Re: Taleban are MQM’s competitors [split: Taliabn funding itself from kidnappings..
Aint very different from Taliban, are they?
Sample Chapter for Verkaaik, O.: Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan.
ON SEPTEMBER 26, 2001–fifteen days after the suicidal attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon–a large public gathering was held in Karachi, Pakistan, to demonstrate the city’s solidarity with the thousands of victims in the United States and to offer sympathy and support for the United States-led campaign against terrorism that would soon lead to the bombing of Taliban and Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan. …
Although this “rally against terrorism” failed to make headlines in the international press, it was remarkable for two reasons. First, it was held in Liaqatabad, an inner-city neighborhood of Karachi, which flaunts a reputation for its hard-boiled anti-state militancy. In the 1960s it had been the site of anti-government riots, playing a prominent role in the revolt against then president General Muhammad Ayub Khan. In the 1980s, when Karachi became notorious for its violence among various ethnic groups, Liaqatabad virtually became a “no-go-area” for both non-inhabitants and the police. In 1992 when the army was sent into Karachi to put an end to the so-called kalashnikov culture, which included political assassination, nepotism, blackmail, burglary, and car theft, the army’s intelligence services identified Liaqatabad as a major “terrorist den” and a “hotbed of anti-state extremists.” Military and paramilitary forces had a hard time fighting the armed groups of political activists from this area…
Although Sindhi nationalists claimed the citadel as a symbol of Sindhi history and autonomy and demanded that the Muhajir settlers be relocated, Pakka Qila became one of the most well-known and devoted strongholds of the MQM and in 1990 played a major role in the most gruesome case of ethnic violence in the history of Pakistan, leading to cases of ethnic cleansing that subsequently subdivided the city of Hyderabad in Muhajir and Sindhi areas…
*Fun *was even, to some extent, considered a feature of Muhajirness, part of the metropolitan, cosmopolitan Muhajir culture and a far cry from the supposedly rural dullness of other ethnic groups. Yet at the same time the MQM was also deadly serious to its followers. It evoked Islamic and nationalist traditions of martyrdom and sacrifice in the face of state persecution and tyranny. It revived a diasporic identity of Muhajirs as persecuted people throughout history in search of a homeland. Many young Muhajirs were willing to become full-time militant activists willing to kill and risk death, exile, torture, and long-term jail sentences for their political convictions…
Chapter 5 is devoted to an analysis of these large-scale violent events with special focus on to the dynamics between violence and the interpretation of violence by young MQM supporters transforming themselves into full-time militants, martyrs, and "terrorists…