MQM Militancy

Senior Leader Farooq Sattar & Tariq Javed, with founder Altaf Hussain

The ancestor of the MQM was the All Pakistan Muttahidda Students Organization (APMSO), drew its support from muhajir defectors from the heavily armed Islami Jamiat ut-Taleba(IJT). A large number of Jamaat-i-Islami members who were ethnic Muhajirs shifted their loyalties to the MQM overnight, resulting in the elimination of the former influence of the Jamaat. APMSO was radicalised when in 1985-86 the first (of the many) major clashes took place between Karachi's Muhajir and Pushtun communities.[1] Faced by the superior firepower brought in by Afghan refugees, MQM dispatched a delegation of APMSO members to Hyderabad to meet a militant group from the Sindhi nationalist student organisation, the JSSF. APMSO were given some small firearms by PSF in the early 1980s, but it was JSSF that sold the APMSO its first large cache of AK-47s that were then used to tame the heavily armed IJT in 1987 and 1988, eventually breaking IJT's hold at KU and in various other state-owned campuses in Karachi. Admist ethnic violence, MQM's armed wings used street fighting and urban warfare as ethnic Muhajirs sought to use violence to control governing structures and appointments such as the Karachi Port Trust, Karachi Municipal Corporation and the Karachi Developmental Authority.[2] During the MQM's stint in power in 1991, when it was part of the provincial government of Sindh, the party endorsed and participated in raids and the mass-arrests of its political rivals. Additionally, the MQM, supported by the government, was accused of operating as a mafia organization where its heavily armed militants used extortion and coercion to increase their influence.[3]

In 1990s the Pakistani army and intelligence agencies according to multiple sources were growing increasingly concerned with the MQM's growing influence in urban Sindh, where it had become a de facto parallel government and was becoming more aggressive towards the government in Islamabad. The military high command viewed the MQM's treatment of opponents and journalists with alarm and saw the group as a "state within a state." A turning point came in 1991 when allegedly MQM activists mistreated two army officers in Karachi, leading to the launch of "Operation Cleanup" in May 1992. This operation was aimed to target "terrorist" and "criminal" activities in Sindh, but primarily focused on the MQM. The army claimed to have aimed to cleanse Muhajir neighbourhoods of militias, but in order to avoid charges of targeting a single political party, the army soon handed over the operation to the paramilitary Rangers.[4] The crackdown, which involved a massive deployment of the army, resulted in the movement going underground, the party leader's exile, and a significant change in the MQM's operational strategy.[5][3] A propaganda campaign was started by the army to label MQM as terrorists.[6] As a result of the operations, while the organizational structure of the MQM were in disarray, its mass support among ethnic Muhajirs increased tremendously.[5] The rise in the support mainly came due to the violent tactics used by the army to curb MQM.[7]

During the months of May and June in 1994, the MQM carried out a series of attacks following the army's withdrawal. These included car bombings, riots, and secret killings, leading to the deaths of around 750 people, including non-Urdu speakers and other opponents of the MQM.[8][9] The conflict its most bloodiest in May 1995, when MQM militants resurfaced to the ground, and systematically ambushed government offices, police stations and police patrols using rocket launchers. Although sporadic ethnic and sectarian violence had been a permanent feature of the Karachi landscape since 1980s, the level of organization and intensity of the violence in 1995 was unprecedented. About 300 people were killed in the month of June, the death toll reached 600 deaths in two months and 2,000 deaths in a year attributed to ethnic violence, leading analysts to compare the situation to the Kashmir insurrection which were also taking place in the 1990s.[10][9] On June 25, 1995, nearly 80 policemen were killed in a five-week long assault by the MQM militants, and a total of 221 security forces were killed over the year, while over 70 police operations killed over 121 "terrorists" believed to be MQM activists or sympathizers. By 1996 it was described as a virtual civil war between the Pakistani security forces and the MQM.[10][11][12]

In 2002, the MQM assumed office in the provincial government and were elected to the city government in 2006 and 2008, while Karachi newspapers were accusing the MQM of eliminating opponents with impunity. This also involved violent, unchecked land expansion and real estate 'entrepreneurs' who were specualted to be illegally or violently occupying land driven by powerful political patrons in the MQM.[13] Karachi experienced an exceptionally high level of violence in 2011 with some 800 people killed, where the MQM was widely viewed as the perpetrator of targeted killings, out of a total 1800 killings in Karachi.[14][15][16]

