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The Inferno Within
For a person who led a relentless struggle in the 80s decade for the restoration of unadulterated democracy in Pakistan, Ms Benazir displays a remarkable obduracy in refusing to recognize the ground realities of the increasingly anarchical situation in Karachi. Though it is true that fate intervened rather fortuitously to her advantage, one cannot take the credit away from Ms Benazir’s struggle against dictatorship (and vestiges thereof) with respect to the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. The then Establishment tried to stop her in her tracks by the cobbling together of the IJI by Maj Gen (later Lt Gen Retd) Hameed Gul, the then DG ISI, but the people of Pakistan gave her enough NA seats to be the prime contender to form the Federal Government. Even when the sizeable MQM bloc changed sides in late 1989, she survived a vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly, mostly because both the intelligentsia and the masses continued to believe in her recurring song of democracy.
During her long stint in the cold, Ms Benazir had repeatedly pointed out that with drugs and Kalashnikovs flooding into the urban cities of Pakistan, particularly Karachi, there was a dire necessity to usher in democracy immediately to “counter the dangerous vacuum created by Martial Law and dictatorship at the grassroots level because of the lack of leadership duly elected by the people.” Her contention rightly was that a mixture of ethnic and sectarian bigots along with mobsters, drug barons, foreign-trained terrorists etc, would flood into this void, anybody who could wield power through the power of forcible suggestion, more potently, through the barrel of a gun. Ms Benazir Bhutto had very rightly advocated that the only solution to avoid apocalypse was to have free and fair elections at every tier of government so that credible, authentic leaders would emerge, with their roots in a rock-solid base because of the peoples’ confidence in their abilities and person.
Governance and Democracy
Dynamic young leadership is usually taken to be a boon for any nation, what we have seen happening in Pakistan over the past 5 years or so makes us cry out for those with experience of more years on Planet Earth. Usually intelligent and articulate, youthful leadership’s potential is often hamstrung by a whole bunch of informal Advisors from the inner circle dating back to school and college days who tend to influence/take part informally in crucial decision-making. This Under-19 lot that seem to surround youthful leadership and remove them from reality (a la Ms Benazir’s astonishing “Karachi is not boring” has undercut the system of governance as both elected representatives and selected officials have had to give way to those who do not have any idea (or expertise) of running an administration or for that matter even have a vested and accountable interest in doing so. Hardly able to find Grozny on the map (or for that matter Kigali), these “Yuppies” near the seat of power have become “experts” on foreign policy, influencing the hot and cold football with the media and as far as law and order is concerned the over-riding perception is that of a bevy of beauties let loose to run amok in a China shop (no pun intended). The hormones of our young leadership need constant companionship (remember John Kennedy’s young Presidency) to while away the time away from the rigours of Statecraft. Americans may remain nostalgic about “Camelot” that the Kennedys brought with them to Washington, the later knowledge about John F’s romp with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Mafia-moll Judith Exner, etc gives shivers to historians about alien influence in the then decision making process.
To compound all this, a suffocating, hide-bound election mechanism has thrown up a very poor quality of leadership, without drastic reforms positively, we will have more of the same. Other than bad advice by dilettantes (and even yesterday’s debutantes) our political leadership is forced to depend upon “special interest groups” (and individuals) for survival once they are in office rather than on the electorate that voted them into office. The major problems thrown up by the present electoral system are nepotism and corruption (and accountability thereof) among our elected elite. Unless an innovative fresh (and natural) approach is made to minimising the predilection of our elected legislators for misusing the powers and privileges bestowed on them by the system, the debilitating process in our fraying society will continue.
The Ostrich Syndrome
The ruling PPP seemed to strike a discordant note at the hierarchical level at the beginning of this week. It is true that the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the NA had been trying to establish their writ (in independence of their party position) by insisting on the sanctity of their ruling in bringing the arrested MNAs to the House. However, the surprising Presidential hint that he would not hesitate to use his Constitutional role if he had to in the face of the worsening law and order situation in Karachi as well as the need to bring in MQM from the cold was in direct contrast to the PM’s assertion that “MQM should rein in its terrorists.” Having been on the receiving end of foreign policy disasters one after the other since the beginning of her reign, PM Ms Benazir had put in all her well known potential for persuasion into the OIC at Casablanca and thereupon savoured the first foreign policy success of sorts in bringing Kashmir to world attention by getting the participants to adopt a resolution, though it may be said quite reluctantly, by the likes of our so-called friends, Hosni Mubarak, Yasser Arafat, etc. That the PM may have been waylaid by the misleading reports given to her by her aides is perhaps the only excuse one can have for her failure to acknowledge that disaster is facing us in the face at Karachi. Having her power-base in rural Sindh, Ms Benazir has to come to terms without any further delay with the urban majority MQM in a spirit of give and take.
