The Loss of Muhajir Support

The Muslim League’s anti-Jama‘at campaign was compounded by a more devastating development—the loss of the Karachi, Hyderabad, and the Muhajir vote to the MQM. The MQM had been founded by former members and affiliates of the IJT, and it initially drew support from the Jama‘at’s constituency among the Muhajirs. The Jama‘at’s leaders believed its meteoric rise to power could not have occurred without the approval of the armed forces,^[48] and realized that Zia had engineered it to destroy their base in Sind.

Since the beginning of his rule, Zia had remained wary of rural Sind, where Bhutto still enjoyed a considerable following and which had shown little enthusiasm for Zia’s coup. He had sought to placate Sindhi landlords and ethnic parties by catering to their interests, which were often at odds with the demands of the Muhajirs. For instance, the controversial quota system in Sind put in place by Bhutto, which reserved prized bureaucratic positions for Sindhis to the detriment of the Muhajirs, was kept intact by Zia. Nor did the general do anything about the worsening social conditions in Karachi, which by 1986 had reduced many Muhajir neighborhoods to squalor. The Zia regime encouraged the rise in power of the Punjabi and Pathan communities of Karachi, in the form of the Punjabi-Pakhtun Ittihad (Punjabi-Pathan Alliance) party, which the Muhajirs also resented. Zia had turned a blind eye to the Pathans’ trade in contraband and narcotics, brought to Karachi from Afghanistan for export.^[49] The Muhajirs’ frustrations erupted in the form of the anti-Pathan riots of 1986, which culminated in a protracted conflict between the MQM and the Punjabi-Pakhtun Ittihad, waged in Karachi well into 1990. Between 1979 and 1986, Zia had relied on Islamization and anti–People’s Party propaganda to keep the Muhajir community in check and had deputized the Jama‘at—with the help of the Punjabi-Pakhtun Ittihad in Punjabi and Pathan areas—to maintain order in Karachi. Not surprisingly, the Muhajirs grew resentful of the “Islamic” regime and its allies. The rise of Muhajir ethnic consciousness ended the Jama‘at’s control of Karachi politics and for the first time brought to light the grievances of the Muhajirs against the Zia regime.

Zia concluded that he needed a new political order in Karachi and other cities in Sind to supplant the Jama‘at and harness the political energies of the Muhajirs to his benefit. The organization of the MRD in 1981 had generated concern among Pakistan’s military leaders. While Sindhi landowners and the ethnic parties could be relied upon to keep the MRD out of rural Sind, the situation in Karachi was more complex. Wali Khan, the Pathan leader of the Awami National Party and a MRD stalwart who was opposed to the Afghan war and the Zia regime, was popular among Karachi’s sizable Pathan community. The inroads he made had led the People’s Party, which could also benefit from the restlessness of the Muhajir community, to action. When the 1985 elections proved that the Jama‘at no longer had the political power to keep the MRD out of Karachi and had developed doubts of its own about the Zia regime, the general decided that the Karachi-based MQM was a better choice for his support. Jama‘at leaders in fact claim that the army and the Sind ministry not only encouraged the MQM but also armed it.^[50] Although it too had been organized by people with grievances against the Zia regime, it was still more hostile to the People’s Party and preoccupied as well with defeating its rivals—the Jama‘at, the Punjabi-Pakhtun Ittihad, and the MRD. The Muhajir-Pathan clashes in 1986 greatly benefited Zia as they pitted the Pathan supporters of Wali Khan and the MRD against the Muhajirs. What Zia did not realize was that the advent of the MQM gave the Jama‘at and the People’s Party a common cause. As the IJT was squeezed out of the campuses in Sind and the Jama‘at lost its base of support in Karachi, both found a natural ally in the People’s Party, which was also trying to make inroads into the MQM’s territory.^[51]