MQM: Setting the record straight--Jan Assakzai (Frontier Post)

(The Frontier Post)

I have received many hate mails from MQM supporters after my recent article on situation in Karachi. However, I would like to limit myself responding to comments of Kunwar Khalid Yunus, the member of MQM Rabita Committee. Pakhtuns’ population in Karachi on its surface seems not likely to have made Yunus a happy man as he termed my figures as exaggerated. But independent international observers, some NGOs and sources from Wikipedia, and “Front Line World”-Focus- a report produced in association with the New York Times”, put the number of Pakhtuns around 7 million in Karachi. Besides, the current census offers language choice instead of ethnic choice, hence does not take into account the number of those Pakhtuns who have lost fluency in first language —Pakhtu— and now speak Urdu thus codified as Urdu speaking population. The allegation of MQM that Hazarawals might be involved in the killing of Pakhtuns is baseless. In this regard, I would draw the attention of Yunus to all those media statements that leaders of Suba Hazara have been giving to distance themselves from the targeted killing of the Pakhtuns in Karachi recently and to the statements of ANP leaders in which they endorsed the Haraza suba leadership stance on this issue. The MQM failed to pitch Hazarawals against Pakhtuns, hence cannot absolve its militant wing of the responsibility of killing Pakhtuns in Karachi. Yes! Yunus, militant wing that the MQM has. This is not my mere allegation. All the government agencies corroborate that the MQM has a military wing. The report was ordered by the Interior Ministry with input from all the official security stakeholders in Karachi, including the Sindh Police, Special Branch, IB, ISI, Rangers and the Interior Ministry. The report indicted the MQM that it’s militant wing has special tasks “to create law and order situation for achieving political ends” The report also indirectly indicted the MQM that “eighty-three (Yes 83) police officers involved in earlier operations against the MQM, were eliminated in targeted killing “which has adversely affected the morale of police force”. Another report “State of the Human Rights in 2009” by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) says that nearly 300 people were targeted killings. Most of these victims were Pakhtuns and the MQM Urdu speaking dissidents. Since May 19, at least 44 Pakhtuns have been killed by the MQM’s militant wing. Therefore, those pundits and groups who claim that Karachi’s killings are motivated by poverty and unemployment or a result of tug of war between two political parties, are wrong. It’s the MQM’s militant wing that wants to keep the MQM stranglehold on Karachi by despicable policy of targeted killings, and re-settlements in areas of other communities particularly Pakhtuns. Would they also deny that this strategy of the MQM does not border the policy of ethnic cleansing as defined by the UN, “the planned deliberate removal from a specific territory, persons of a particular ethnic group, by force or intimidation, in order to render that area ethnically homogeneous”, (UN report in 1993). There is more unemployment and poverty in South Punjab, Rural Sindh and Tribal areas why there are no pattern of such killings because political parties do not have military wings despite resided by diverse communities. As far as Pakhtuns’ involvement with land mafia, the report of the Interior Ministry also indicted the MQM that as part of its ethnic resettlement in Pakhtun areas, the group is complicit with land grabbers. Thus the black kettle calling the pot black. Not to mention the missus of amenity plots for residential purposes and illegal encroachments as alleged by the report. Khalid says that ANP will lose next elections in Karachi. That ANP might lose next elections not because all Pakhtuns will join the MQM but because the MQM is working on a pre-planned demographic engineering to turn Pakhtun majority areas into minority by resettling Urdu speaking people, grabbing Pakhtun owned properties with the connivance of the now- defunct anti-Pakhtun City government of Mustafa Kamal. A fact noted even by the Interior Ministry report. The MQM is trying to expand its influence by new settlements of Urdu speaking people in areas dominated by not only Pakhtuns but also Balochs which include Rehmanabad, Junejo Town, Khuda ki Basti and Gutter Bagheecha etc. Yunus also blames Pakhtun community being associated with extremism. But he is only harping on the media stereotypes which are the baseline of misrepresentation and outright lies about Pakhtun culture. Current wave of militancy and extremism in Pakhtun areas is the by-product of militant infrastructure nurtured over decades as Pakistan’s Afghan policy tool. Pakistan was feeling its way forward in Afghanistan, attempting to find the means to increase its geo-political stature through elements of Mujaheddin then Taliban across the border, and develop new tools of influence in Pakhtun areas through religio-political forces. For the record, Pakhtun culture is far from extremism and Taliban. It is reflected in Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai’s non-violent movements, in the mysticism of Rahman Baba’s poetry and in the romanticism of Ghani Khan’s poetry. This is a society that produced hundreds of anti-Taliban lashkars and their leaders all over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and parts of FATA to get rid of the menace of Taliban. Thousands of Lashkar leaders, political workers and even Assembly members were target killed why because they insisted that Talibanisation is the antithesis of Pakhtun culture. So Yunus is trying to take a cheap shot at the Pakhtun culture by linking the Pakhtun community with extremism. Yunus’s assertion on MQM’s workers’ alleged killing, fits in with the current strategy of the group: keep Pakhtun community in the spotlight and play up group’s alleged victimisation as outrage builds in the wake of the targeted killings of Pakhtuns in Karachi.  As far as MQM becoming a Mutahida Qaumi Movement and having Pakhtuns in its fold are concerned, it is nothing but amount to offering old wine in a new bottle as they say. Far the MQM cannot transcend its narrow ethno-Muhajir nationalistic credentials and xenophobia against Pakhtuns and other communities in Karachi. However, Pakhtuns do not oppose the entire Urdu-speaking community in Karachi and wish to live in peace and cooperation with them. But they oppose fascism, whether a fascist is wearing jeans or turban hence appeal for support from Pakistan’s establishment, democratic political forces, human rights groups, the media and civil society in this just cause. janassakzai200@gmail.com