Party. Although in reality there would be certain overlap. I expect an average Pashtun to have differant voting habits with referance to say parties like PTI etc
Considering that the MQM did not exist until the 80's.. and before that the ethnicity associated with MQM was focused on JI.
The timeline you mention, 1950's... had very little ethnic violence and there was no "stranglehold" as is being insinuated. Rather all ethnicities existed peacefully. The issues began with the elections between Ayub Khan and Fatima Jinnah, the need to negate the votebank for her was fixed by Gohar Ayub having paid voters trucked in.. generally of the fairly uncouth class from the NW. Considering Karachi was the capital then, every government officer from all walks and ethnicities was posted there.
So I am struggling to see how some the "MQM" which did not begin till much after the APMSO came into being would have a stranglehold over the city of Karachi?
Moreover, despite Gohar Ayub's plan to rig the elections.. many of these bus voters returned to their homes leaving a percentage that either set up small businesses or participated alongside the criminal element from the other ethnicities.Those that did set up businesses, just as those from Punjab and other rural areas eventually kept calling in people from their area to assist and grow. That is natural resettling that was never disputed except by the Sindhi Nationalist rising under Bhutto's dual policies.
If any ethnic conflict did occur, it happened due to Bhutto in the early 70's. Against which both the Pashtuns and the other ethnicities voted against under JI's banner and protested against in a fairly large rally carried out in the Mausoleums park.
So if anything. there was no conflict of votebank all the way till the ethnic clashes after the bus incident catalyst.
Which brings the question of how much of the votebank is disturbed? The votebank for Karachi has been contested by four main parties. The ANP which draws only Pashtun, the PPP which is mostly Sindhi but with other elements under Bhutto's romance thrown in, the MQM and the Jamaat parties(which draw elements from every ethnicity).
As to the loss of votebank due to voter disparity, there is lesser threat simply due to the voting laws that make it rather difficult for anyone not showing their domain as Karachi to vote there. That has given the usual home field advantage to the MQM and PPP for quite a while leaving aside the settled Pashtun Kachi abadis(lasting from the 50's). Infact, if anyone has suffered vote loss it was the ANP and that to the Jamaat-e-Islami whcih has already competes against the ANP in KP. The threat to MQM's votebank comes from PTI, and from the JI.. to the extent that both the ANP and MQM ground workers routinely cooperate against the JI. In the last election I was witness to a game of "pakran pakrai" with MQM and ANP workers chasing blockading the streets leading to a polling booth for JI workers.
Which brings us to the actual question on the topic regarding Afghans. As I mentioned to
@Samandri , the antagonism leadership per-se in Afghanis is comprised in my view of these "King" Afghanis; whose government was hostile to Pakistan prior to the invasion. However, there was certain discrimination shown against the poor Afghan refugees and in general too; those who had money were able to pay off officials and establish business and live a semblance of life..but those that cannot are essentially third generations now living in the same place as their grandparents came to.
Due to this desperation in poverty, the Afghan element has a higher degree of involvement in criminal activities and especially in the drug business due to their ability to get the Afghan produce brought over.
There is little ethnic identity or otherwise involved in most settled (Pakistani)Pashtuns in Karachi or any other major cities for the Afghans and most of them generally hate them. A lot of it has to do with the bad repute that the Pashtun's perceive the Afghan criminal element has brought to them.
In the end, the situation with the Afghans is one of Pakistan's(or rather Pakistani's) own creation. The camps and their occupants were essentially left on their own. Granted, Pakistan did not possess the economy to sustain any of these people on subsidies but efforts should have been made to harness at least a useful percentage of the manpower. Yet, there are much more complex issues that go into the threat that this manpower posed to the already existing large pool of unemployed and hence their ire for the Afghan.
What is clear however, is that the Afghan refugee problem.. and that of many of Pakistan's other problems.. are beyond the pettiness of ethnicity assumed or assigned to them; and most(if not all) are connected to the need to the now ironic term of "Roti, Kapra aur Makaan".
