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OPINION	E-mail this page
'Oscar-Tango Karachi'
JUNE 2: For General Musharraf the worst nightmare scenario has been hurled towards his doorstep like an IED (Improvised Explosive Device): Risk setting the country's tribal belt aflame, or watch the key commercial port city of Karachi burn. According to well placed sources, the chiefs of Pakistan's elite spy agencies the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence maintain that the recent bomb attacks near the US consulate in Karachi were directed not at the US but at Musharraf himself, to serve as a warning that he needs to do something, and quickly, in the tribal areas, or there will be continued trouble in Karachi. Their prognosis is based on the low key response given by the US state department to the incident. "The target of two car bombs that exploded on Wednesday in Karachi was a privately run English-language school and not the nearby residence of the US consul general," a State Department official said in Washington. Earlier, the US assistant secretary of state Christina Rocca, in a recent visit to Islamabad at which the director general of the ISI was present, had expressed concern over possible trouble in Karachi if operations in the tribal areas did not go well, says one report. But the bloodshed of the past few days in Karachi has widely been attributed to sectarian troubles. In one sense this is understandable, as the country, and the city, have had considerable such strife: Shi'ite-Sunni violence since the 1980s has killed more than 4000 people. It should be noted, though, that after Monday's attack on the Ali Raza Imam Bargah mosque in Karachi, the Shi'ite Muslim leadership pointedly refused to apportion blame to any Sunni Muslims. A top leader of the Shi'ite community, Maulana Hasan Turabi, said the government had conveniently tried to label the attacks as suicide, even though no evidence of this had been found. He said the police do this as the attackers are said to have been killed and nobody needed to be arrested. "This (the blast) is part of the conspiracy to drive wedge between Shia and Sunni Muslims," said Allama Hassan Turabi. He also said that when a bomb exploded in Hyderi Mosque, he had warned that the next target would be a Sunni cleric or mosque. "And yesterday Mufti Shamzai was assassinated," he said, "again I warned that the next target would be a Shia personality or mosque, but they paid no heed to my warnings." Was Turabi pointing to a sinister design by quarter he was unwilling to name or divulge? Some observers and analysts squarely reject a sectarian angle. Instead, they point to the ethno-urban political group Muthahida Quami Movement (MQM), which is a part of the government both at federal and provincial level in Sindh. Karachi happens to be in Sindh, and is the bastion of MQM's power. They also claim that the Sindh police, who are under the thumb of the Adviser for Home Affairs (the MQM's nominee), were culpable through negligence - at best - in not preventing the attack on Shamzai, even though they had information that it was likely. The high-profile pro-Taliban sunni cleric Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai was killed by gunmen in Karachi on Sunday. As a radical Sunni cleric, he had repeatedly called for a holy war against the United States. Coincidentally, on the same day Pakistan warned of imposing some form of economic sanctions on the people of South Waziristan if they did not hand over foreign fighters, and more paramilitary troops were sent to the areas. Shamzai's assassination was followed on Monday by a bomb attack on a Shi'ite mosque that killed 22 people. The mosque was less than two kilometers from the seminary where Shamzai was killed. On May 7, a bomb killed 23 worshippers and wounded 125 at the Shi'ite Haideri Mosque in Karachi. Shamzai's murder had the potential to set Karachi alight, but key religious figures acted quickly. All the top leadership of the Mutahidda Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), a grouping of six religious parties that controls the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) assembly (the province in which the tribal areas are located), traveled to Karachi for Shamzai's funeral. Also present were the leader of the opposition in the national parliament, Maulana Fazalur Rehman, NWFP Chief Minister, Maulana Samiul Haq, and Pakistan's grand mufti, Rafi Usmani. They all worked to pacify the thousands of mourners, who included the leaders and workers of numerous jihadi organizations. The Founder & Leader of Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) Altaf Hussain  strongly condemned the act of terrorism at the Shia mosque. In a statement, Mr Hussain said: "..for the past one month the persistent act of bomb blasts, terrorism and killing of innocent civilians and law enforcement personnel was a well designed and well engineered conspiracy not only to disturb the peace of Karachi but to portray Karachi as a battleground with a view to creating a reason to either deploy army in the city, imposition of Governor Rule, suspend the Sindh Government or impose emergency. By creating such grounds, the hidden hands in collusion with the religious