In the last 6 months or so, Karachi has been perpetually burning. To be honest Karachi has been burning for over five years now, but in the last 6 months it’s gotten simply insane. Unlike Rehman Malik who refuses to accept the facts and shows us the third finger regularly as the reason Karachi is burning, the rest of humanity knows it’s the MQM at play. But why is MQM, the party that claims to own the city and be its savior killing and maiming people in the city that was once beautiful and amazing.

Simply put there are three reasons this mess is going on. We can throw down all sorts of theories but factually speaking it’s these three reasons combined that are the basis of Karachi’s current bout of MQM.

Firstly, MQM is actively engaged in a two pronged approach with regards to the approaching elections. If you do not know, MQM has overseen the deaths of 9,000 people in the last 5 years in Karachi. Normally MQM will try to weasel out of this fact by blaming the provincial government for this, but fact is they had the Mayorship till 2010. More recently a number of MQM ‘leaders’ has been forced to resign from the assemblies as they are dual nationals, a fact they refused to tell the public even though it was a major issue of discussion for many months. So now after doing this over the last 5 years, MQM is getting ready for elections the only way they know how; through violence.

As part of this two pronged approach, MQM first resisted the Delimitation issue that is supposed to fix the constituency mess in Karachi. With changing demographics in the last 12 years, this is a major blow to the MQM who currently have the constituencies designed in a manner that every other party’s votes are split. So when push came to shove, even the PPP stood with PML N, ANP and every other party to file a case about delimitation. The Supreme Court gave the orders to the ECP to redraw the constituencies and involve army if it had to. And this is the point where MQM clearly saw that their grip was going to be lost.

So in a very systematic manner, they first had a huge public gathering where their leader practically bitched out the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice knowing full well that would lead to a contempt of court notice. The bet MQM made was simple, they attack the Supreme Court like they did on 12th May 2007, then they wait for the court to take action and once the action is taken against them, they put Karachi on Fire and start black mailing the PPP and the SC itself that if things were to continue, Karachi would keep burning. And this is exactly what is going on right now, the Supreme Court took notice, issue of a Contempt of Court notice against a British National who runs the MQM and then MQM started burning Karachi.

Now this is just one prong of the two pronged approach, the second portion is that given Karachi is up in flames, MQM is now systematically going to start arguing that the delimitation exercise cannot be done. They are going to put their journalists to task, starting with AK Chishti types who rely on MQM for all they have. They will start spinning a narrative about how going about the SC order would only spark more tension in Karachi i.e. if you follow SC orders we will burn this city to the ground.

So that is just one reason why the MQM is doing this to Karachi. The 2nd reason is simple actually; Karachi is an abusive relationship with MQM. MQM beats her, rapes her and even sells her out as and when required. Every time Karachi starts looking for an alternative, a way out, the violence increases. MQM does it to show who is in control. With just a few months to go before the elections, MQM is rallying its troops to make sure that their victim doesn’t even think about looking the other way. So for that they will do what they have to including fighting the SC and defacing the city of Karachi all just to show her who is in charge.

Lastly, if you haven’t noticed yet, there is a change in the way the over lords deal with the MQM. They always pushed it to a point from where it was easy to come back. But ever since MQM crossed a line and did what they did in London, the overlords have lost their patience. In the last 10 months, slowly but surely they have been working on caging the animal they created over 25 years ago. Letting the redrawing of constituencies go through and getting it backed by even PTI and ANP was a technical step to minimize the influence of MQM. Other such steps would continue in the coming weeks and months that slowly chip away at the MQM. MQM realizes this and is fighting back. They are essentially showing the overlords that they are not going to be taken apart that easily and it’s going to get violent.

These three reasons put together are why Karachi is burning. MQM will flood all media space with its brand of BS but if you look through the patterns, it all comes down to these three reasons. Yes we cannot really do anything about it, but it is good to know what exactly is going on.