Indians Dominate

Pakistan
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Sindhi-Muhajir Violence in Pakistan 1984-1992

State power was not always centered in the Punjab. After Partition, predominantly Urdu-speaking and
urban middle-class Muhajirs took over the bureaucracy of the fledgling country and developed
into a powerful elite. Urdu, the language of this minority, was made the national language, and
until recently the Muhajirs were among the most vocal advocates of nationalist sentiments.
However this sense of primary identification with Pakistan underwent a dramatic shift after the formation
of the MQM.

What has accounted for the sudden change in Muhajir political loyalties? Over the years, the
Muhajir community saw a decline in its share of state power, as a Punjabi- dominated military
increasingly took hold over the state apparatus and strengthened its control over the formerly
Muhajir-dominated bureaucracy.

Almost all of the Muhajir members of the Jaamat switched their loyalties overnight.

By 1991 the MQM, in partnership with the Sind provincial government, unleashed a reign of terror in
Karachi -- raids, witch hunts, and mass arrests of political opponents became the norm. Heavily armed
MQM militants operated as an organized, government supported Mafia, and extortion and coercion
became the order of the day. Journalists who wrote anything critical of the MQM were hounded and
newspapers offices were raided. The dismal behavior of the MQM's political leadership and the Party's
turn towards bossism were part of a pattern that all political parties in Pakistan manifest to varying
degrees once they control the state apparatus. The MQM's tenure in power became merely a new
group's opportunity to loot and plunder. Still, the MQM's incorporation into the ruling coalition
challenged the almost total hegemony of the military and feudal elite.

Source: www.onwar.com
Sindhi-Muhajir Violence in Pakistan 1984-1992

But the long-festering division between Sindhis and non-Sindhis exploded into
violence in Sindh. The muhajirs formed new organizations, the most significant-
being the Refugee People's Movement (Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz). The incendiary
tensions resulted not only from Sindhi-muhajir opposition but also from Sindhi fear
of others who had moved into the province, including Baloch, Pakhtuns, and
Punjabis. The fact that Sindhi was becoming the mother tongue of fewer and fewer
people of Sindh was also resented. The violence escalated in the late 1980s to the
extent that some compared Karachi and Hyderabad to the Beirut of that period. The
growth of the illicit drug industry also added to the ethnic problem.

*****

State power was not always centered in the Punjab. After Partition,
predominantly Urdu-speaking and urban middle-class Muhajirs took over
the bureaucracy of the fledgling country and developed into a powerful
elite. Urdu, the language of this minority, was made the national language,
and until recently the Muhajirs were among the most vocal advocates of
nationalist sentiments. However this sense of primary identification with Pakistan
underwent a dramatic shift after the formation of the MQM.

What has accounted for the sudden change in Muhajir political loyalties?
Over the years, the Muhajir community saw a decline in its share of state
power, as a Punjabi- dominated military increasingly took hold over the
state apparatus and strengthened its control over the formerly Muhajir-
dominated bureaucracy. During the first military dictatorship (1956-1969), the
capital was moved north from Karachi to Islamabad in the Punjab. Then when the
Sindhi feudal landlord Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir's father, came to power, he
instituted a series of reforms which effectively cut back at an already diminishing
bureaucratic base that was the source of power for the Muhajirs. During the most
recent military dictatorship, General Zia ul-Haq (1977-1988) doled out many key
government posts and huge land allotments to Punjabi military personnel and
retired army officers.

This process of Muhajir disenfranchisement from the corridors of power was

accompanied by the overall impoverishment of the middle-class. Clientelism,
corruption, and inflation cut further into the pool of available jobs, frustrating the
urban educated youth. This situation paved the way for the popularity of Altaf
Hussain's MQM Party. The MQM's initial demands were dedicated to specifically
urban, middle-class concerns -- increased quotas in government jobs and
educational institutions, and a greater share of provincial revenue for expenditure
on urban development. But despite the Party's indisputable resonance amongst
Muhajirs, it is now widely accepted that the MQM, after its formal establishment in
1984, was supported and backed by the military dictatorship, in part to break the
opposition to the military in province of Sind. A Sind-based movement opposing
General Zia's military regime had been gaining ground, and by promoting the MQM,
the General had hoped to break the opposition by dividing it on ethnic lines.

During General Zia's dictatorship, the MQM had emerged as a highly disciplined
party with a well-organized and widespread grassroots network. The party structure
virtually mimicked the organizational model of the previously dominant right-wing
party the Jamaat-i- Islami. Almost all of the Muhajir members of the Jaamat
switched their loyalties overnight, as the MQM effectively eliminated the Islamist
party's Karachi base. Tired of the traditional Muhajir stand which has usually
revolved around fundamentalist support for a strong center and army and staunch
opposition to India, many saw the MQM as a means of solving local issues that had
been ignored by previous governments.

As a result, after the sudden and fortunate death of General Zia, the 1988 election
results revealed the MQM's strong popular base. The Party won almost all the Sind
Provincial Assembly seats from Karachi, emerging as the third most important party
at the national level despite its extremely local base. However, once in power, MQM
realpolitik was marked by opportunism and a failure to address popular social
agendas.

By 1991 the MQM, in partnership with the Sind provincial government, unleashed a
reign of terror in Karachi -- raids, witch hunts, and mass arrests of political
opponents became the norm. Heavily armed MQM militants operated as an
organized, government supported Mafia, and extortion and coercion became
the order of the day. Journalists who wrote anything critical of the MQM were
hounded and newspapers offices were raided. The dismal behavior of the MQM's
political leadership and the Party's turn towards bossism were part of a pattern that
all political parties in Pakistan manifest to varying degrees once they control the
state apparatus. The MQM's tenure in power became merely a new group's
opportunity to loot and plunder. Still, the MQM's incorporation into the ruling
coalition challenged the almost total hegemony of the military and feudal elite.

At the height of its power, the MQM began to lose much of its popular support, and
would have certainly lost the following elections if it was not for the massive
deployment of the army under the aegis of "Operation Clean- up." Afraid that the
monster that they had supported had gotten out of control, the military junta
attempted to splinter the MQM by promoting a dissenting faction within the Party,
led by former commanders of MQM's dreaded militant wing, the Black Tigers. At the
crack of dawn on June 19, 1992, three hundred MQM dissidents backed by the
army rangers took control over key MQM offices.
In the months that followed, the MQM Party was crushed -- its workers arrested or
forced underground, their families brutalized. An army press campaign against the
MQM "exposed" MQM torture chambers, and stories of rape and extortion flooded
the front pages. That half of these stories were true made the exaggerated and
fabricated claims all the more believable. Despite military backing the dissident
group, known as the "real" or Haqiqi faction of the MQM, failed to gain any following
at all. Since the Muhajir community as a whole bore the brunt of a program of
systematic intimidation and harassment by the state, even those Muhajirs who had
previously not supported the MQM, or did not believed in the politicization of their
Muhajir identity, now felt that they had no choice but to support Altaf's MQM.