Al-Qaeda meddles while Karachi burns
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD - Pakistani police claimed on Tuesday that a lawmaker from the
Muthahida Quami Movement (United National Movement - MQM), Syed Raza Haider,
had been murdered by the al-Qaeda-backed South Waziristan-based Fazl Mehsud
group.
Haider and his bodyguard were killed on Monday by gunmen at a mosque in the
Nazimabad area of the southern port city of Karachi.
The killing sparked violence in Karachi, with at least 65 people killed in
clashes between supporters of the anti-al-Qaeda MQM and pro-militant groups.
Hundreds of buildings and vehicles have
been destroyed and the city remains extremely tense and virtually closed down
after overnight fighting on Tuesday.
The unrest comes at time the country is reeling from its worst floods in living
memory, with vast parts of northwestern Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa province, southern
Punjab and parts of Balochistan affected.
The assassination has reopened deep faultlines in Karachi, the country's main
financial and industrial city, where over the past six months targeted killings
on ethnic as well as sectarian lines have been frequent, with 165 people
killed.
Haider hailed from the ethnic Urdu community and was a Shi'ite. The alleged
killers, if they did indeed belong to the Fazl Mehsud group, would be Sunnis
and ethnically Pashtun.
Karachi's closure has completely choked the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization's (NATO's) supplies, of which more than 60% of non-fuel supplies
and up to half of the fuel used by Western forces in Afghanistan passes through
the port city.
Asia Times Online investigations lead to the conclusion that al-Qaeda desires
to jack up tensions in Karachi, open up a front in central Punjab and exploit
the flood-affected situation in restive Khyber Pakhoonkhwa. The belief among
al-Qaeda leaders is that NATO's combat operations will have to be abandoned by
the end of this year.
Al-Qaeda's war
In al-Qaeda's broader analysis, mainly agreed on by ideologues Dr Ayman
al-Zawahiri and Mustafa Abu al-Yazid (the latter - better known as al-Masri -
was killed in drone attack this year), it is essential that Pakistan's armed
forces be engaged across as much of the country as possible. This, it is
argued, will eventually lead to Pakistan's support of the "American war" drying
up.
This approach led al-Qaeda to open up multiple war theaters in the tribal
areas, such as Khyber Agency, Orakzai Agency, Kurram Agency and South
Waziristan. The result was that the military had no capacity - or will - to
launch operations against the global headquarters of al-Qaeda in North
Waziristan. Al-Qaeda plans much the same for central Punjab, starting with the
capital Lahore.
According to a Pakistani counter-terrorism official who spoke to Asia Times
Online, the recent arrest of some high-profile militants revealed that al-Qaeda
planned an attack vastly bigger than the one on the Indian city of Mumbai in
November 2008 in which for several days 10 Pakistani-linked gunmen went on a
rampage, killing 173 people and wounding at least 308. Despite the arrests and
the recovery of a huge cache of weapons and explosives in Lahore, it is still
believed that the militants are geared up to carry out a devastating operation
in the city.
However, in al-Qaeda's view, Karachi, with its multi-national corporations,
major banks and stock exchanges, is the weakest link and chaos in this city
would be most detrimental to Pakistan - as well as to the war in Afghanistan as
a major casualty would be NATO's supply lines. A chaotic and paralyzed Karachi,
a disturbed Punjab and a crisis-hit Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa would effectively block
all supply routes.
Karachi a simmering volcano
In the early 19th century, Karachi was a small fishing town; by the mid-19th
century the British had developed a port and various ethnic trading communities
began to move in, mostly from Bombay (now Mumbai), Gujrat and Kach. These
included Gujarati-speaking Hindus, Muslims and Parsis besides Christians from
Goa.
Later, members of the rich Hindu Sindhi community came down from Hyderabad and
Sheikharpur and established businesses. Despite the religious and ethnic
diversity in the city, there was one common link among all communities - they
were all traders whose prime interest was in the promotion of a peaceful and
cosmopolitan environment.
