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.
Instead of challenging the established political Holy Cow of Sindh's quotas, or beginning a process of reconciliation with itself, by absorbing the stranded Pakistanis of Bihar into Pakistan, the military supported Musharraf to do simply what any dictator would do. He bought his way out of the problem by providing the massive infrastructure grants to the MQM-dominated Karachi district government (but only after the people of Karachi got smart and elected an MQM administration at the local level).
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8:37 PM
Moderate Islamist here
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