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“Hyderabad?” asks the man in a thick Pashto accent, looking quizzically towards other passengers in the economy compartment of a train as it trundles from Peshawar to Karachi. His clothes are tattered and his beard is unkempt; his teeth are stained yellow. He hands over his cell phone to the passenger next to him. “Tell [the man on the other end of the line] where we are; I can’t comprehend,” he requests in broken Urdu.
By then, everyone in the compartment is curious about him. They want to know where he is coming from and where he is headed. In a few halting sentences, he tells them that he lives near Peshawar in an Afghan refuge settlement. An acquaintance in Hyderabad has found a job for him in the city, he says.
He is obviously lying.
Hyderabad comes and goes. The man does not alight from the train. Instead, he begins asking fellow passengers the time to Karachi. Disembarking at Karachi’s Cantt station, the train’s final destination, he melts into the multitude: mostly Pakhtun men of different ages exiting into the city.
Two months later – in February 2013, to be exact – the same man was spotted in Kunwari Colony, a Pakhtun-dominated locality near Manghopir area in Karachi’s district west. Along with many other Pakhtun men, he was living at a dera (a male-only house or portion of a house) near a concrete pipe manufacturing factory. No one knew precisely what brought the men to Karachi but the proprietor of their dera, Mohammad Mushtaq Mohmand was known to have close connections with a Taliban group operating in Karachi.
Pakhtun elders in many northern and north-western neighbourhoods of Karachi tell the Herald that at one stage in 2013, Mohmand was heading one of the two Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) factions in the city. On the surface, he was running an illegal hydrant and a social welfare organisation; behind the curtains, he was facilitating – and sometimes ordering – targeted killings and suicide blasts. He would provide accommodation to militants shuttling between tribal areas and Karachi and raise funds for terrorist attacks through criminal activities in the city, say many prominent Pakhtun residents of areas such as Manghopir, Pirabad, Mominabad, Pakhtunabad, Ittehad Town, Metroville and Frontier Colony.
After the death of TTP founding chief Baitullah Mehsud in 2009 – in a drone attack in the tribal areas – most Taliban fighters based in Karachi supported Waliur Rehman in his bid to become the new TTP head. By the early part of 2013, they were able to overshadow the Karachi-based supporters of the other claimant to the post, Hakimullah Mehsud, at least in some localities.
“With help from local Pakhtuns who have been living here for decades, the militants of the Waliur Rehman group set up a peace committee in Pakhtunabad and ordered Hakimullah’s men to leave Pakhtunabad within a week,” says a local resident. This eviction order led to frequent clashes between the two Taliban factions all over Manghopir, he says.
In retaliation, militants belonging to the Hakimullah faction consolidated their support in another neighbourhood – Sultanabad – and launched an operation against their opponents there. In this way, all of Manghopir was carved into localities strictly demarcated on the basis of loyalty to one Taliban faction or the other, say local residents.
Mohmand was an important operator in all this factional fighting. He was instrumental in setting up the Pakhtunabad peace committee, soon earning the trust of Waliur Rehman, say local residents. He not only took on Hakimullah’s men but also played a central role in arranging logistical and financial resources for the operations of Waliur Rehman’s followers .
Then he switched sides.
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