Political Killings Hint at Pakistani Dirty War

Even in the middle of the night, traffic is steady on Sunset Boulevard, yet Karachi police can’t find anyone who saw roadside assassins fire 14 bullets into two of the city’s most popular politicians.

The two men were moderate, respected leaders of Pakistan’s third-largest political party, which, after years of conflict with Pakistan’s government, was making peace with President Pervez Musharraf.

Mohammed Farooq Sattar, a leader of the two men’s Muttahida Quami Movement, says he suspects that the killers got their orders from a faction of the military’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the paramilitary Rangers or members of other federal agencies that he says are conspiring to destroy Musharraf and his reforms.

Bombings and homicides are so common in Karachi these days that there are numerous possible motives for the politicians’ slaying.

But the timing and targets of the assassins suggest to many here that elements of Pakistan’s security forces are waging a new, dirty war on the streets of this treacherous port city to undermine Musharraf.

Sattar isn’t alone in his suspicions. Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who heads one of Pakistan’s largest religious parties, Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam, has added his influential voice to accusations that the army and the ISI are trying to split various political parties and stir up sectarian violence in cities such as Karachi.

Sattar predicted that enemies within Musharraf’s regime will win unless the army general, who took power in a coup, gets tough with them soon.

“He’s walking a tightrope--no doubt,” Sattar said. “But he has to, very quickly, take care of his ‘friends.’ He has to be organized to deal with this religious intolerance, extremism, bigotry and this monster of a state within a state.

“If he does not get rid of these elements, then he will not be able to deliver the agenda he is promising to the people of Pakistan and the international community. This is the last chance for Pakistan: now or never.”

Sattar’s party, known as the MQM, wants most federal government powers to be shifted to the provinces, and Musharraf’s promised reforms would meet at least some of those demands. If Musharraf goes far enough, agencies such as the ISI will lose a lot of power, and that is why they want to stop him, Sattar said.

Although Musharraf continues to support the U.S. effort against foreign Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, there is mounting evidence that his most important domestic reforms have stalled.

Hundreds of suspected militants have been released on promises of good behavior, their leaders have not been put on trial for any serious crimes, and the government has quietly abandoned a campaign to collect illegal weapons.

Evidence of Musharraf’s failure to control extremist groups mounts with daily killings and bombings. The victims in one recent week’s violence included children maimed by a series of small bombs planted in garbage heaps where they were scavenging.

Karachi’s bloodletting spread to the city center Wednesday, when a car bomb exploded next to a Pakistani navy bus, killing 11 French defense contract workers and two Pakistanis, along with the bomber, in an apparent suicide attack in front of the Sheraton Hotel and Towers.

Senior Karachi police officers declined interview requests, and spokesman Ghulam Saqlain said they were under strict orders not to speak to foreign reporters without written permission from Interior Ministry officials in the capital, Islamabad.

Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, Musharraf’s spokesman, called Sattar’s allegations irresponsible and said they were hardly worthy of comment.

“It’s the most ridiculous claim that anyone could ever make,” he said from Islamabad.

No Suspects, Yet Clues oint to an Expert Hand

As in most of the thousands of political killings that have cursed Karachi over the past decade, police have told the slain politicians’ families that investigators have no suspects and few leads to follow. The clues that are known suggest an expert hand in the killings.

In the minutes before they were killed April 27, politicians Mustapha Kamal Rizvi and Nishat Mallick were coming back from dinner at the nearby Tandoori Hut restaurant in Rizvi’s black Toyota Corolla. Police found it parked, with the engine off, about five minutes away from the crime scene.

The shawarma sandwich Rizvi had promised to bring home to his wife, Firdaus, 45, was still in the car, and apart from Rizvi’s cell phone and a Rolex watch, nothing was stolen, members of both families said.

Without knowing that her husband was dead, or dying, in the street, Firdaus called his cell phone six or seven times to warn him of the shooting outside Mallick’s home. Each time she dialed, someone hung up her husband’s phone without speaking.

Investigators told her the cell phone hasn’t been found.

