On the 28th August 2011 Senior Pakistan People's Party leader Dr Zulfiqar Mirza resigned as vice president of the PPP and as the minster of Sind. Addressing a packed press conference at Karachi Press Club he outlined a number of issues that led him to take such actions. These included Interior Minister Rehman Malik siding with the killers as anarchy continues on the streets of Karachi. He expressed serious reservations on the policy of his government about the law and order situation in Karachi. He also leveled serious allegations on Muttahida Quami Movement and its chief Altaf Hussain. He termed the MQM and its head responsible for targeted killings in Karachi. Zulfiqar Mirza also alleged that during a meeting in London MQM Chief Altaf Hussain had told him that America and world powers had decided to break up Pakistan and he (Altaf Hussain) had supported their idea.
In just the last few months many hundreds of lives have been lost on the streets of Karachi as targeted killing increased, even in the month of Ramadan. Many accusations have been made with regards to the culprits these include the third hand – foreigners, terrorists, gangsters and drug/land mafia, while the Muttahida Qaumi Movement(MQM), a former partner of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) coalition government in Sindh and the Awami National Party(ANP) place the blame squarely at each other. The loss of life in Karachi has brought life to a virtual standstill. A closer and deeper analysis shows the failure of government is once again at the centre of the crisis.
Karachi: Past and Present
Most of the deaths that have taken place are from the Mohajir Urdu speaking community and the Pashtun community in Karachi. The killings are a result of ethnic and political tensions which exist in Karachi and have resulted in over 500 killings this year with over 400 people being killed within the first three months of 2011 alone.
Karachi is Pakistan's largest city with a population of 13 million. More importantly it is Pakistan's economic and trading hub. This has made Karachi a magnet for migration as people from inside and outside Pakistan have relocated there in search of employment. Many Muslims from Afghanistan moved there during the Afghan war and more recently many from the FATA region have moved there, including whole tribes due to operations by the Pakistan army. Mohajirs who migrated from India during the1947 partition make up the majority of the population of Karachi whilst the Pashtuns are the second largest community with significant numbers of other ethnicities such as Punjabis, Balochis and Biharis.
During the 1970's the PPP led by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto declared Sindhi to be the main language in Sindh via the Sindh act 1972. This was an attempt by Bhutto to deal with the large Muhajir population; it also meant all teaching in schools, official documents etc was to be in Sindhi. This was seen as discriminatory by the Urdu speaking population, which eventually led to language riots for the second time in Pakistan's history (the first being the Bangladesh language riots in 1952) between the Mohajirs and the Sindhis. A compromise solution was reached eventually which enabled both Sindhi and Urdu to be the official languages of the Sindh province. In 1978 a young student leader by the name of Altaf Hussain established the All Pakistan Mohajir Student Organisation (APMSO) and campaigned for the right of Mohajirs at Karachi University which in turn lead to the establishment of the MQM a few years later.
In 1984 the MQM lead by Altaf Hussain was officially launched with the aim of securing rights for Mohajirs and recognition as the fifth nationality in Pakistan. The MQM message resonated amongst the Mohajirs of Sindh's largest cities Karachi and Hyderabad. In 1985 ethnic riots broke out after a bus driven by a Pathan ran over a student called Bushra Zaidi who was of Mohajir descent, Mohajirs attacked Pathans and Pathan interests such as businesses. The Pathans retaliated by attacking a bus load of students who were on the way to attend the funeral prayer of Bushra. Throughout the 1980's, ethnic violence reverted from Pathan-Mohajir to Sindhi-Mohajir with **** for tat incidents occurring in Hyderabad and Karachi as the Sindhis felt the Mohajirs were becoming too dominant. This lead to an attack on the Mohajir mayor of Hyderabad and retaliatory attacks against Sindhis.
By the time the 1990's came around the MQM was at war with the government and the army was called in to maintain law and order on the streets of Karachi. This continued with both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif when they were in power. It was in the early part of the 1990's that Altaf Hussain and other MQM leaders went into self exile.
The past decade has seen violence erupt mainly between the majority Mohajir and Pashtun communities where members of rival political parties the MQM and Awami National Party (ANP) have been killed. The most recent examples are the killing of MQM member Raza Haider outside a mosque in august 2010. The MQM blamed the ANP and this led to attacks against the Pashtun community while there was more violence between ANP-MQM supporters on the eve of by-elections which culminated in an attack in October 2010 at the Sher Shah scrap market when attackers from the Baloch community sought out Urdu speakers and murdered them in retaliation for earlier attacks. This year has seen no let up in the killings and supporters of both parties have attacked each other.
Targeted killings are not only confined to Karachi but have taken place in Balochistan where the subject of attacks have been Punjabis known as "settlers" i.e. have migrated from Punjab to Balochistan...........
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