Nichola Khan - Is Pakistan witnessing the fall of Altaf Hussain, the long-distance king of Karachi?
Even by Karachi’s
standards, it is an extraordinary time in the politics of this complex and
violent Pakistani metropolis. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the party
which has dominated the city’s politics for nearly three decades, is facing a
mounting backlash from the Pakistani authorities and an internal power shift.
MQM’s leader, Altaf
Hussain, has been exiled in London since the early 1990s, its deputy leader is
trying to sideline him by blaming mental strain, and the party’s newly elected
mayor of Karachi is in prison, facing charges
of aiding militants and criminals. Meanwhile, for the past two years
the Pakistani military has been conducting operations against MQM in Karachi
while other political parties are demanding that the party should be banned as
terrorists.
The population of Karachi’s
urban conglomeration is over 23m, and the city itself is expected to
become the world’s seventh largest by 2030, according to the UN. It has also
been called the world’s
most dangerous city. Since the 1980s, MQM
has been able to hold the city to ransom through a nexus of violence and crime
as it steadily gained more political power. The party was formed by Hussain in
1978 as a student organisation to represent the Urdu-speaking “Mohajirs”, or
migrants from India to the new nation Pakistan during Partition in 1947.
Since
its inception Hussain has remained unilaterally powerful, his hold on Karachi attributed to his famed, lethal,
“remote control politics”. In hours Hussain, who has been based in London since
1992 when he was granted asylum during army operations against the MQM in
Karachi, could command MQM workers to effect a total strike, and through
terror, shut down Pakistan’s largest commercial city.
In 2007, dozens of
people were
killed during the “Black Saturday” riots in the city. The MQM has
been implicated in the violence, but so far there has been little
justice in the Pakistani courts.
In September 2010, one
of MQM’s founders Imran
Farooq was murdered in London amid speculation about an intended
leadership bid. British police are investigating the
MQM on charges of money laundering and with involvement in Imran Farooq’s
murder – but it has been slow going… read more:
