This article was first published in The Herald issue of July 2013.

“Separate Karachi (from the rest of the country) if you dislike its people’s mandate,” thundered Altaf Hussain, “If you don’t stop playing with fire, it will burn down the entire Pakistan.” The warning, delivered as part of a speech given a day after election results were announced, did not seem to come from the leader of a party which had just won 18 National Assembly seats and 36 Sindh Assembly seats.

The May 11 polls might not have dented the parliamentary presence of his Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) but they certainly have left a bitter aftertaste: The party’s political hold over Karachi has never been shakier before since the mid-1980s. Not only the MQM had to contend with the loss of nearly 10 per cent votes in 2013 election as compared to those it polled in 2008, it also found itself out of the treasury benches, both at the federal and the provincial levels, for the first time since 2002. The barrage of criticism by the media and the MQM’s opponents about its alleged involvement in large-scale ballot stuffing and other strong arm tactics on the Election Day has also been unprecedented. According to Dr Merajul Huda, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in Karachi, a party which has always opposed the MQM’s politics, goes to extent of saying that the MQM may be passing through one of the most difficult phases of its history, with its very survival being at stake.

Many believe that these not so helpful developments have forced Hussain to take some extraordinary steps, including the restructuring of the party’s two central bodies — the Raabita Committee and the Karachi Tanzeemi Committee. Many known faces in both the committees — such as Farooq Sattar, Saleem Shahzad and Raza Haroon — have been shown the door and many relatively unknown people — such as Nasir Jamal, Adil Khan, Aslam Afridi, Mian Ateeq, Yusuf Shahwani and Mumtaz Anwaar — have been brought in.

Party insiders and some observers, however, claim that the restructuring does not have anything to do with the post-election situation. Ahmed Yusuf, a Karachi-based journalist and a keen follower of the MQM’s politics, says the institution of new committees is not a knee-jerk reaction to the votes lost or the party’s irrelevance to government formation. “The reshuffle process was two years in the making,” he says. “The idea is to give new life to the party's two main branches — the tehreeki (or the movement branch) and the tanzeemi (or the organisational branch),” he says. Haider Abbas Rizvi, senior party leader and former member of the National Assembly who is also part of the new Raabita Committee, has a similar point of view. “Reorganisation is part of the MQM’s internal accountability process and it was already planned, election results notwithstanding,” he says.

Critics, though, continue to point out that, in the aftermath of May 11 election, Hussain is feeling increasingly edgy over how the party affairs are being run in Karachi. He also seems unhappy over how some people in the party’s central leadership could not effectively respond to the allegations of rigging against the MQM. If nothing else, many in the media and commentariate believe that he wants to reassert his firm control over the party organisation in Pakistan while sitting in his London office and that is what explains the sweeping changes that he has made in the party organisation. It is in this context that some are predicting, or at least hoping for, a decline in the MQM’s hold over Karachi’s politics. “The party is stuck in a rut,” says Huda as he argues that the current situation may well mean the beginning of the end for the MQM.

This view, according to Gibran Peshimam, a journalist and currently a research fellow in journalism at the Oxford University, doesn’t completely hold merit. “Pundits and opponents have been writing off MQM for decades now,” he says. “The real question to ask is whether there has been a change within the MQM’s core support base, and what that change is. That will determine how the party’s politics will play out in the future.”

Regardless of whether its support base is changing or not, the MQM definitely seems under pressure to do things differently, something acknowledged by people within the party. Many insiders and sympathisers that the Herald spoke to agreed that the MQM urgently required a shakeup to alter the direction of its politics and to regain support and sympathy of its voters lost mainly to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in the election. One senior party official described the party’s situation in a Persian verse which roughly translated reads — “it is neither finding a place to run nor feet to stand upon”.

What has led the MQM into such a situation? The search for an answer has to start with the 2002 election when the party decided to side with General Pervez Musharraf. This was in a sharp contrast with the party’s image in 1990s when it was facing military operations and its politics was soaked in an anti-establishment ethos verging on rebellion against the state institutions. The relationship with the military and other security agencies was seen as “us” versus “them” in those turbulent years. The MQM’s decision to join anti-democratic forces and side with General Musharraf was a defining moment in the party’s history, according to Taj Haider, a former senator belonging to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). The party, he says, was playing politics of opportunism at the cost of ideology.

Since 2002, the MQM has evolved from being a tightly knit fraternity fighting in the streets for the cause of its core supporters – the Urdu-speaking Mohajir residents of Sindh’s urban centres – against both the state and political rivals to becoming a party machine seeking to throw public goodies at its voters and activists by being a part of the power structure. The change was bolstered further when Mustafa Kamal, an MQM activist, became Karachi’s nazim in 2005 local government election. Being in power at the national, provincial as well as the metropolitan level not just allowed the party to create a well-oiled network of patronage financed by public money, it also helped it in placing its workers in strategic departments such as those dealing with road construction, water supply, sanitation and, perhaps most importantly, land revenue and real estate development.

Haris Gazdar, a Karachi-based political economist, pointed out these developments in a 2011 article published in Indian journal Economic and Political Weekly. “The MQM not only controlled municipal functions, but also began to exercise de facto authority over state-owned land around the city which formally comes under the jurisdiction of the provincial government.”

The second, and simultaneous, development was the party’s repositioning from an ethnicity-based, Mohajir-specific entity to a liberal, progressive, secular organisation — a bulwark against Islamic extremism and religious/sectarian violence. This, incidentally, fit well within international and national narrative of the time when Pakistan and its foreign supporters – mainly Washington and London – were pitted in a battle of survival against Al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani affiliates.

This ‘rebranding’ project, however, faced its first major jolt on May 12, 2007 when Karachi suffered serious street violence, resulting in the death of about 50 political activists getting together to receive the then suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry at the airport. The opponents blamed the deaths on the MQM. The events of that fateful day also triggered an unrelenting cycle of violence in the city that resurfaces every now and then with renewed intensity, with the latest bout starting soon after the May 11 election and having already taken scores of lives (See timeline of Karachi violence). As PPP’s Haider points out, “Violence gives birth to counter violence, resulting in a violent society.”

One of the most significant aspects of this ongoing violence is that the MQM is alleged to have been involved in each of its recurrences over the last six years or so. “The MQM has fought with every other party, be it their partners or not,” says Huda.

The second setback to the ‘rebranding’ exercise came when the MQM decided to become a coalition partner of the PPP, both at the federal and the provincial levels. This, according to some analysts, gave birth to a politics of wheeling dealing. “Politics between the PPP and the MQM became transactional, thus converting their political cultures into transactional ones as well,” says journalist Yusuf. There came a stage in this relationship when people started saying that the MQM cannot remain out of power no matter what the cost. “It [had] become used to being in power and would constantly strive to be back there,” says Huda. Peshimam echoes the same view when he says that the MQM “actively pursued” to remain within the power corridors “even at the expense of looking rather politically unscrupulous, or even silly”.

While in power, the MQM also felt obliged to become the voice of its core Urdu speaking constituency once again, especially on issues of in-migration to Karachi, local government elections and violence in and around Lyari. With the rise in migration to the city since the start of the war on terror in 2001 – followed in 2010 and 2011 by the influx of flood victims – Karachi’s ethnic calculus have changed dramatically. While this has given rise to new political forces like Awami National Party (ANP) to claim political stakes in Pakhtun-dominated areas, many Sindhi nationalist groups have also become quite active in many parts of the city which have a sizeable Sindhi-speaking population. The third element in this highly volatile mix is the presence of religious/sectarian organisations which operate in many areas with mixed populations. The most troubling aspect of this new political equation in Karachi is that it has ended the MQM’s monopoly over violence in the city. From Lyari to Malir to Landhi, Korangi and even the Mohajir heartland of Orangi and Baldia, the party is being increasingly challenged by groups not averse to using violence as a political tactic.

Perhaps the most formidable challenge so far to the MQM’s hegemony over the use of violence has come from the People’s Amn Committee which originated in Lyari in 2007 as a PPP proxy and now has become too big for its own patrons. Zafar Baloch, a member of the People’s Amn Committee, however, claims that it is the MQM which has alienated most of the non-Mohajir communities in Karachi, leading to a divided cityscape. If the MQM claims to be the sole representative of the city then it should have supported Karachi’s original inhabitants, he says, suggesting that the party instead has treated the indigenous Sindhi and Baloch Karachiites as enemies.

The latest threat to the MQM is growing religious militancy which has targeted the party, along with ANP and PPP, before, after and during the May 2013 election. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its sectarian affiliates have claimed responsibility for the murder of at least two of the three MQM members of the provincial assembly killed in the last three years.

All this, on the one hand, has resulted in criminalisation of politics in Karachi on unprecedented scale and, on the other, given Mohajir community an image that most of its middle class and educated members are not comfortable with. “Before the MQM came on the scene, Urdu-speaking community was considered as cultured, educated and peaceful. Thanks to the MQM, a member of Muhajir community is almost always thought of as an MQM terrorist,” says JI’s Huda.

The MQM is hardly defensive over mixing politics with violence. Among hardcore party sympathisers the sense of victimhood is as steeped as the belief that without the MQM being around other ethnic communities would have expelled Mohajirs from Karachi. They, therefore, believe that being able to perpetrate violence and retaliate to violence committed by others is the only way to ensure the physical and political protection of Mohajir community. “More than any other party, the MQM knows what it is up against,” says Yusuf.

