A fighter to the last

Veteran Baloch progressive leader and president of the Awami Workers Party (AWP) Yousuf Mustikhan passed away early morning on September 29, 2022 after a prolonged struggle against cancer. Wrapped in the red and white flag of his party, the icon of Baloch nationalism was laid to rest that same afternoon in the presence of a large number of political leaders and workers, journalists, lawyers, trade unionists, peasant leaders and of course, the leaders and workers of the AWP.

Yousuf Mustikhan was one of the closest companions of one of the ‘big three’ of the Baloch national struggle, Mir Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo. Yousuf Mustikhan remained a lifelong, passionate advocate of the Baloch national movement and the struggles for justice and against oppression of the working class, peasantry, the poor and marginalised.

He ran for elections twice from the Baloch-dominated neighbourhood of Lyari, Karachi. He was a leader of Karachi’s Indigenous Rights Alliance, which organised anti-eviction campaigns against land grabbing big real estate developers.

Hailing from a well-off family settled in Karachi, Yousuf Mustikhan started his lifelong political journey as a student in the radical 1960s. He joined the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO) while studying in the Sindh Arts College, Karachi.

He worked closely with Baloch Marxist leader Lal Baksh Rind, who nudged BSO towards becoming not just a nationalist, but progressive movement. Yousuf Mustikhan joined the National Awami Party (NAP) along with Lal Baksh Rind in Lyari, while conducting underground work for NAP inside Balochistan.

When NAP was banned by the Supreme Court on a reference filed by the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto government in 1975 in the context of the Baloch and Pashtun resistance to Bhutto’s repression in Balochistan and (then) NWFP, Yousuf Mustikhan joined its ‘successor’ party, the National Democratic Party (NDP) as a member of its central committee. Later he was elected president of NDP Karachi.

There is hardly any nationalist/progressive/democratic movement that Yousuf Mustikhan was not a part of over his six decades of political struggle. In 1981, he joined the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD) against the dark night of General Ziaul Haq’s military dictatorship. By 1983, when the MRD movement was brutally crushed, particularly in Sindh, the NDP became more or less moribund, particularly after the disillusioned ‘retirement’ from politics of its leader, Sher Baz Mazari.

The splintering of the old Baloch-Pashtun political alliance delivered divergent paths for both in the emergence of the Awami National Party (ANP) of Khan Abdul Wali Khan and the Pakistan National Party (PNP) of veteran Baloch nationalist leader Mir Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo (and other factions).

It needs mentioning here that Mir Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo had been a mentor to one of his closest colleagues and followers, Yousuf Mustikhan, from the period of the NAP government formation in Balochistan (1972), adoption of the interim and final Constitution/s (1972-3), and the Hyderabad Conspiracy Case trial (1976-77) after the Balochistan government of Sardar Attaullah Mengal was dismissed by Bhutto in 1973 and a military offensive launched in Balochistan. After his longstanding mentor’s passing away in 1989, Yousuf Mustikhan was elected the president of PNP. In 1999, Yousuf Mustikhan led the way to the formation of the National Workers Party along with veteran Left leaders Abid Minto, Akhtar Hussain, and other Leftist elements.

It may be recalled that this was a period of a sense of defeat and retreat after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1991. This conjuncture signalled for many a permanent demise of Left politics.

Yousuf Mustikhan steadfastly remained in the ranks of those who saw beyond the conjuncture and continued the struggle against national oppression, class exploitation and militarisation of state and society.

In 2012, Yousuf Mustikhan was one of the moving forces behind the formation of the AWP. He served the party as its Sindh president, federal senior vice-president and, finally, as its president (2018-2022). In June 2022, he presided over the formation of a new platform to unite the progressive, nationalist and democratic forces in Islamabad: the United Democratic Front.

At that conference in Islamabad and a subsequent conference in Lahore just a few days later, both of which I was a participant of, I cautioned my dear friend and colleague Yousuf Mustikhan against the strain he was putting on his health by excessive travelling and political activity. Little did I know then that my words would soon prove so tragically prophetic.

Yousuf Mustikhan fought all his conscious life and until his last breath for justice for the oppressed and smaller (in population) provinces, arguing for their being made equal partners in a truly democratic federation while recognising their historic national rights, amongst which must be counted their separate culture, language, identity, and ownership of their natural resources.

Despite coming from a comfortable background, he had contempt for the pursuit of wealth and was never lured by the temptations of material advantage or power. He inspired generations of fighters for national and social justice.

People like Yousuf Mustikhan are becoming rare in our society. For one, it appears it is departure time for many of his generation. For those still surviving, and for the young, Yousuf Mustikhan’s lifelong principles and struggle contain a profound truth.

History unfolds not according to our subjective wishes and desires. Those who have internalised the seeming truth about the neoliberal capitalist triumph that has come to define our global culture today must revisit history’s objective processes and paths, acquire strategic patience, conduct theoretical work to update and clarify our understanding of today’s world (and Pakistan in it) (Lenin: “Without a revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement”), and organise the masses for a struggle for their, and our collective better future.

Nothing could be a greater and better tribute to the life, struggle and principles of our dear departed comrade Yousuf Mustikhan. Rest in peace, my friend, you did more than your share, always.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022