The first victims of the MQM in the 1980s were primarily ethnic Pashtuns, who were generally targeted on trivial grounds which the MQM did its best to exacerbate.[19] In 1985, a bus accident led to the death of Bushra Zaidi, by an Azad Kashmiri Punjabi driver,[20][21][22] ignited tensions and resulted in riots in Orangi Town of Karachi. Mobs, especially university students, attacked ethnic Pashtuns and policemen, blaming the ethnic group for car accidents in the city, resulting in the killings of over 100 people.[21][23][24][25] During the riots, the APMSO printed and distributed inflammatory pamphlets against the ethnic group, grounding the city to a halt and shutting down educational institutions.[26] In 1990, in a response to a police raid on MQM militants which caused the deaths of 60 Muhajirs civilians,[27][28] MQM retaliatory attacks led to the deaths of 130 Sindhis.[29][30] In 2007, the 12 May Karachi riots saw the MQM party workers being accused of launching highly coordinated attacks on ANP and PPP supporters, resulting in the killings of 58 people as well as hundreds of injuries, most of whom were Pashtuns. 14 MQM workers were killed in relation during the clashes.[31][32][33] In several occasions in 2007 and 2008, Pashtun-majority neighbourhoods were subject to violence and bombings, including coordinated attacks against Pashtun street vendors, restaurant owners and labourers, as well as "target killings" of ANP activists, who were accused to be involved with the Pakistani Taliban.[34][35][36] In 2010, in response to the assassination of an MQM politician, Raza Haider, MQM-affiliated gangs gunned down close to 95 people, primarily Pashtuns as well as a minority of Sindhis and Punjabis, during the 2010 Karachi riots.[37][38] In March 2011, beginning with an attack on a PPP office, 50 people were killed, mainly Pashtuns, although Urdu-speakers and Balochs were also among the killed, as well as another 18 in the month of April. These were blamed by Pashtun activists on the MQM. although MQM denied the claims.[39][40] In a five-day period beginning on July 5, MQM led a protest quitting the ruling government, resulting in 114 deaths indiscriminately targeting ethnic Pashtuns regardless of their affiliation to any political party.[41][42][43] While in mid-July, ANP politicians accused the MQM expelling 3–4,000 Pashtuns out of their neighbourhoods,[44] the Sindhi politician Zulfiqar Mirza's comments criticizing MQM which were seen as offensive to Urdu-speakers re-ignited violence as MQM mobs mobs went on a rampage and burned vehicles, resulting in further 14 deaths by morning,[45] while the death toll increased to 200-318 by the end of July.[46][47] According to Fawad Chaudhry, neither PPP nor ANP had a comparable militant wing as the MQM in the past 10 years.[48]

The MQM's initial source of funding relied on Zakat, voluntary donations from its members. However, in the 1990s, the MQM adopted a new approach called "Bhatta" or forced tax and protection money collection from commercial areas in Karachi. The party also resorted to illegal funding methods such as bank robberies in 1988.[49] The "Bhattia" mafia extorted money from various professionals, including traders, businessmen, bankers, doctors, teachers, construction workers, and religious figures. This illegal funding scheme blurred the lines between politics and crime in Karachi, as some criminal groups transformed into political parties' armed wings.[50][51] In 2015, the MQM faced accusations of setting fire to a factory to extort money, resulting in the deaths of 258 people.[52][53][54][55] MQM managed to build a successful network of businessmen and marketeers, to influence what was in effect a parallel economy in Karachi which produced organizational profits from alliances cemented with violence.[56] Dawn reported that Karachi as an economic hub was essentially a "hostage city" of the MQM.[56] MQM made use of its violent control over the economy not just through profits from extortion, but also an organized strategy of intimidation to enforce "strikes", pendowns, tooldowns, and shutdowns of the entire economic hub in Karachi, which essentially used the city's economy as a hostage from the rest of Pakistan, to gain political concessions from the central government and force it to accept the MQM as a ruling power.[56][57]

MQM has allegedly resorted to violence against journalists and media outlets critical of the party's violent activities.[58] Starting from 1991, the MQM engaged in destructive activities against newspapers that criticized them, with members of the group involved in looting and burning down offices. In fact, the management of Herald publications in Karachi had to suspend the distribution of the Dawn newspaper on March 21, 1991, after what it called a week-long "terror campaign" carried out by the MQM which involved abductions, intimidation, and attacks against newspaper vendors, distributors, and hawkers.[59] In one brazen incident in 2011, after a Pashtun journalist Wali Babar was allegedly killed by the MQM in Karachi, 4 journalists linked to the murder investigation of the dead journalist, two policemen, a police officer's brother, and an informer, were all "methodically targetted" by the MQM.[58]

In response to the massacre of Muslims in Meerut in India, the MQM attacked local Hindu temples forcing a Hindu delegation to seek the protection of G. M. Syed.[60]

MQM's violent activities were not limited to external confrontations, as internal factional violence also occurred, with party members being targeted in drive-by shootings. An instance of this occurred in the initial half of 2009 when over a hundred killings took place due to infighting between the MQM-Haqiqi and MQM factions.[61]

Throughout 2008, about 143 killings in Karachi were attributed to clashes between MQM and the Sunni Tehreek, a Barelvi Sufi Islamist organization which recruited former MQM members.[62] Contrarily to MQM-A, MQM-Haqiqi, a breakway faction of the MQM, united with the Sipah-i-Sahaba in Karachi in attacks against Shi'a places of worship.[63] MQM also involved in clashed with the Taliban is which believed to profit from criminal activities such as bank robberies, thefts, car snatchings, and kidnappings for ransom.[62]