Given the deteriorating circumstances, the launching of Operation Clean-Up in May 1992 was necessary. The situation in the Province was reaching anarchical proportions and the then military hierarchy surmised that the populace was fed up of the transgressions and would respond positively. In the initial stages Operation Clean-Up was extremely successful in both the rural and urban areas but the latter exercise became a victim of serving individuals in mufti (in contrast to their uniformed colleagues for the most part) misusing their authority to unleash ill-conceived vendetta targeted on the MQM (only) in trying to bring about political change by military means, a non-starter as any avid student of history can confirm. Fighting in built-up areas while keeping civilian casualties down is not an easy task, the planning of the Operation by the then Corps Commander Lt Gen Naseer Akhtar was outstanding and its execution by his Comd Corps Reserve, Maj Gen Malik Saleem Khan was brilliant. However, the joker in the pack was the ill-conceived organising of the MQM (H) into a potent anti-MQM weapon. The MQM(H) may have genuine grievances but these latter day Quislings have served only to create a backlash among the Mohajir community to absolute resuscitation of Altaf Hussain’s waning fortunes in self-imposed exile. The MQM(H) exists today as a tragic but sore bone of contention in the search for urban peace. Instead of allowing the law of nature to take its course in establishing detente between the warring parties, those who were sidelined, some even being subsequently forced into early retirement for various misdemeanours involving corruption, greed, misuse of authority, etc have re-surfaced. Having ruthlessly exploited the MQM(H) previously, they are now again engaged actively in promoting disorder and anarchy by remote control. What is their “connection” that they cannot be made to answer for their crimes against humanity? The PM gave a broad hint to this effect before she left for Casablanca and repeated it again in a party Parliamentary meeting, why is GOP not bringing them to book with the same alacrity they showed for Mian Muhammad Sharif?
Apocalypse Now
If posterity were to take events to pinpoint exactly when the clock struck midnight and Karachi ran out of time, the brutal assassination of Mohammad Salahuddin, outspoken Editor of Takbeer and the flight of renowned social worker Maulana Sattar Edhi to London, ostensibly in fear of his life, would serve as symbolic markers. Karachi is now a city filled with fear, full of apprehension of the known and the unknown. For years there has been no dearth of soothsayers predicting impending doom but they can have no satisfaction in being proved right, only contempt for those at the helm of affairs over the past decade who were so deaf and blind that it is not surprising that they acted dumb in the face of catastrophe.
Appoint an Administrator for the whole of Karachi NOW, for purposes of perception of authority let us call the person Lieutenant Governor (or some such title) and give him (or her) a sweeping mandate for an interim period of one year over all the law enforcement and civic agencies in the city, with extraordinary powers under Article 245 of the Constitution to rule over Karachi. The Lieutenant Governor will be directly responsible to the Federal Cabinet through the Governor and will effect such changes in the administrative control of the city as he thinks fit in keeping the city running, in supersession to all other Federal and Provincial entities that are working today. As a psychological stamp of authority, he must have an office in the Governor’s House where he could use the services of the Citizens Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), an outstanding example of citizen participation in solving urban problems.
Mission Impossible
Over the past week, the Pakistan Army has cordoned off three entire areas in Karachi in well-coordinated urban area operations, first the hotbed of Jacob Lines followed by sections of North Karachi and Korangi. During these operations which were kept a well guarded secret, the Army has netted in more illegal arms and ammunition than any single month of Operation Clean Up in the last 30 months. Furthermore, given that over a million people were affected (and discomfited for a day or so), public protest was almost non-existent (and muted at that). Other than weapons, over 200 criminals involved in various crimes were netted. During the whole operation, only one youth was killed resisting arrest in a shootout. Many of Karachi’s citizens have commented that more than two years after its launching, Operation Clean Up has now started in earnest.
