UNDENIABLE as it may be that the Karachi operation has brought a degree of calm to a historically volatile city and that public sentiment is solidly in favour of the operation, there is in fact relatively little known about the strategy behind the operation.
Spurts of intensive action are followed by periods of relative inaction and while some of that can be attributed to the varying political temperature, it is not very clear what the time frame or indeed overall framework for the operation is.
On Saturday, Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan in a typically ambiguous statement suggested that the Karachi operation will be expedited, while also addressing the concerns of the MQM and the PPP.
Know more: Nisar hints at expediting Karachi operation
Most likely, neither the MQM nor the PPP will be very impressed by the minister’s assurances given the continuing pressure on the political leadership of both parties. More intriguing was Chaudhry Nisar’s suggestion that the pace of the operation may be about to pick up again.
Was the minister hinting at an endpoint to this seemingly most open-ended of operations? Or was it just more political rhetoric?
The Karachi operation is now more than two years old. Given the scale of the problems in the megacity, any attempt to combat violence and crime was always going to be a lengthy affair. But can a provincial capital, one of the world’s largest cities and Pakistan’s most populous city by far, be in a permanent state of a militarised operation?
To the architects of the present strategy it may appear that their principal job is to restore order and ensure that criminals are put out of business or behind bars — everything being secondary, including considerations of time.? Yet, the longer the operation continues, the more two things have become obvious.
First, the dominant parties in Karachi and overall Sindh, the MQM and the PPP, respectively, have a support base that will outlive any military-led operation in Karachi.
By seemingly treating both parties as part of the problem and no part of the solution, the architects of the Karachi operation may unwittingly be creating the conditions for the eventual unravelling of the operation’s gains.
Second, to protect the gains made over the long term, the federal will have to give way to the provincial and local, ie the military will have to hand over control of the city to strengthened and rejuvenated local law-enforcement agencies.
Permanent military control is not an option, but there does not seem to be any thought being given by civilian leaders such as the interior minister to what the long-term measures should be.
Effectively, by treating the MQM and the PPP as the enemy, the architects of the Karachi operation are risking the spectre of a permanent military-run operation with even weaker civilian institutions. Surely, that cannot be the goal?
Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2015