Claiming Pakistan: The MQM and the Fight for Belonging

In the late 1980s, a conflict which had been smouldering for years in the city of Karachi, southern Pakistan, escalated. Time and again, focus of the dispute between police, militant groups, political parties, religious splinter groups and criminal gangs was the ethnic community of the Mohajirs and its political party, the “Mohajir Qaumi Movement” (MQM). In this volume, the escalation of violence, particularly against the background of the ethnically-based movement of the Mohajirs, is analyzed. Central to this analysis is the formation of identity and the politicization of the Mohajirs and their party, the MQM. Taking Karachi as an example, the forms, limitations and possibilities of a purely urban, ethnic movement and its interrelationships with local criminal gangs will be examined – factors often not taken sufficiently into account in conventional theories of ethnic conflict. The book is targeted at academics, journalists, and those with an in-depth interest in Pakistan. The author has not only spent a long time in Pakistan, but has also worked for international organisations in Central Asia and Afghanistan.