Victims Had Not Mentioned Threats

Police took at least 15 minutes to reach the crime scene from the Gizri station house just a minute’s drive away, even though the heavy fire from two automatic pistols could be heard for blocks in the wealthy neighborhood, said Mallick’s son Ucksy, a 22-year-old medical student.

The widows of both men said they had never mentioned any death threats, and described them as gentle men who were working to build support for Musharraf within their party.

Neither of the women suggested a possible motive for the killings.

“All I know is that my husband was very vocal,” said Firdaus Rizvi, her head covered with a white scarf of mourning. “Rivals are there in every field, especially if you are so popular, and successful, and a politician. I’m not saying there were enemies within, but there could have been.”

The MQM, reportedly founded with the ISI’s help in the early 1980s, accuses the intelligence agency of backing a splinter group in 1992. The two factions have been killing each other’s supporters ever since, and a growing number of political and religious leaders charge that the ISI is reviving its divide-and-conquer strategy.

Sattar’s MQM faction has won strong support by demanding more autonomy for Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital. When its exiled leader, Altaf Hussain, sensed that Musharraf was sympathetic, he offered qualified support to the president as he asked voters for five more years in power in an April 30 referendum.

The party’s backing for Musharraf collapsed after the killings of Rizvi and Mallick--just one day before what was supposed to be Musharraf’s triumphant, final rally in Karachi.

The MQM, which is Karachi’s most powerful political party, has long accused the shadowy ISI of killing party leaders, supporters and members of their families. But that seemed to change after Musharraf’s bloodless coup in October 1999, Sattar said.

Like most in the MQM’s power base, Musharraf is a refugee of India’s partition in 1947, when millions of Urdu-speaking Muslims fled violent mobs into the newly created Pakistan.

That makes him a minority in Pakistan’s military and security apparatus, which is dominated by ethnic Punjabis and Pathans. Many members of the security forces still sympathize with the religious extremists that Musharraf says he wants to eradicate.

Karachi’s violence, and complaints of torture in police custody, dropped off sharply after Musharraf seized power and quietly began to reach out to the MQM, Sattar said.

Banned Groups Still Publish Openly

Today, however, as Musharraf’s critics complain that his reforms are faltering, at least four extremist and terrorist groups that the president banned are openly publishing newspapers and magazines.

In Peshawar, where Taliban officials secretly come and go as U.S. and Pakistani forces conduct search missions along the nearby Afghan border, the Zarb-i-Momin, or Blow of the Believer, is a newsstand favorite.

Published in Karachi by the Al Rashid trust, a group banned by the U.S. and Pakistan because of alleged Al Qaeda links, the newspaper exhorts readers to support the Taliban as it battles U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The lead editorial in Saturday’s issue praised Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan, calling him “Emir al Momineen,” or “Leader of the Faithful.”

“The popularity of Emir al Momineen among the Afghan people is evidence that he did not rule the people through power, but through his piety, honesty and love for Islam,” the newspaper said. “The people of Afghanistan will continue to love him as long as they have a single spark of belief in their hearts.”

The MQM points to the recent reinstatement of at least five police officers it accuses of waging a covert war against the party as proof that orders have been issued to escalate the campaign again. One of the officers is Chaudhry Mohammed Aslam, deputy superintendent of police.

In a May 2 letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, an MQM leader, Imran Farooq, accused Aslam of personal responsibility for the December 1995 abduction, torture and murder of the brother and nephew of party leader Hussain.

Aslam was also the lead investigator in the November 1997 killings of four U.S. oil workers and their Pakistani driver.

A special anti-terrorism court sentenced two MQM party members to death for the murders in August 1999.

But at the time, U.S. officials questioned whether the real culprits had been caught and didn’t pay out a $2-million reward offered to anyone providing information leading to the arrest of the four Americans’ killers.

Instead, the State Department more than doubled the reward to $5 million for information or other assistance leading to the arrest or conviction “of those responsible for this cowardly attack against civilians,” says the reward offer still posted on the State Department’s Web site.

Despite official denials from Musharraf’s government, Sattar insisted that the general knows that conspirators within his own government are working against him. Sattar also says Musharraf is still trying “to mend fences” with the MQM through secret contacts with party leaders in London.

But Musharraf spokesman Qureshi insisted: “I’m not aware of any such discussion.”