The General’s Solution for Karachi
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
Last week the Director General of Rangers in Karachi, Major General Bilal Akbar announced that the paramilitary force under his command, the Federal Government and the Provincial Government of Sind have together formulated a plan to create jobs for the youth of the largest city of Pakistan.
The program addresses three different areas: 1) Skill Development Center, which will focus on getting young people acquire vocational training and thus be hired as qualified workers and draw higher salaries, 2) Victim Support Program, which will provide assistance to the relatives of victims of target killings and other violent crimes in securing jobs; and 3) Rehabilitation Scheme, which will help individuals who have not committed major offense in getting back on track, finding employment and staying away from further criminal acts.
Would these measures help to improve the law and order situation in the city? Even in the best case scenario, they may boost the morale a little. Otherwise the chances are that they would fail like many other initiatives have foundered in the past. Why? Because, these programs look perfect on paper covering a wide range of issues, nevertheless, they fail to look at the elephant sitting in the room: the political isolation of the people of Karachi and their lack of participation in the decision-making process.
Aside from the violence, the target killings and the widespread collection of protection money, what sets Karachi apart from large cities is its consistent, enbloc voting pattern for the last 30 years in which almost all the National and Provincial Assembly seats have been won by the MuttahidaQaumi Movement (MQM). Under its controversial leader Altaf Hussein, MQM represents a large group of heterogeneous people who migrated to Pakistan and settled in Karachi from the non-Punjabi speaking parts of India (mainly Utter Pardesh and Bihar) in 1947 or after the fall of Dhakka in 1971.
One way of looking at this pattern is that the Urdu-speaking people vote for a person who cannot be by any means considered normal or mentally stable, who is allegedly associated with violent crimes including the murder of his own associate, who disparages his own military, and who may also have worked with the not-so-friendly foreign intelligence agencies against the interest of Pakistan. Although these charges are still to be proved in a court of law, they do represent the predominant view of the people of Punjab-if not the whole of Pakistan. Doubt it? Look at the voting pattern that has emerged in the last elections: the two most popular Punjab-based political parties, the PTI and PMLN, carry similar negative views about the MQM and its leadership. Mian Nawaz Sharif, a few years ago, vowed publicly never to forge an alliance with the MQM and Imran Khan. Well, we all know about his derogatory remarks based on skin color and his approach towards the party, its members and the voters.
If MQM and its chief are so unreliable, then the question emerges: Are the voters of such a party equally patriotic as the people of Punjab? Can they be trusted at all on key positions? Should the local workers of MQM be regarded as criminals, target killers or considered as political activists? Is there a difference between a sector in-charge and a ring leader of a criminal organization? Where is that distinction and who will draw that line? The operation in Karachi currently cannot differentiate between the two.
But this picture-based on accusations and suspicions-has another side too. This side attempts to explore the reasons why the people of Karachi feel so insecure to vote on ethnic grounds alone. Even if Altaf Hussein had once made some sense years ago, he does not any more, then why would anyone in his sane mind vote for him-and with such a large gap?
Looking for the real answers to these questions, and after leaving our own biases and presumptions aside, we will first find that the major problems of the people are the same as in the rest of the country: poverty, unemployment and lack of support programs. However, there is something more: the people of Karachi feel that someone has usurped their right to rule, the elephant in the room that the program rolled out by the General fails to address. By saying that I do not mean the right to rule is limited to vote for few corrupt individuals once every few years or listen to the nonsensical telephonic address of an ailing politician. By the right to rule I mean that they would like to have equal representation in the Army, the AirForce and the Navy going up to the highest level. And within these institutions they are respected and trusted like someone from Punjab or KPK, not humiliated as a persona-non-grata, an intruder in the ‘old boys club.’
The right-to-rule means that they have a representation in the police and judiciary according to their education, talent and, of course their population size. The right-to-rule means that they be selected in the Central Superior Services (CSS) in accordance with their actual percentage not based on the quota. Along with all that, what the right-to-rule actually means is that they, not General Akbar, come up with the plan to reduce crimes in the city and rehabilitate its youth.
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