Re: Pashtuns in Karachi Unite
This thread is going into tangental debates...I have not read all the posts so I'll be brief in making some simple observations
1) Pashtuns are poorly represented in karachi because of the demarcation of boundaries, poor organization etc
Historically now:
There is a distinction between ruling elites and popular will, i do not believe any ethnic group is intrinsically bad..it is wrong to judge an entire people in a pseudo democracy like we have nowadays.
The distinction between the people and the elite is/was far more amongst Urdu speaking/Mohajirs and punjabis then other ethnic groups I believe that because:
* Karachis local populace has consistently opposed the federal government in elections..despite ayubs pandering to the urdu speaking business owners it did not earn him popular support electorally in karachi..in fact karachites even voted for Baloch nationalists when need be..on the other hand they have also backed the PPP in the 1979 local elections, conversely the Karachites backed non locals in the 1977 election people like Asghar Khan and Baloch like Sherbaz Mazari polled huge numbers despite the PPP rigging..so basically the karachi populace have never backed an establishment constructed and supported party. Whereas the same can't be said for the Punjab but you have to remember there were cases of ordinary people who set themselves on fire in the hope of shaming the army into releasing Bhutto. Also one musnt' forget the scale of PPP support in the 1980's in the Punjab and frontier was quite intense.
I disagree with the idea that nationlisations helped create the MQM, it was a factor but not the decisive one..if it had been so decisive why was there such a large gap between the time of the nationalizations and the formation of the MQM. The story of Altaf Hussains disillusionment can be traced to his experience in the army and not nationliasation programme. In fact you can trace the MQM's genesis to the de-nationlization programme launched by Zia ul Haq after 1977..in his attempt to create a new constituency in Punjaba nd the frontier he favoured returning assets to people from those areas and gae out loans to people from those areas. That new generation of business people developed with automatic monopolies and through using their clout in politics and not through fair competition (which explains the decline in corporate culture).
lastly, the Jamaat has been mentioned, you again have to remember something about the JI, the party suffered a very serious divide in the 1980's between the lahore wing versus the karachi one..the lahore branch was more ideologically pro zia and favoured the afghan "jihad"..that wing eventually won, leading to the illustrious Qazi sahibs ascent to power. That power struggle played one of the biggest roles in the collapse of the JI in karachi.