After an uneven beginning Operation Clean Up succeeded in the rural areas mainly because a change of command from an atrocious General officer. In the urban areas after a good start it got bogged down, succeeding only in imposing an immediate peace in the city. While it took some time for the general public to clearly identify the reasons for the uneven performance of the Army, for military analysts the reasons were clear. In the rural areas, a clear-cut mission was given to eradicate criminals while in the urban areas, the mission given to the uniformed personnel was subverted by duality in aim, under the guise of eradicating criminal elements, the MQM were the only party so targeted. Though one dare says that MQM’s militants had gone past the fail-safe line, the fact remains that every political party had militant factions running riot. The uniformed Army was further frustrated by the men in mufti whose only mandate was to eradicate the MQM, an impossible task given that this party is representative of the urban majority in Karachi and the Province. All the initial gains made by the then GOC Karachi, Maj Gen Malik Saleem Khan, were compromised by the fact that whereas his was the command to exercise, instructions were issued directly by the Corps HQ and the DG ISI separately. In essence, the principle of military command was violated by the then Army leadership. If it were not for the unbending will of Malik Saleem in keeping the troops under his command restrained, the excesses of the intelligence agencies would have been surpassed by the bloodbath that would have ensued as frustration seeped into his command. This was accentuated by the fact that the civil administration had no socio-economic plan to follow the restoring of the immediate peace. To complicate it further, successive political governments had no political initiatives to offer. Instead of tarring and feathering MQM’s ultimate leader-in-exile Altaf Hussain, the duality of objectives succeeded only in solidifying Mohajir support behind him, including for the first time the community as a whole. Though some people were disenchanted with him they rallied behind him in the greater cause.
The Pakistan Steel Story
By the mid-60s our economy was booming by comparable Asian standards but it was clear to the Pakistani economic planners that without a heavy industry we could never hope to become an industrial and/or economic giant. Therefore it was necessary to have our own integrated steel mill. 1968, the last year of Ayub Khan’s “Decade of Reforms”, saw the first concrete step taken towards that goal by registering The Pakistan Steel Mills Corporation (PSM) as a private limited company. In January 1971, an agreement was signed with the USSR by the much-maligned Yahya Khan Regime for technical and financial assistance in the construction of a coastal-based integrated steel complex. The events of 1971 interrupted further proceedings and it was not till almost three years later that the foundation stone of the single largest industrial complex in the country was laid in December 1973. As the Minister for Production in the Bhutto cabinet of the early 70s, PPP party theoretician, Secretary General and elder statesman J.A.Rahim guided the process towards early establishment. While there was no doubt that late Z.A.Bhutto was breathing down everyone’s neck in his enthusiasm and impatience to get the Steel Mills Project off the ground, it was late J.A.Rahim who successfully managed the inception to implementation stage, almost single-handedly ensuring the move of the location from Hawkesbay area to its present position at Pipri, thus avoiding an environmental disaster for Karachi. Late J.A.Rahim’s unceremonious exit as Party Secretary General and Minister for Production in 1975 threw the project off balance and it was not till 1976 that the construction work on the main plant was started. Looking back on it one must give credit to the first PPP regime for conceptual brilliance in bull-headedly pursuing this project against the analysis and professional advice of economic doomsayers.
Resuscitating a City Let No One Write Karachi Epitaph
The last fortnight has witnessed a focussing of national priorities with the very visible personal intervention of the PM in coming to grips with the ever-increasing problems of this vast metropolitan port city. Present in Karachi because of a family tragedy, Ms Benazir herself also became a victim of the massive blackout that hit the Province of Sindh and the city of Karachi. The miseries of rain-induced power shortage were further accentuated by a series of mysterious fires in power houses and grid stations. It would have taken an extremely insulated ruler, or a callous one perhaps, to remain impervious to the rapidly declining state of this leaderless city. Galvanized into action, the PM phased her approach to first providing immediate succour and relief, succeeding in instilling some urgency into the efforts of the Administration and the public sector utilities responsible for the bad state of affairs in the first place. Very visibly she did not show much confidence in the Provincial Government politicos or functionaries. However, in adopting a narrow political approach instead of a pragmatic and logical course as a democratically elected leader of bringing the city’s elected representatives into the solution mainstream in trying to keep the city going down the tube, she cast doubt on the credibility of the whole exercise.
