minister. Regardless of the merit of this allegation, that the Rangers were keen to remind the urban Sindh-based party of this was quite clear in the manner (blindfolded and handcuffed) in which senior leader Amir Khan was presented in an anti-terrorism court.
In the past, the Rangers may have demonstrated an ability to embellish facts to support their claim of good performance in enforcing the law. But in this case they didn’t need to as people such as Faisal ‘Mota’, the man sentenced to death for the murder of Geo journalist Wali Babar were found from or around the MQM HQ.
The MQM’s defence that these wanted criminals were present in the area unbeknownst to the party didn’t cut any ice as even journalists who are invited to Azizabad know how impenetrable the HQ is and how nobody can enter it without security checks and screening.
Will the MQM be able to recover from the humiliation heaped on it? Is this the beginning of the end? Notwithstanding the fact that the party has sometimes been allegedly run as a criminal enterprise, with violence used to keep both dissidents and external opponents in check, its popular appeal paradoxically in urban Sindh is a reality.
This isn’t, of course, to say that it can and will sustain the sort of success it has enjoyed at the ballot box in the past but any suggestions that it’ll soon be consigned to history will be a gross exaggeration of its travails.
It is being asked whether the party can rise phoenix-like as it did from the operations targeting it in the 1990s. To be able to answer this question perhaps the most important factor to consider would be the role of the leader Altaf Hussain.
The MQM leader has now lived in self-imposed exile for over two decades. Most of the activists on whose street support the party relies on will have been mere toddlers, if that, when he last held court in Nine Zero. They may worship him but they have never seen him and, far more significantly, he doesn’t know (read trust) them.
While choosing to live in exile, in his own words Mr Hussain has relied on ‘collective leadership’ rather than appointing a deputy or two (which, his critics say, is due to the fear of being challenged) but this may prove to be his Achilles heel.
One can hold a deputy or two to account but the revolving door that has now come to represent the Rabita Committee that is supposed to publicly articulate his policies has led to both a drift in terms of policy and the leader’s ability to have all MQM decision-makers on the same page.
For example, the impact of the apparent rifts in the party’s Karachi Tanzeemi Committee which was the organisational and enforcement arm of the party are said to have been telling. Although hardly seen in the media, KTC leader Hammad Siddiqui was said to have become one of the most powerful figures in the party.
He acquired so much clout that when he was sacked by Mr Hussain last year, party insiders expressed serious concern about party unity. The MQM’s fear may have kept the media from exploring and reporting on rifts within the party but the party has done itself no favours by brushing these under the carpet.
The contending centres of power within and the reported ill-health of the leader can weigh against it as it goes forward. When the local bodies’ elections are held in Sindh this September the extent of the damage to the party will become apparent.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn. abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Abbas Nasir, "Trying times for MQM," Dawn. 2015-03-14.Keywords: Social sciences , Social Crimes , Decision making , Social media , Karachi port , Criminals , Journalists , Politicians , Politics , Supreme court , Altaf Hussain , Wali Babar , Amir Khan , CJ Iftikhar , Hammad Siddiqui , United States , Pakistan , Karachi , Sindh , MQM , NATO