Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [189]
At this, I had to cover a smile, given what I had heard about election rigging by MQM activists – and heard from journalists and analysts who in other ways admired the MQM as a party. The real reason for the MQM’s intransigence seems to be that they feel that time and demographics are against them, and that if they give even an inch to the steadily growing Pathan population they will end up losing control of Karachi altogether.
Jamal took me to Zarina Colony, a Mohajir settlement in the shadow of the low hills that fringe northern Karachi, which had seen several deaths in the latest fighting. Mohajir and Pathan fighters have repeatedly battled to control these insignificant hills, like a slow-motion, low-level urban gang version of the battle of Ypres; and as the sky darkened, the MQM guards became visibly uneasy.
As we entered the colony, we moved from Karachi to rural South Asia. Decrepit one-storey mud houses haphazardly lined the roads, and the street was dotted with heaps of rubbish. Looking up at the summit of the closest hill, I could see ANP flags against the sunset, the hill having been occupied by the Rangers, however, when they stepped in to end the fighting. The crowd that met us seemed to have been carefully put together to blame the ANP and present the MQM case over the latest fighting and, as far as I could judge, some of their stories were highly exaggerated. To Jamal’s embarrassment, however, they departed from script by admitting that their colony was illegal. ‘We will be registering it very soon,’ he cut in. Many of them, like Jamal himself, were Urdu-speakers who had fled Bangladesh in the 1970s – twenty-five years after most of the Mohajirs, which helps explain why they were still unhoused.
They grew silent and looked uneasily at each other and at Jamal when I asked if they were satisfied with the city government. ‘Well, the local nazim has done something,’ Bilquis, a fat, formidable-looking local woman replied. ‘At least we have a sewage line now [which according to my nose was not sufficient] and we have been promised a water pipe.’ In one way, however, Zarina Colony was still Karachi, and not the rest of Sindh – in the way that the women like Bilquis pushed forward past their men to shout their complaints at me.
In previous days, I had visited Pathan areas to get their side of the story. Before the latest fighting, I saw Syed Shahi, the ANP president, at his home. Shahi is a self-made businessman who made a fortune in various enterprises after coming to Karachi in the 1970s, and had become a community leader. His luxurious home is decorated in eye-wateringly bad taste even by Pakistani standards, with a huge illuminated photograph of a Canadian lake dominating the glaringly lit, quasi-rococo drawing-room. Next to the drawing-room is a large hujra, or traditional Pathan male gathering place, set out in traditional style with cushions along the walls, a sign that, whether from culture or astuteness, Mr Shahi remained close to his community roots. Indeed, he looks that way, with a small moustache set in an enormous face, craggy and extremely tough-looking. His English is poor, and his son – who is studying in England to be a doctor and says he probably will stay there – had to translate for him.
Syed Shahi said that his aim is to ‘defend Karachi as place where all different peoples can live’. He claimed that of these people, 4 million are Pathan – which most people say is a gross exaggeration, though none of them can agree on what the real figure is. He complained bitterly that ‘the MQM says that other peoples can come here, but in fact they try to stop them from getting jobs, businesses, or an education.’ He said the ANP is against the Taleban, but that the MQM’s warnings of Taleban penetration of Karachi are just an excuse to seize Pathan land and business.
Asked about ANP mobilization of the