This city is running on sheer momentum. Operation Clean Up had driven the urban political cadres underground, creating a leadership vacuum exactly when such a leadership was desperately needed at the grassroots level. The major factor contributing to the present socio-political crisis has been the indifferent, inefficient and almost non-existent civil administration of this metropolis. A city management that has no commitment to the people can never succeed. Without central direction and bereft of its elected representatives at the grass-roots level, the city’s infra-structure has gone to seed, the peace of earlier years has now been compounded by ethnic and sectarian clashes, further complicated by the lawless who have taken advantage of the uncertain environment with a spate of dacoities, kidnappings for ransom, etc. Well directed in the rural areas, in the urban areas Operation Clean Up separated into two parallel operations, one directed by uniformed personnel, the other by the shadowy men in mufti, badly compromising the integrity of the original mission whose prime targets were to be dacoits and kidnappers. Certainly there were militants in the MQM who had gone way past the pale of the law and needed to be brought to heel but insincerity in the intent and objectives of the men in mufti in contrast to the overall strategic plan as laid out to the then political government ensured that the Army found itself in sole confrontation with the MQM in deviation from its original objectives. The MQM hierarchy compounded the situation by abandoning their responsibility to the masses lock, stock and barrel and going underground. In the resulting leadership vacuum, a new breed of militants surfaced providing enemy agencies such as RAW with a gleeful opportunity to create mayhem. Writing in THE NATION, we had advised the immediate closure of the Indian Consulate General in Karachi (A DEN OF EVIL, June 28, 1994), one hopes that after the SAARC Foreign Ministers Conference in Dhaka (which has just ended) this will be done without further delay. RAW agents from this well of snakes are spreading poison in Karachi’s bloodstream. On Sunday, August 31, 1994 a Swiss national, Mr Fritz Jasser, was shot dead by two motorcyclists while driving a diplomatic vehicle, such is the state of lawlessness.
For Whom the Bell Tolls!
A major part of the city of Karachi has been paralysed over the past three days due to disturbances that started with the police firing last Friday on unarmed demonstrators proceeding to the Sindh Chief Minister’s House to court arrest. Independent observers have confirmed that the police action was rather hasty however they deserve some credit for not going berserk under grave provocation that took place later. Waiting on cue and not to be outdone, MQM militants in strength came out of the woodworks after spending two years in the cold almost to the day and took on the civilian law enforcement agencies (LEAs). Since civil disturbances having political overtones are clearly outside the ambit of the mandate of Operation Clean-Up, the Army very wisely stayed out of the fray leaving peace enforcement to the police and the para-military Rangers.
Karachi has been a city waiting to explode for some time. What we are seeing is only the opening sequence of what seems to be a programmed escalation. Even in the best of times, the socio-economic problems of this urban metropolis are so acute that it needs crisis management. With vast areas of the city in the grip of civil strife, this could easily turn into disaster management. The present fracas is a natural culmination of political neglect whatever the government-controlled media may say and any attempt to paper over a temporary truce will fail unless compromises are made by either side. The MQM must clearly recognize that the PPP is the majority party in the Province of Sindh and while the MQM does represent the urban majority, in the overall context of democracy, it is in minority in the Sindh Province. The PPP has full right to form the Provincial Government and to rule, with or without the MQM, but for the PPP it is important to come to terms with the MQM majority in the urban areas. While it can govern in theory without the MQM, in actual practice it cannot rule the Province without the association and/or cooperation of the urban majority party. As we have seen in the past three days, militancy with all its evils is impatiently waiting to take over in the wings. As yet death may not be stalking the streets in abandon but with loss of civilian control in a state of confrontation and chaos, innocent victims may increase manifold in the resultant crossfire. At the moment, large areas are without electricity and water, food and essential items are in short supply, this is a situation tailor-made for criminals to take over from political militants and exploit the situation into a state of anarchy. As it is by setting up ambushes off the main roads in by-lanes and side roads, a classic trap of urban guerilla warfare had been set. This was avoided by the LEAs simply because they wisely did not venture to enforce their authority off the main streets.
The Sindh Cauldron-III Last Ditch Remedial Measures
Rather than re-hashing the mistakes made in the past that has made the uniformed Army vulnerable to any number of contrived accusations, it is time to come to grips with the present situation so that the city of Karachi (in particular) and the Province of Sindh (in general) has something of a future. Leaders of all ilk must provide outstanding leadership, rise above themselves for the greater good of the nation, providing a platform of reconciliation that will not waste time in baseless and/or negative vilification but engage in positive initiatives to draw together our deeply polarized society. Above all, we must recognize that the Pakistan Army remains the best guarantor of our freedom from Indian occupation and slavery. Increasingly it is becoming the target of Indian RAW-inspired controversy to besmirch its reputation and shake the faith that bends this country together while making the Army gun-shy of internal security flashpoints in future, thereby compromising its much-needed deterrent status in this respect. People seem to forget that the Army was requested to launch Operation Clean Up to prevent civil strife, are we confident that if the Army moves back to the barracks today civil war conditions will not re-emerge?
