Flawed Adversaries


Written by Chris Cork • Cover Stories • July 2007

Imran Khan and Altaf Hussain, flawed opposites, have stirred up a blizzard of media interest and comment with accusation and counter accusation; generating much heat but little light, states Chris Cork

Battle is joined between two of Pakistan’s more idiosyncratic politicians. To themselves and perhaps the more devoted of their supporters, they are centre-stage, and key players in the tapestry of national politics, perhaps believing themselves destined for power beyond that they currently hold. But one is in exile in the UK since 1992 and is in no imminent prospect of returning despite leading the party that rules in Karachi; and the other is leader and sole parliamentarian of a party that has failed to garner votes, its charismatic leader dogged by old scandals that refuse to go away and a voting public wary of ticking the box of a man who has transgressed so many norms in this conservative society. Great events may turn on the actions of both, but neither is ever likely to be a leading national player, let alone achieve statesman status.

Imran Khan is probably Pakistan’s most famous cricketer, having captained the national side when they won their maiden World Cup in 1992. He is a Niazi Pashtun of the Shermankhel tribe of Mianwali and although his family is settled in Lahore, he still considers himself a Pathan by origin. He moved through the education systems of Pakistan and England and gained an undergraduate degree in economics from Keble College, Oxford, where he captained the cricket team in 1974. Many cricketing pundits regard him as one of the greatest all-rounders the game has ever produced, alongside Sobers, Botham, Kapil Dev and Hadlee. His leadership of the national team transformed its fortunes and he retired, literally at the top of his game, in 1992.

Post cricket, social work beckoned and he created the now world-famous Shaukat Khanum memorial hospital and research centre. He was married to Jemima Goldsmith in 1995, the daughter of British billionaire Sir James Goldsmith and they had two sons before divorcing in June 2004. He has had a private life that can reasonably be described as ‘colourful’ and been romantically linked to C-list celebrities such as Elizabeth Hurley and Susannah Constantine.

Since 1997 the leadership of the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) party of which he is the founder and thus-far only representative in Parliament has dominated his public profile. All of which is a couple of light years distant from the man he is currently locked in conflict with – Altaf Hussain.

Altaf Hussain has a connection with Pakistan that is these days limited to long-distance telephone addresses to his followers and party members, and it is no disservice to say that he runs Karachi from an office in London where he lives as a British subject; it being far too dangerous for him to live in his native land. Whilst his life in considerably less ‘glamorous’ than that of Imran Khan, it is no less colourful or controversial – though both the colours and the controversies are very different.

Born in 1953 and a pharmacist by training and with a spell as a taxi-driver in the US somewhere along the line; he first became an activist as a university student when he created the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organisation (APMSO) which in turn became the organizing platform for the MQM. Mohajirs are Pakistanis of Indian origin whose families migrated to the new state after partition in 1947. The MQM - Mohajir Qaumi Movement – is said to be dedicated to democracy and defending the political rights of Mohajirs – a group of many millions principally living in Karachi and Sindh province.

The MQM has had a considerably greater impact on the Sindhi/Karachi political scene, as well as beginning to acquire a national profile, than has the PTI of Imran Khan. MQM wall chalking is now seen across Punjab and even occasionally in NWFP, far from its ethnic and political roots. But as a party it has a dark past.

In the mid-1990’s the MQM-A was heavily involved in the political violence that scarred southern Sindh, and particularly Karachi. MQM members fought government forces, members of other ethnic based movements and breakaway MQM factions fought among themselves. By 1995 Amnesty International and the US State Department were accusing MQM-A of summary killings, torture and a range of other human rights abuses – all routinely denied then by MQM-A as are any similar accusations today. To hear MQM representatives speak in public you would think that none of them had ever put a foot wrong since they left the cradle – palpable nonsense.

The word ‘terrorist’ was frequently heard in the context of describing the actions of MQM, but that past was beginning to fade as the party gained political clout in the new century, broadened its vote bank and finally became a slightly irritable ally of the present regime. It has not gone unnoticed that Musharraf is himself a Mohajir, and this is in some quarters seen as the reason why his regime was tolerant if not indulgent of both the past and present excesses of the MQM – and then 12th May happened.

Attempting to unpick the events of that dreadful day when over forty people died in Karachi during the worst politically-inspired violence Pakistan has seen for many years is not the purpose of this piece. Suffice to say that the fallout from that dreadful day lies at the root of the contrived conflict between Imran Khan and Altaf Hussain. The ghosts of the mid nineties have been resurrected, and accusations of terrorism and state complicity in the commission of terrorist acts using the MQM as its proxy, fly about everywhere. There are also fresh accusations flying in the other direction, with wall chalking in Karachi, highlighting Imran Khans past indiscretions and hinting at new, or more recent, scandals – fictional or otherwise.

Imran Khan flew to London in an attempt to start a legal process that had the goal of prosecuting Altaf Hussain under English law for a variety of terrorism-linked or inspired offences – there is no clear indication of a possible outcome of this process as these words are written, but the chances of a successful prosecution under English law must be slim at best. Members of the Pakistan National Assembly in their turn tried to use parliamentary procedure and protocols to discredit or disbar Imran Khan – again thus far unsuccessfully. All robust political knockabout and moderately entertaining – but largely irrelevant.

Politics is a cutthroat business everywhere in the world, with literal and metaphorical bloodlettings a regular feature of political life. Nobody is either safe or forever in the world of politics, and Imran Khan and Altaf Hussain have become masters of both survival on slim pickings and the art of illusion – tricking the eye into seeing something that is not there.

The rule of MQM in Karachi and its role in the defence and support of the Mohajir population is undoubted, but the position of Altaf Hussain at its head is no more invulnerable than that of any other political leader, and there are already fissures and factions within MQM that could yet produce serious internal strife. It also has to face the electorate again in the near future – and the Mohajir electorate in Karachi may not be as enamoured of their distant saviour as they were in the past.

For Imran Khan, another high-profile outing on the rich-and-famous circuit, a few photo-opportunities with the upper echelons of British society and the usual round of windy rhetoric that never seems to contain much beyond a re-arranging of political alphabets into this month’s most popular phrase or saying. His recent appearance on the BBC World ‘Hard Talk’ programme was elucidating – he managed to get through twenty-five minutes of close questioning without saying a single thing of substance or indeed – sense. His inarticulacy in the face of determined questioning revealed his shallowness and political naïveté. Not a man likely to move a nation.

Altaf Hussain, closeted in his London bunker and door-stepped by the British heavyweight press said – nothing. He refused to be interviewed by the Guardian and the London Daily Telegraph – which had run a front page story on him saying that he ran his political party much as the mafia run their operations in Sicily and around the world; so we heard nothing from the man who spends a small fortune phoning home every week.

At the end of the day, once we clear away the undergrowth and expose to the light this manufactured confrontation we see it for what it is – a sideshow, little more than a juggling act wandering the periphery of the three-ring circus that is politics in Pakistan. Imran Khan and Altaf Hussain may be able to grab the headlines, but for one of them there is only ever going to be life in exile, and for the other – well, perhaps a career in cricket punditry may prove a more successful venture than his foray into politics - at least he would know what he was talking about.