Comparing E.Pakistan with Karachi.

A few points to make :


Comparing E.Pakistan with Karachi.

Many MQM-ite machhars have been bringing out such allusions. That’s really stupid.

Firstly, the bengalis grievances, all of them, were genuine. They were kept out of the fruits of independance and economic progress during 60s, their language relegated to second (or third) place, they were half the country’s population but living on W. Pak’s handouts, they were looked down upon and treated as inferior ’bhookey bengalis’ and their young men were regarded as being no more than domestic cooks and their women as housemaids by W. Pakistanis. All that is a fact.

Secondly, E. Pak was a W.Pak exclave thousand of miles away with India in between, and W. Pak establishment was never really seriously interested in retaining it or even defending it. It derived no economic benefit from it and was a burden. There was a huge hue & cry in W. Pak when a Rs. 1 per gallon tax was imposed on gasoline for cyclone relief for E. Pak. The military action of 1971 was further proof that just the existing troop strength of 30,000 in E. Pak was used to crush the rebellion, while no reinforcements were sent in anticipation of an Indian incursion. When it did take place, the high command was ordered by W. Pak not to fight and to surrender. Whatever fighting did take place with the Indians, it was only by junior officers on their own who didn’t know what was going on and had refused to surrender. These junior officers later rebelled against the high command on return to Pakistan and were court-martialed in the Attock Conspiracy case (Majors Saeed Akhtar Malik, Farouk Adam Khan, Asaf Shafi, Ishtiaq Asif, Farooq Nawaz Janjua, Nadir Parvez, Munir Rafiq, Iftikhar Adam, Sajjad Akbar, Tariq Parvez, Ayyaz Ahmed Sipra, and Nasrullah Khan; Captains Sarwar Mahmood Azhar and Naveed Rasul Mirza; Lt. Colonels Muzaffar Hamdani, Iftikhar Ahmed, and Afzal Mirza; Colonel Aleem Afridi; Brigadiers Wajid Ali Shah and Ateeq Ahmed; Squadron Leader Ghous, Wing Commander Hashmi and Group Captain Sikandar Masood). Many of the above were holders of Sitara-e-Juraat in the 1965 war.

So, W. Pakistan establishment effectively got rid of the ’bhookey bengalis’ burden, immediately recognised Bangladesh, and got its POWs as well as all its territory back without giving up anything in return. The material cost to W. Pak was minimal though the public still carries some emotional remorse which is actually quite unfounded. E. Pak was not Pakistan, but a W. Pakistan exclave which it decided to discard and Pakistan was overall better-off. The choice had always been how to defend E. Pak both economically and militarily at the cost of W. Pak, and the decision was arrived at to defend W. Pak with all resources.

None of the above holds true in case of Karachi and the mohajirs. None of their espoused grievances are genuine or acceptable, the ethnic basis is ridiculous because their language was adopted as national language and their ethnicity recognised and placed at a premium status, their jobs are guaranteed in the quota system at a larger ratio than their population, they were never harassed or discriminated against by the locals anywhere, and the ethnic locals work for them as cooks, drivers and guards instead of the other way around. What their political core i.e. MQM wanted in the beginning (upon having grown too big for their boots after having been established by Zia solely to counter PPP) was a separate province for the sheer motive of ’Qabza’ of Sindh’s territory, and when that was rebuffed, took to violence and talk of secession in the name of Jinnahpur. These idiots still threaten Jinnahpur when they post nonsense like bringing out the scenario of E. Pak which had nothing in common.

Karachi is neither E. Pak nor mohajirs are half the population of Pakistan nor a thousand miles away with India in-between. Most importantly, Karachi is not dispensable as Dacca was.

Thirdly, as detailed above, W. Pak did not defend E. Pak as this would have meant taking resources away from the W. Pak’s defense. Not so in case of Karachi. The MQM cadres were ruthlessly crushed using just the para-military rangers in the 90s. Any bigger movement will be dealt with even more severely. Approx half the population of Karachi is non-mohajir and non-militant as of now, but beginnings of militancy in that population is clear.

The perception amongst non-mohajirs (and rightly so) is that these people came to Pakistan to make a life in the promising new country, and they have betrayed it first by usurping federal power through liaqat ali khan’s manipulations, and when that imbalance was corrected by ZAB through lateral entry in civil services and the quota system, by then turning to thuggery, badmaashi, murder, bhatta-khori while at the same time aligning themselves with Pakistan’s arch-enemy i.e. India in trying to undermine the federation. These (MQM and its supporters) are now confirmed traitors after 12 May, and will be dealt with as such by the rest of the country mercilessly in an appropriate fashion which may even turn indiscriminate.

In short, the armed wing of MQM numbers in a few thousand who will be eliminated completely if they were to raise their heads again, but the innocent urdu-speaking bystanders will be butchered unnecessarily.