After the partition of British India in 1947, when many people settled in
either Pakistan or India according to religion, the rich Sindhi Hindus went to
Bombay and Gujarati Muslim businessmen from Bombay and Gujrat settled in
Karachi. Well-educated Muslim middle class people from Indian Punjab, Delhi,
Uttar Pardesh and other parts went to Karachi and provided a useful workforce
in the fields of the military, the bureaucracy and teaching.
Trade remained the soul of the city and the Christian community (dominating all
elite English-medium church schools), Parsis, Bohra Muslims, Kachi Memons
(ethnically all Gujarati-speakers) were still the real owners of the city. A
large labor force came from Punjab and North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber
Pakhtoonkhwa) and by the late 1950s Karachi had been transformed into an
industrial city.
The first faultline emerged after the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in
1979. Karachi became one of the biggest refugee camps for Afghans fleeing the
war. This provided a big boost for religious organizations and in 1983 the
first large-scale Shi'ite-Sunni riots broke out.
Soon after this the MQM was formed as the flagbearer for the rights of the Urdu
community - that is, Muslims who had come from British India. This in turn led
to the city's first ethnic violence between Pashtuns and Urdus. Clashes
continued until 1990, when the MQM established political dominance and
overshadowed all religious and political parties.
The MQM, hated by the military establishment because of its left leanings, was
the victim of two military operations, but this simply further strengthened the
organization.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the MQM, like all
other left-wing forces in the country, leaned towards Washington. After the
September 11, 2001, attacks on the US the MQM was the only political party to
publicly mourn the attack and it announced its all-out support for the American
war in Afghanistan and for the "war on terror".
However, in an extremely anti-American atmosphere this cost the MQM heavily and
the six-party religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, won five
National Assembly seats from Karachi.
The MQM all the same continued to actively support the anti-Taliban,
anti-al-Qaeda drive and helped the security forces track down suspects, to such
an extent that by about 2005 Karachi was by and large declared clear of Islamic
radicalism. Nonetheless, with more than 3,000 madrassas (seminaries)
Karachi still had deep roots of Islamic militancy.
Following the demise of the dictatorial rule of president General Pervez
Musharraf, Washington pushed hard for the introduction of a civilian,
US-friendly administration in Islamabad. For elections in 2008, Washington made
it clear its favored parties were the MQM and the Pashtun nationalist Awami
National Party (ANP).
Representation of the Pashtun population, which had previously been in the
hands of religious parties, was given to the ANP, which managed to win two
provincial assembly seats. This was the beginning of a renewed struggle between
Pashtuns and Urdus in which al-Qaeda saw an opportunity for eventual control of
the city. The South Waziristan-based Mehsud community was the majority
component of the ANP and the whole Mehsud tribe was controlled by the late
Baitullah Mehsud and now by Hakeemullah Mehsud - the head of the
al-Qaeda-backed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistani Taliban).
Al-Qaeda continued to play off the ANP and the MQM. ANP leaders first realized
the problem early this year when targeted ethnic killings turned into sectarian
killings between Shi'ites and Sunnis and Deobandis and Brelvis.
The ANP's leader in Karachi, Shahi Saed, urged his men to stop all hostilities
against the MQM and warned that the situation was being manipulated by al-Qaeda
and by the Taliban, who are ethnically Pashtuns. However, Pashtun youths ganged
up against the Urdu community in defiance of all orders and MQM office bearers
were killed and their offices ransacked.
The American consulate in Karachi played an active role in trying to calm the
situation, to some effect, but the underlying tensions exploded with the
killing of Haider on Monday.
As the battlelines now stand, all jihadi organizations and Pashtuns are in one
camp. They are lined up against the MQM, the Sunni Tehrik (an anti-Taliban
Sunni group), and all Shi'ite groups.
It is a highly explosive situation, and one that could again erupt into flames
at any time, especially when al-Qaeda holds the lighter.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can
be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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