In Karachi, keeping struggle for Hazara province alive

Karachi
Dozens of young activists shouting ‘Aik hee Naara, Suba Hazara’ gathered outside the Karachi Press Club on Sunday. They came to attend a gathering there organised by the Hazara Qaumi Mahaz (HQM) to observe the fifth death anniversary of the seven men reportedly killed by police in Abbottabad while they were protesting against the renaming of the NWFP to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Haji Khurshid Hazarvi, the central president of the HQM, said the gathering had shown that the Hazarawal (people of the Hazara division in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) living in the city were continuing to struggle for a separate province.
The HQM had invited leaders of all key political parties except the Awami National Party to attend the gathering. Nisar Khuhro and Haji Muzaffar Ali Shajra of the Pakistan People’s Party, Maulana Abdul Karim Abid of Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam-Fazl and Naeem Adil Shaikh of the Pakistan Muslim League-Qauid attended the gathering.
Local leaders of the Hazarawal community, including Hazarvi, Alamzaib Tanoli and Munsaf Jan, spoke at gathering and renewed their demand of creating a Hazara province.
Hazarawal community in Karachi
A significant population from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa living in Karachi belongs to the Hazara division. They mainly live in Pashtun-populated neighbourhoods of the city but in some parts, there are also some Hazarawal-majority areas, such as Kalapul, Hazara Colony, Qayyumabad, Keamari, Mansehra Colony, Rasheedabad, Patel Para and Sherpao Colony.
Ali Arqam, a Karachi-based political analyst, believes that the Hazarawal community would be about 35 percent of the Pashtun population living in the city.
The Hazara division consists of six districts, Haripur, Abbotabad, Mansehra, Battagram, Kohistan and since January 2011, Torghar, a new district. The dominant language of the inhabitants of Haripur, Abbotabad and half of Mansehra is Hindko. The people of Battagram and Torghar speak Pashto. Kohistan’s people speak their own Kohistani language.
Interviews with the Hazarawal community leaders suggest that they had migrated from the Hazara division in the early 1960s during the Ayub Khan era.
However, lack of job opportunities and the earthquake in 2005 has also caused a large-scale migration from the Hazara division to Karachi.
Political leaning
Similar to the situation in the Hazara division, the Hazarawal community in the city has been a strong support base for the Pakistan Muslim League and remained anti-ANP from the beginning. But in recent months, the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf have also been gaining popularity among the community.
Maulana Aurangzeb Farooqi, the central head of the ASWJ, hails from the Mansehra district, while a number of its Karachi leaders are also from the same region. Community leaders say that Farooqi has not only gathered the support of the Hazarawal community in Karachi, but has also shifted its influence in Hazara division.
The PTI has also been making inroads in the community in the city too. For this purpose, the party’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief Azam Khan Swati, who is from the Mansehra district, regularly visits Karachi and musters the community’s support.
Political analysts link the community’s anti-ANP inclination to pre-partition politics and the NWFP Referendum in 1947.
Arqam said there were two reasons. “First, Baacha Khan’s Khudai Khidmatgar Tehreek (KKT) did not have influence in the Hazara division. Secondly, in the 1947 referendum when the KKT had boycotted, it was the Hazara division which had the highest share of votes in support of Pakistan.”
After the NWFP was renamed to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through an amendment in the Constitution in 2010, the Hazarawal groups had carried out a series of protests calling for a new Hazara province. “It also irritated the Hazarawal leaders in Karachi who openly started anti-ANP politics and supported the Muttahida Qaumi Movement,” said a community leader in Qayyumabad.
Taking advantage of the situation, the MQM had also tabled a resolution in National Assembly for a constitutional amendment to facilitate the creation of new provinces, which received a good response from the Hazara community in Karachi.
However, Saeed Khan, the ANP Malir district president who is also from the Hazara division, said his party had significant influence among the Hazarawal community and many officer-bearers at the central, provincial and districts levels belonged to the community.
“Some political parties and individual use the demand of a separate province for their own interests and intentionally want to divide the Pashtun community on linguistic lines,” he added.
A cause ‘misused’
The Hazara community was disappointed with the political parties and individuals that used the “cause” of the Hazara province for their own political ambitions, say local activists.
In Karachi, there are more than a dozen Hazarawal groups operating in the community.
“These splinter groups don’t unite on a common platform and all of them are affiliated with specific political parties and individuals,” said Mufti Ziaul Islam Tikravi, a Karachi-based activist.
A section of the community leaders says that the HQM’s efforts to show its strength and presence in the city are part of the preparations for the upcoming local bodies polls.
“Unlike the general polls, the Hazarawal community can win a significant number of seats in the local bodies in the city,” Tikravi told The News.
At the central level, the Baba Haider Zaman-led Tehreek-e-Sooba Hazara, federal minister Sardar Muhamamd Yousaf’s Tehreek-e-Hazara Sooba and the HQM are significant groups struggling for a Hazara province.
The Hazara Qaumi Jirga is another faction that is backed by the MQM. It too seeks to woo the Hazarewal voters in Karachi. Its chief Syed Waqar Shah is now an MQM MPA from PS-128 Landhi.
Dr Laila Parveen, the head of Karachi-based Hazara Front, had also joined the MQM in June 2011.