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Editorial: Now the Muttahida-Haqiqi war

The target-killing in the last seven days in Karachi reached another peak on Sunday when 13 people were killed, most of them belonging to two factions of the MQM. Earlier, on June 4, the toll was 11 MQM (Haqiqi), two MQM (Altaf), one PPP and one Jama’at-e Islami. This Sunday, MQM-H says seven of its members were killed; the rest were MQM-A members, barring one who was an ANP worker. The Karachi police has arrested a confidant of Baitullah Mehsud with Al Qaeda links who has confessed to plans to cause widespread mayhem in Karachi. A large collection of suicide jackets too has been captured, implying that as many suicide-bombers were expected to be in Karachi, ready to kill innocent citizens to add to the confusion of mindless homicide.

Most of the killings took place in Malir, Landhi, Korangi and North Karachi, describing the parameters of the new battlefield. The Karachi police chief confirmed that group killings had started five days ago. He said “political intervention would be required to end the targeted killings of political workers”. But the truth is that “political intervention” may have been happening for the last few months in the opposite direction. According to pro-MQM websites, the leader of Tehreek-e Insaf Pakistan, Mr Imran Khan, has been trying to cure the internal rifts of MQM-H, as between the Afaq Ahmed and Amir Khan factions, the latter rumoured to be leaning in favour of MQM-A. When Mr Imran Khan was preparing his “London case” against MQM-A after the killing of his party workers on May 12, 2007, he had allegedly relied on the Afaq faction to gather details of the MQM atrocities. Sensing danger in this new development, the Sindh government had tried in recent months to keep Mr Khan out of Karachi under one pretext or another.

According to MQM sources, Mr Imran Khan’s efforts to get the MQM-H factions to reunite were allegedly supplemented by efforts from the APDM (All Parties Democratic Movement) and the Jama’at-e Islami. According to one report, a leader of MQM-H’s Afaq Group admitted that a five-member delegation of the party had a meeting with Imran Khan in Lahore in May, which lasted for around two hours. Several issues, including reconciliation between the Afaq and Amir factions of the party, also came under discussion: “Our delegation met the PTI chief Imran Khan and discussed the Muttahida’s vendetta against our workers, the no-go areas issue as well as the frequent killing of our workers in Karachi”.

The MQM suffered a split during the 1990s when it was under pressure from the state. Mr Altaf Hussain kicked the Afaq-Amir group out of the party and accused it of being a proxy for state “agencies”. In subsequent elections the MQM-A became the repository of a majority political mandate of Karachi, and the rebel group was consigned to the margins as Haqiqi, meaning “real”. It is universally accepted that when a split takes place “among brothers” it is most violent and merciless. It is always a wise course to help contending factions compose their differences, but in this case the result looks like a regrouping before the inception of a bigger war.

A rebel spook, currently running a human rights outfit for the “disappeared persons”, had once revealed that Haqiqi was used by the intelligence agencies to weaken the street power of Altaf Hussain. It had obviously not worked. In fact it had made permanent a dangerous urban split that the agencies could not have wanted had they known in advance what their policies would bring about. Eqbal Ahmad, writing in Dawn (August 17, 1995), stated: “The press as well as human rights organisations confirm what is public knowledge in Karachi — that the MQM-H practises terror and extortion as does the MQM-A; but one is tolerated by the government while the other is targeted by it — a fact which devalues the government’s authority, making it a partner in crime rather than the guardian of law.”

This is what is going to happen if efforts to make divided parties fall upon each other in internal violence bear fruit. This policy, pursued by the government or by politicians, is going to further complicate the map of Karachi’s violence and make the city a sitting duck for the suicide-bombers of Baitullah Mehsud, who desperately wants to distract the Pakistan Army from its mission in the tribal areas. *

Second Editorial: Dir villagers against Taliban

The consequence of last week’s suicide-bombing of a mosque in Upper Dir has unfolded in the shape of local retaliation, killing 13 Taliban in Upper Dir. The local tribesmen simply could not forgive the killing of 33 innocent people who were bombed as they were saying their namaz on Friday. Some 400 of them have got together and are hunting around for 200 Taliban said to be living in the villages they are surrounding. They have pulled down the houses sheltering them and want the Taliban to leave.

This is the sentiment taking hold of the people where the Taliban were first allowed to stay. The local population doesn’t want military operations but they now associate military operations directly with the activity of the Taliban. The hatred of the co-ethnic and co-religionist killing his own people is now quite intense. Although Khyber had seen a Taliban attack on a local mosque, the popular feeling was not aroused to this extent, maybe because the people who died during the Friday prayer in Khyber were mostly state levies. But the tide of opinion is turning decisively against the Taliban.

There are three reasons for the turning of the popular tide. One is the breakdown of the Swat accord with Maulana Sufi Muhammad and the other is the national consensus against the actions of the Taliban and in favour of military operations. The third of course is the transformation of the media from a clearly pro-Taliban opinion factory to a balanced “national” comment that tells the suffering people in the tribal areas in very clear terms that the Taliban are morally and legally wrong in what they are doing. *

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