Pakistan assassination inflames political feud

KARACHI, Pakistan — To members of Imran Khan’s upstart Movement for Justice party, the assassination of one of their top officials last month here in the nation’s largest city sent a blunt message: Welcome to Karachi, where power, armed thugs and turf wars combine to transform politics into blood sport.

Zahra Shahid Hussain, who led the women’s wing of the party in the southern province of Sindh, had just gotten out of her car in her driveway when two young men pulled up on a motorcycle, a senior Karachi police official said. Pushing her purse aside, one of the men shot her twice, once under the chin and once in the back before hopping back onto the motorcycle and speeding away.

Her party is accusing the city’s leading political organization, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, of being behind the killing, a charge that MQM officials vehemently deny.

A day after the slaying, Khan said he blamed London-based MQM leader Altaf Hussain, who he said had urged his followers to attack Movement for Justice party members.

“I hold Altaf Hussain directly responsible for the murder, as he had openly threatened [Movement for Justice] workers and leaders through public broadcasts,” Khan said on Twitter.

The MQM has controlled Karachi, the nation’s commercial hub, for nearly three decades, but Khan’s party has emerged as a formidable new opponent. Movement for Justice won only one legislative seat from Karachi in the May 11 parliamentary elections, yet it garnered 20% of the vote in the city and says MQM-engineered vote-rigging kept it from winning more seats.

“They are already worried, and they should be,” Arif Alvi, a Movement for Justice leader, said about MQM. Alvi won a parliament seat from a Karachi legislative district where election officials ordered a new election because of rigging allegations. “I’m pessimistic about whether they will reform. But at least they’re under pressure.”

Khan’s aides doubt that Hussain’s killing will ever be solved in a city like Karachi, where political assassins rarely are brought to justice. Still, Movement for Justice leaders say they aren’t intimidated, and will continue their push into MQM turf.

Analysts say MQM leader Hussain clearly sees Khan’s party as a threat. Hussain, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Britain since 1992 when Pakistani authorities sought to arrest him on murder charges, ousted several top party leaders after the election. Observers say the moves were a reaction to Movement for Justice’s strong showing in Karachi.

MQM officials acknowledge that Movement for Justice was particularly adept at appealing to young voters through social media, a tactic MQM has yet to embrace.

“What Movement for Justice did in Karachi was that they got a bigger share of new voters, young voters,” said Farooq Sattar, MQM’s top leader in Karachi. “If we got 35% of the new vote, they got 65%. That’s where the challenge is.”

MQM was founded in 1984 by the barrel-chested, black-mustachioed Hussain, who has a penchant for delivering fiery, rambling speeches via video link to throngs of followers in Karachi.

His party has its roots in the plight of the Muhajir community, Urdu-speaking Indian Muslims who encountered discrimination after migrating to Karachi. Today, however, MQM’s critics contend that it maintains its grip on Karachi through a shadowy armed wing that uses violence to stifle political opposition.

Khan, a cricket legend in a country rabid about the sport, developed into a potent voice for reform over the last year after spending more than a decade as a fringe political player. His political organization was buoyed by legions of young Pakistanis voting for the first time, and though he lost national parliament elections to Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N party, he won enough seats in the northwest province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to form the provincial government there.

In Karachi, vote-rigging allegations against the MQM included intimidation and ballot-box stuffing. In Alvi’s district, election officers never showed up to polling stations, either because they had been abducted or threatened by what Movement for Justice says were MQM workers or sympathizers.

One voter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was afraid of reprisals, said he showed up to his polling station at a Karachi school and saw MQM workers with three large bags filled with what appeared to be ballots. While one of the men stuffed the papers into a ballot box, the voter said, the other workers stood around him in an apparent attempt to hide what he was doing.

MQM officials deny that they took part in vote-rigging in Alvi’s district or any other legislative district in Karachi. “I was the first person to go to the media and say there is chaos in NA-250,” Sattar said, referring to the district’s designation.

Altaf Hussain’s reaction to Movement for Justice’s accusations of vote-rigging was far more explosive. Speaking from London on May 12, he appeared to incite violence against Movement for Justice backers protesting in Karachi against alleged vote-rigging by his party in Alvi’s district. Pakistani newscasts reported that Hussain said, “If I order my supporters, they will go with swords and tear apart these people at Teen Talwar square,” the site of the protest. MQM leaders say Hussain’s remarks were misinterpreted.

Analysts say MQM’s political clout in Karachi will continue to diminish if it relies on violence.

“It won’t serve them well in the long term,” said Farhan Hanif Siddiqi, a professor at Karachi University. “People know that if this violence takes place against Movement for Justice that the first blame will be put against MQM. So that is a sort of pressure that MQM will have to deal with for the next five years.”

Zahra Hussain’s killing came six days after Altaf Hussain’s tirade against Movement for Justice. Police say they have no suspects, and at this stage, no reason to question anyone at MQM. “It’s not necessary to talk to MQM,” the senior Karachi police official said. “We get their statements through the media.”

In the victim’s neighborhood, a quiet, posh district filled with columned houses and lush greenery, neighbors struggled to understand why the 60ish woman, who sometimes walked with a cane, would become the victim of the sort of mayhem that has defined Karachi politics for many years.

Her assailant, clad in black and brandishing a handgun, strode past bougainvillea in her front yard and up the driveway toward her. She apparently thought he was an ordinary thief and thrust her purse at him.

After being shot under the chin, she collapsed. The assassin then fired the second bullet into her back.

“Who was she harming?” says Najeeb Umar, a 58-year-old architect who lives across the street. “This is just a message someone wanted to give, and she was an easy target.”

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com