The Army and the MQM are now in a state of confrontation and because of that the entire Mohajir community has become bitter and aggrieved, let us first accept this fact. The second fact is that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is the majority party in the Province of Sindh even though its solid base is in the rural areas as much as the second largest political force is the MQM with its authority largely in the urban areas with swing votes in crucial urban-rural constituencies. The third fact is that the PML (N) under Mian Nawaz Sharif has emerged (like the PPP) with a large vote bank in both the Sindh urban and rural areas though the PML (N) choice of most candidates in Sindh in the last general elections was atrocious. The fourth fact is that since 1977, but more particularly since 1985, the Province has been gradually polarized because intermittently unelectable so-called “people’s representatives” (potential PML (N) defectors) had robbed the Sindh roost over which they ruled and are now scurrying for cover from criminal prosecution, as is their usual practice, to the party that wields power. The fifth fact is that no serious concerted socio-economic initiative has been undertaken in either the urban or rural areas to ameliorate the distress of the common man and this has contributed to creeping anarchy settling into society for which the civil forces of law and order are not equipped morally or materially to deal with. The last and most important fact is that a combination of bad faith and bad judgement has created a situation tailor-made for the enemy to exploit, this is now being undertaken with such ruthless vengeance by RAW that if the volcano that is brewing in Sindh explodes, 1971 in comparison will be a Sunday church picnic.
The Sindh Cauldron-II Untangling a no-win Situation
Given that Gen (Retd) Aslam Beg, formerly COAS and lately PML (J) recruit, has recently said that the Army and the MQM are not in a state of confrontation in Sindh, one may well ask, where is the beef? After two years of “chasing shadows” (a direct phrase from the ex-COAS circa 1990), the Army hierarchy remains seemingly convinced that the MQM leadership prefers its own narrow ambitions in preference to the greater national interest, this suspicion has been further heightened because of the Human Rights initiative taken internationally by MQM. Conversely, why should not the MQM get that feeling that the Army is out to do them in, given that all urban area operations seem to be focussed on them? In 1990, the then COAS Gen Beg declined to take army action to quell criminal elements in Sindh unless he had sanction under Article 245 of the Constitution, with its refusal Ms Benazir regime punched its own time clock to extinction. Two years after stepping into the Sindh cauldron, other than the fact that Gen Beg and PPP are now uncomfortable but nominal allies because of the Wattoo factor, the Army has achieved spectacular results in the interior but in the urban areas their success has been of mixed blessings for a myriad number of reasons. Cleansing the MQM of its militants, the Army’s continued presence has become a media disaster, not unsurprisingly given that most welcomes tend to wear off in due time. Forced into a role that was not in keeping with their prime mission, the Army has performed a thankless task with increasing apprehension that the situation has taken on the life of a hydra-headed monster, you deal with one urban problem, other problems crop up in its place.
Mohajirs comprise a sizeable segment of the population in Pakistan. Though the MQM is representative of the main population blocs in Karachi and Hyderabad, a greater majority lives in various numbers in all the towns and cities of Pakistan (even upto 20-22% of the populace in some cases) while a sizeable percentage is settled in the rural areas of the Seraiki belt, a geographical reality that cannot be denied. In the 1993 elections Mian Nawaz Sharif would have swept into power with an overwhelming majority except for several political missteps, the most crucial being vacillation in the getting of active support from the MQM. That would have certainly given him a sizeable swing vote in every urban constituency in Pakistan (not that critical since he was fairly well placed in urban areas) but more importantly in the Seraiki belt that went almost solid in default to the PPP and its PML (J) allies, in many cases by narrow margin. The lack of MQM’s NA seats because of the MQM boycott also meant that the decisive bloc of a potential ally was lost to the PML (N) in the National Assembly. Lesson learnt from this exercise is that the MQM represent a segment of the populace that cannot be denied its place in the sun to whoever wants to retain Federal power. Down the line another fact to emerge is that isolating a vocal minority cannot be ever possible in a major urban city.