A YEAR or two ago only a handful of customers would brave a trip to Muhammad Arshad’s shop in Karachi’s jewellery quarter. They were highly likely to be robbed of cash on the way in or of purchases on the way out. Now, Mr Arshad says, business is up by 70% thanks to an army-directed crackdown in Pakistan’s commercial hub by a paramilitary force, the Rangers, who are not shy of brutal tactics. Their operations have led to a sharp fall in serious crime. But not only kidnappers and murderers are feeling the heat in a city rife with criminality. So are two of the country’s biggest political parties.
The Rangers launched their operations in September 2013, but have recently shifted focus. Scores of people from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which holds nearly all the parliamentary seats in Karachi, have been arrested, have disappeared, or have been bumped off in extra-judicial killings. The party headquarters has twice been raided this year. Attention is now turning to the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), in national office until 2013. On August 26th Asim Hussain, a former minister who owns one of Karachi’s best hospitals and is a close associate of a former president, Asif Ali Zardari, was arrested under new terror laws.
The Rangers’ actions are popular; Karachi has long needed cleaning up. The MQM has run a huge and violent criminal racket in the city alongside its political wing. Mr Arshad dares not name the heavies who would demand payments of up to $10,000 from shopkeepers every few months. But, operating street by street, the MQM had become a master of the extortion game. The PPP too has links to the underworld through its fief in Lyari, a troubled slum in the heart of the city where both politics and business are dominated by a gang allied to the party. Public anger is strong over allegations that PPP leaders have used control of the Sindh provincial government to enrich themselves.
Both parties are grappling with long-term decline. The MQM’s once-unassailable grip on urban Sindh is melting as its base of “Mohajirs”—descendants of Muslims who moved from India in 1947—is being challenged by a fast-rising Pushtun population with their own political leaders. Altaf Hussain, who rules the MQM from self-imposed exile in London, is a subject of inquiry in investigations into alleged money-laundering and murder being carried out by British police. Some within the party regard him as a liability. As for the PPP, it has a well-deserved reputation for incompetence and no charismatic leader to compare to Benazir Bhutto, Mr Zardari’s wife, who was assassinated in 2007. Since its electoral defeat in 2013 the party has shrunk from a national movement to being the voice of rural Sindh.
Crackdowns on political parties are not new: in the 1990s the MQM weathered an operation that at times descended into urban warfare. But the politicians are cornered as never before. The Rangers, unlike the police, are not under their control, but the army’s. The corruption probes cannot be dismissed as partisan politicking.
Both Mr Zardari and Mr Hussain have lashed out at the army, threatening to expose its corruption. But its head, General Raheel Sharif, is wildly popular—not just for actions in Karachi but because he has declared war on the abhorrent Pakistani Taliban. The two men are now turning their ire on the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif (no relation of the general).
On August 31st Mr Zardari threatened to renounce his party’s informal mutual non-aggression pact with Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), in place since the two parties joined hands a decade ago against the former military rule of General Pervez Musharraf. A return to the partisanship of the 1990s could imperil Mr Sharif’s position. As it is, he is being harassed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, a rising opposition party led by Imran Khan. His attempt last year to topple the government through street protests in Islamabad, the capital, was thwarted by other opposition parties that feared the country was slipping back towards military rule. The former cricketer now senses a fresh opportunity.
As for the MQM, last month it announced the resignation of all its MPs. It is now negotiating with the government to withdraw the resignations in return for a let-up in the Rangers’ campaign—even though the general, not the prime minister, is the Sharif with sway over them. Nasreen Jalil, a veteran MQM senator, says that although her party has nothing to do with extorting men like Mr Arshad, it is not above threatening to overturn the “apple cart” of Pakistani politics in the hope of getting what it wants.
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21663292-crackdown-gangs-countrys-most-populous-city-threatens-upend-national
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