By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD – After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States , Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and its industrial and financial backbone, became a main transit route for al-Qaeda – illustrated in gruesome fashion by the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl in May 2002; he was on al-Qaeda’s trail.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, in collaboration with United States intelligence, tackled the problem head-on and by 2007 dozens of al-Qaeda cells had been broken up, all but cleaning the southern port city of al-Qaeda’s influence.

The Taliban’s resurgence in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan in 2006 led the authorities to investigate the sources of their support, and it emerged that more than 3,000 madrassas (Islamic seminaries) sprawled across every nook and cranny of Karachi were linked to major markets and served as financial arteries for the Taliban.

In response, Karachi had by 2008 became an outpost of the war in Afghanistan and major covert operations were launched to root out the militants and their supporters. These were largely successful, but ahead of what promises to be an all-out offensive against the Taliban’s stronghold in Kandahar, militants have regrouped to protect their support bases in Karachi by taking on anti-Taliban forces.

Over the past week, more than a dozen people have been killed in clashes in a vicious outbreak of multi-faceted sectarian strife.

These include targeted killings between activists of Shi’ite organizations and members of the Sepah-e-Sahaba (SSP). The SSP, now operating under the name Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, is a banned sectarian organization and a former registered political party primarily established to deter Shi’ite influence.

In central parts of the city there have been killings between the anti-Taliban Sunni organization Sunni Tehrik and members of the SSP.

Karachi has a long history of sectarian violence, with the worst Shi’ite-Sunni clashes taking place in the early 1980s. However, after the emergence of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in 1984, founded by Marxist intellectuals to protect the rights of Karachiites and aimed at launching a self-styled class war between the feudal and capitalist classes, sectarian tension eased markedly. However, serious ethnic clashes resulted in two military operations in the city in 1992 and in 1995-96.

The MQM has shed much of its Marxist thought, replacing it with neo-liberalism, and politically it follows Washington’s line. It is influential across the country.

In past outbreaks of violence in Karachi, the situation invariably returned to normal after the imposition of curfews and political dialogue. This time, it is expected the trouble will last much longer as the Taliban’s lifelines are at stake.

Militant sources tell Asia Times Online that while the chief of the coordination committee of the MQM and a former mayor of Karachi, Mustafa Kamal, was recently in the US for over a month, at least 200 SSP members poured into the city to help their members beset by the anti-Taliban Sunni Tehrik and Shi’ite organizations.

They immediately turned the tables. In one incident in the central part of Karachi known as New Karachi, they stopped two vehicles loaded with weapons from reaching the Sunni Tehrik.

“The present fight is a response to last year’s Bolton Market rampage that aimed to destroy the people who supported the Taliban,” a militant told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, He was referring to a raid in which Shi’ite agitators set the main downtown market on fire after a Shi’ite funeral procession had been bombed in Karachi. The market fire did damage worth millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday gave the green light to a major security crackdown in Kandahar, assuring residents that the operation was aimed at battling corruption and bad government as much as insurgents. Hundreds of tribal and religious leaders endorsed the plan, although Afghan officials acknowledged lingering skepticism about the high-stakes operation, seen as a possible turning point in the nearly nine-year-old war, according to the Associated Press.

Before a start of a full military operation in Kandahar, which the US says might be delayed for another two months, Karachi can expect more bloodshed as the Taliban fight to protect their assets.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online’s Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

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