The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

by Declan Walsh

to him; others, apparently believing he possessed mystical powers, implored him to bless their babies with a kiss. At Nine Zero, the MQM headquarters named after the last two digits of Hussain’s phone number, party officials stayed up late into the night to await his instructions, in a room where the clocks were set to Greenwich Mean Time. They handed me hagiographical books about their great leader, or collections of essays that lauded his wisdom. In 2014 Hussain published a book, The Philosophy of Love, that featured his beatific portrait on the cover. But it was on the streets of Karachi that Hussain’s grip was most evident. At a couple of hours’ notice, he could bring the entire city to a grinding halt by calling a hartAal, or general strike. Shopkeepers would whip down their shutters and office workers would scurry to their cars and rush home with anxious haste. Electoral politics only partly explained this formidable show of strength. The MQM was a beacon of middle-class ambition – a party filled with articulate, well-educated officials, women as well as men, who espoused progressive ideas and presented themselves as an antidote to the tired political dynasties like the Bhuttos and Sharifs, or the conservative mullahs of the religious parties. But the true source of Hussain’s power was old-fashioned muscle. From his perch in London, he controlled a network of armed gangs that enforced his will across the city with ruthless acts of violence. The gangs extorted busines...