The most obvious conclusion that can be drawn from such a situation is that the MQM is no longer the only party or group in Karachi which sees violence as a necessary extension of politics. This is one of the main reasons why Karachi cannot be at peace with itself. If the MQM was the only force with weapons in Karachi, it could have been pressured into giving up its weapons, says Yusuf. “But all other major stakeholders are also violent, often teaming up with each other against the MQM,” he says and cites the examples of Iranian group Jundullah which, according to him, collaborates with Peoples’ Aman Committee in Lyari, and Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat and TTP which allegedly work in tandem with some political parties in Sohrab Goth). “The MQM will definitely not give up weapons because it would then feel defenceless,” says Yusuf.

The deadly violence that results from free for all turf wars that continue unabated in the city endangers the interests of a community that has always sided with the MQM over the last three decades – traders and businessmen. While this community has been complaining quite regularly about violence, lawlessness, extortion and kidnapping for ransom, it has also started talking in rather hushed tones about how the MQM’s frequent calls for shutter-down and wheel-jam strikes have been having a seriously negative impact on the business activities. Backhandedly acknowledging such grievances, in one of its most recent shut-down calls the MQM allowed the businesses to reopen after mid-day and profusely thanked the traders and industrialists for making its call for a strike a success.

Such changes might have resulted from the realisation that the way the party has done politics in the last decade or so has not worked. All we have done in last few years is to be reactive and immature. We have never been proactive,” a senior MQM official says, without wanting to be named.

Dr Jehanzeb Mughal, a member of the MQM’s executive committee, confirms that the party is going through a process of “introspection”. According to him, the MQM leadership realises the party has lost votes in its home constituencies and that it has to go back to the drawing board in order to “deliver to the masses, socially as well as politically”.

An immediate decision the party needs to make is whether to join the provincial government or not. It held a referendum in the third week of the last month to elicit the opinion of its supporters mainly in Karachi and Hyderabad ostensibly as an attempt to show that it cares for the views of its constituents. This is in sharp contrast to how it made its frequently changing decisions between 2008 and 2012 to remain in the PPP-led coalition or step out of it – never once did it sought the opinion of its supporters on all the three or so occasions it left the ruling coalition only to rejoin it later.

The referendum could well be a genuine exercise in eliciting advice from the grassroots. Conversely, it could just be a public relations tactic by a beleaguered party trying to give its supporters a feeling of importance as a means to bolster its endangered political fortunes. Whatever its intent and regardless of its result, the MQM may find that staying out of power for the time being may be in its best political interest. Peshimam feels that the MQM doesn’t have much to look forward to by joining the government. In the post 18th constitutional amendment environment, there is not much that a province-specific party like the MQM could gain from being the part of a federal government which in all likelihood will not adopt a pro-Sindh stance on the issues dividing the centre and the provinces. It will serve the MQM well to become a “soft opposition” in Sindh, Peshimam says. “As a soft opposition, the MQM will have continued, though indirect, access to decision making which it clearly cherishes and has actively pursued in the past,” he says.

Yusuf, too, argues in favour of the MQM staying out of power. Since the PPP will be returning to Sindhi nationalism as its primary mode of politics in the coming years, the MQM would do well to stay away from the PPP’s provincial government, he says. “If the MQM decides to join Sindh government at this point, it will become collateral damage in the struggle to represent Sindh and Sindhi interests.” Yusuf suggests that being in the opposition will allow the MQM to have a say on the political issues close to the heart of its electorate without getting the blame for the government’s failures.

Rizvi agrees that being in the opposition will allow the MQM to reinforce its position on issue-to-issue basis. While at the federal level the MQM will be taking an anti-government stance on inter-provincial issues, budget and petroleum prices etc, he says, at the provincial level the party will focus on local government elections and service delivery.

There is another, and perhaps more, important factor which may force the MQM to stay out of power for a while. With the party having lost some of its support, as shown by the election results, it may be time for its leadership to sit back and reassess political situation in Karachi. How potent still the issue of Mohajir nationalism in the city’s politics is and if it is as potent as ever then what is the best way to remain its flag-bearer without being regarded a violent gang alone — these are fundamental questions that the MQM has to grapple with before it can take up the rather mundane question of being in the government or not.

Notwithstanding different theories about which way the MQM’s politics will move in the coming months and years, the only thing certain about the party’s future is that nothing is certain. “The MQM is like the Pakistan cricket team. You never know what is going to happen, and often, if not always, there is no explanation for what has or will happen,” says Peshimam.