Karachi is burning, once again. There has been a sudden spurt of violence in the city. Killings, bomb attacks and riots have taken a heavy toll during the past month. Sindh Chief Minister Ali Mohammad Maher has been forced to resign. Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali faces criticism for failing to impose law and order. President Pervez Musharraf, intriguingly, has decided to make sympathetic sounds about the death and destruction in Karachi but not move in the Army to control the situation. Religious extremist and sectarian groups are once again on the rampage. What does that mean for Pakistan's stability? <br /> <br /> I will attempt an answer to this question by analyzing some of the issues mentioned above. First, the role of President Musharraf. This is the most telling factor. Besides exhorting his countrymen to adopt a path of moderation and taking repeated vows to stamp out extremism, the President has deliberately avoided taking any decisive action to restore normalcy to Karachi. It would have taken a day or two of troops marching through the streets of the city to deter criminal and religious fringe groups propelled by political compulsions and greed. He did not and it was not an act of omission. It was deliberate. He wanted Karachi to burn. There could be two reasons for it. First, it is an attempt by the President (read Army) to engineer another political realignment, both at the Centre and provinces. Prime Minister Jamali is already on his way out. The Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid-e-Azam), called the King's Party, is on the throes of an upheaval. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), coalition partners at the centre, are at loggerheads in Sindh, especially in Karachi. My assessment is the General is actively fanning this turf war between the MMA and MQM in Karachi to whittle down the former's power in Islamabad and make it powerless to pose a challenge to him when the deadline for his promise to shed his military uniform comes close. The General doesn't fear the MQM; it is acting out as a lap dog (Musharraf being a Mohajir) but it is the MMA which troubles the military establishment. In the past two years, this religious-political alliance has been able to gather enough public support to pose a real threat to his power. Second, the General is letting the situation spiral out of control to find a justification to dismiss the provincial government and impose military rule over Sindh, reaffirming the Army's supremacy in Pakistan while seemingly remaining well within the confines of the neo-martial-democratic rule (a mutation of democracy) that he had been able to establish over Pakistan with the acquiescence of the international community. <br /> <br /> Second factor that needs to be studies closely is the religious-extremist conglomerate that has been in existence for decades. Despite the US pressure and President Musharraf's regular Addresses to the Nation to eschew violence and adopt the moderate path, religious extremist groups like the Sipah and Lashkar have remained active under various names. Officially there is a ban on both these organisations. In reality, both have remained unvanquished. Operating under new nomenclatures, there are reports that these groups have increased their cadre with new recruits from the madrasas that have been flourishing under the military regime. With al Qaida and the Taliban elements relying heavily on these groups for shelter and logistics support within Pakistan, Lashkar and Sipah activists are not exactly without financial resources either. The recent series of violence in Karachi are an apt illustration of the power such groups hold. One factor needs to be kept in mind, however, These groups do not, and cannot, operate in isolation, without a nod from the military establishment. This is a fact that the international community should understand. If the Pakistan military establishment -Army and ISI-wants to put down these groups, it would take them no less than a month. And such an operation need not be of the scale of the recent Wana operation which, however, turned out to be a fiasco as far as the Army was concerned. <br /> <br /> Linked to this is another fact that should not be forgotten. It was President Musharraf himself who disclosed that quite a few Pakistan Air Force and Army personnel were involved in the twin assassination attempts on him that took place last December. Add to this, another piece of forgotten fact that at least 20 junior and middle-rung Army officers were picked up from Afghanistan for helping the Taliban and President Musharraf had to whisk them away to some unknown destination, most probably to be interrogated by the American intelligence agencies. Their whereabouts are unknown as of now. These two facts point at a disturbing phenomenon in the Pakistan Army. Contrary what many of the American policy analysts believe, there is considerable jihadi clout within the Army. General Musharraf is acutely aware of this and is, therefore, in a desperate need to create a situation within Pakistan where he could wrest control from these elements who are working in tandem with religious extremist elements. There is a general disquiet within the Army too about who would succeed the General, considering the promise that he would hang up his boots by December 31, 2004. <br /> <br /> What does these factors, read together, mean for Pakistan? A period of uncertainty with the President jockeying for more power and the political parties, including the MMA, trying to oust him at the earliest. This instability would only help the religious extremists and terrorist groups who could find the situation ripe to increase their sphere of influence in Pakistan. The pot is on the boil in Pakistan. <br /> <br /> <em>* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.</em>
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