The targeted killings taking place in Karachi have brought back memories of the 1990s and Operation Cleanup. That military operation effectively routed the street power of Version 1.0 of the MQM, disabled the organization of the MQM to mobilize young people for demonstrations of street power, and through the courts system, systematically delegitimized its leadership. It was an operational victory that disembowelled Karachi and its politics. Sensing that undercurrent of bitter resentment against the operation, Gen Musharraf and the military adopted a different strategy when they took power in 1999. The idea was to re-engage the MQM, largely on the back of the economic promise of Karachi, a massive urban area, by all international standards, that was left far behind in the global race between cities for investment capital, jobs and infrastructure. Karachi's retarded growth in the 1990s was not only a problem for Karachi, and for Muhajirs. It was a Pakistani problem. Solving the problem would produce many benefits, from rejuvenating the microeconomy of Karachi, to healing the political economy of Pakistan.
The strategy seemed to have worked. By engaging the MQM, the military was able to defuse much of the tension that had defined relations between urban Sindh and the Pakistani establishment. The engagement of course, came in the shape of making the MQM a partner in the traditional patron-pillage model of Pakistani politics. It did not come in the shape of substantive improvements in governance, but rather in the bells and whistles of roads, bridges, parks -- not to mention pomp and privilege for MQM ministers at the federal and provincial levels that had previously been hard to win, and easily lost. Of course, even though it achieved some things immediately, the strategy was also wrought with danger. The original grievances of the people that formed the MQM were never, ever, really addressed. One needn't have endorsed the original agenda of the MQM to see how linearly consistent it was Muhajir identity in urban Sindh. Simply put, the MQM wanted an end to the affirmative action (or positive discrimination) quota system in Sindh province and it wanted the repatriation of the almost 300,000 Pakistanis stranded in Bangladesh, back to Pakistan.
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