extremists and jihadi outfits, want to show the people of Pakistan, international community, foreign and local investors that the present Government of Sindh has failed to control terrorist activities and law and order in Karachi and therefore the federal government had no choice but to take undemocratic steps to either deploy army in the city, imposition of Governor Rule, suspend the Sindh Government or impose emergency to give Karachi in the hands of the Army..." The MQM was the dream of a few Marxian scholars such as Rais Amrohvi, Mohammed Taqi, John Ailia and Shahanshah Hussain to establish an organization that could protect the rights of immigrants who chose Pakistan over remaining in India when the sub-continent was partitioned from British India in 1947. The All Pakistan Mohajir Student Organization (APMSO) was the initial reality of the dream. It became established on campuses in Karachi, and allied itself with the left-wing Progressive Student Alliance. However, the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba, which was ideologically allied with the Jamaat-i-Islami and which had been the main force on Karachi campuses, expelled the APMSO. As a result, its founder Altaf Hussain left his studies and went to the US, where he drove a taxi to earn a living. At this time in the 1980s, the honeymoon between the Jamaat-i-Islami and military ruler General Zia ul-Haq was over, and they developed differences on several national political issues. The sector commander of the ISI (now retired and still living in Karachi) persuaded Altaf Hussain to return to Karachi and take on the Jamaat-i-Islami. Altaf held big rallies and spoke against Punjabis and Pashtuns living in Karachi. In 1986, a bus driver who happened to be a Pashtun killed a college girl who was a member of a family that had migrated from India. The incident was immediately turned into a riot. The MQM was by now close to many bigwigs in the underworld - it still is - and they had several Pashtuns killed. Pashtuns retaliated in kind, and more. Altaf then initiated a drive to sell televisions and video recorders, the proceeds from which he used to purchase arms and ammunition. MQM activists now numbered thousands, and they roamed all over Karachi with AK-47 assault rifles and other sophisticated arms. Later years saw the MQM turn against Sindhis as well as Pashtuns and Punjabis. Killings and strikes were the order of the day for Karachi. In 1988, the MQM won national and provincial assembly elections, marking the all-out defeat to the Jamaat-i-Islami, knocking it from its only stronghold in the country. The MQM then joined hands with the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and became a partner in the Sindh and federal governments. However, this participation in government did nothing to curtail its gutter politics. In the early 1990s the MQM was a part of Nawaz Sharif's coalition government when its vice president, Saleem Shehzad, now in exile in London, kidnapped an army major, stripped him and beat him like a dog. As a result, the first army operation was conducted against the MQM. However, Altaf fled to the United Kingdom before it began, and he now holds a British passport. A second operation was subsequently launched against the MQM, commanded by a former interior minister in the PPP government, retired Major-General Naseerullah Baber. This exposed extensive MQM torture cells and "no-go areas" in Karachi. Scores of MQM activists were killed in extrajudicial killings by the police. After Musharraf took over in 1999 in a coup, he helped resolve differences with the MQM, and now it is a partner in the Sindh provincial government, as well as in the federal government. Yet it often remains critical of the establishment, and has the ability to raise rabble on the streets or call for citywide strikes at the drop of a hat.   Photo Poetry by Irshad Salim Because of its declared secular nature, the US has traditionally been closer to the MQM than any other party in Pakistan. Over the years, thousands of its activists have been given asylum in the US, where the MQM has a strong presence. After September 11, the United States identified even more with the MQM as it was the only party in Pakistan that widely mourned the attacks on the US, openly condemned the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and launched a powerful campaign in support of the US attack on Afghanistan. Lately, the MQM has been the only party to support the military's intervention in the tribal areas. Visits by US diplomats to MQM offices in Karachi have - and continue to be - commonplace. Knowledgeable quarters say that only US diplomatic intervention stopped General Musharraf from taking strong action against the MQM after he received the report on the recent unrest in which the MQM was implicated. Washington indeed has a powerful ally in southern Pakistan. Musharraf is now carefully weighing the alternatives of taking tough action in the tribal areas, or risking more trouble in Karachi, the country's commercial center. Whether he will be able to pull the 'oscar-tango' is to be seen! More By Irshad Salim: Chalabi: Now you see him now you don't Is Bush being ambushed?

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