MQM: The Downfall

Aasef Chauhdry


The world has not forgotten what Altaf Hussain said about seven years back while he was on a tour of India. His hate speech is the recorded in the history, “The division of the subcontinent was the greatest, the greatest blunder of the history of mankind”, he actually said. This was enough to satisfy the people of Pakistan that whose line in fact Altaf Hussain was toeing. That was not enough again on Aug 2, 2011Chief of Muttahida Qaumi Movement Altaf Hussain appealed to the Indian leaders to give asylum to Mohajir community of Pakistan. He said that f the 1992-like operation was started against MQM, will the Indian leaders provide asylum to us? The people have not forgotten what he demanded. His words were, “The government has failed to overcome the situation in Karachi and demanded that army and Rangers should come to control the law and order. The action should even be taken against MQM if it is involved in the violence”, he actually said.
Ever since 1986 the world is observing that Karachi is made hostage by MQM. Initially the Mohajir Qaumi Movement and later when found it being objected by the majority of the Pakistanis converted to Muttahida Qaumi Movement was mainly behind every strike, every wheel-jam and every shutter down. It went so far that the authorities started seriously thinking about putting an end to it. There were many ups and downs especially after Imran Farooq’s murder. Altaf’s arrest, release and then other leaders arrest in London which reflected that the noose was being tightened around MQM and Altaf. Probably that was the time when a close confident started smelling danger in the air.
And then a revelation came. Not by anyone else lesser than a diehard senior party worker Tariq Mir discreetly made a confession about three years back which finally leaked and it appeared that the downfall of MQM is on the walls and the party will soon have it in its neck. Tariq Mir voluntarily visited the Scotland Yard office and made a confession. The police authorities made it very clear that neither it was a arrest and nor was he investigated. It was a friendly walk-in by a person who was feeling ‘guilty’ hence was made comfortable and was interviewed. According to Tariq, MQM got funds from RAW many times in the past. To the Party’s bad luck the leaked statement got viral on social media. Tariq Mir confessed that despite the fact that Dr. Imran Farooq and Altaf Hussain knew about the funding, they never disclosed about it to the other senior party members.
According to Tariq Mir, Altaf Hussain got funding from India since 1994 while MQM workers were sent to India for training and they got training there and did a lot of target killing and terrorist activities in Karachi. His investigation continued for 15 hours at of Scotland Yard’s offices. Mir told London Metropolitan Police at a police station located in Edgeware Road that Indians used to pay 800,000 pound sterling to the party on a yearly basis for running operations. Interestingly, according to transcripts of an interview conducted by the UK police on May 30, 2012, the MQM leader had made the statements ‘voluntarily’ and was ‘not under arrest’. The transcript of the interview was released by a senior journalist. According to Mir, “At some stage our expenses (of the secretariat) were about 100,000 pounds per month. I was aware of our significant increase in funding as a result of the Indian connection. That funding continued for, I cannot be exact. But due to pounds 10,000 cash limit (on importing currency), on some occasions, we got businessmen to receive the money and use it to pay MQM’s expenses. This happened in about 1% of cases,” Mir told the police. When told that the police had also interviewed MQM senior member Mohammad Anwar about Indian funding, Mir said the MQM sought money from all over. He confessed that, “In 1994, we started getting some money, some of our frozen accounts were released. In 1995-96, I took-over the finance from Nadeem Nusrat and that money was coming from India.” Asked whether MQM Chief Altaf Hussein knew about the Indian money, Tariq Mir said Hussein would receive all money coming in from India. He got his money from different sources. The Indian government funded us because they thought it was good to support us.
The shocking truth is that it was very secret and according to Mir the money would have come via Mr. Anwar, because apart from Mir, Anwar and Dr F knew about the money. So far as Mir knew, no one else in the party, apart from Anwar, had the money. No one but these four knew about it and they did not want this secret to be leaked that MQM was receiving from the Indians. Mir said the largest amount of money he ever received was for house purchase, but he did not know what part of that funding came from India. “I would say a large part of the funding for houses came from the Indian money. I said earlier that London gets about Pound 800,000 per year (this is not to include cost of purchasing houses) that has been fairly steady over the years”. It is a long and sort of never ending confession by none other than a senior and close aide of Altaf Hussain. However when MQM’s Rabita Committee was contacted by the media, as usual they termed it as a conspiracy and the documents as ‘fabricated’. According to the Rabita Committee, it was part of an ongoing media trial against the party. However, MQM spokesperson Wasay Jalil with some delay said, “We are aware of some documents circulating online that claim to be transcripts from an interview with an MQM official; we have nothing to add at this time.”
This all started with a BBC report that claimed the MQM had received financial and logistical support from India. Citing an ‘authoritative’ Pakistani source, the report by Owen Bennett-Jones claimed that senior MQM officials, in formal recorded interviews, admitted before British authorities that the party has been receiving funds from the Indian government. While quoting a Pakistani official, the BBC report disclosed that India had trained hundreds of MQM militants in explosives, weapons and sabotage over the last 10 years in camps in north and north-east India. “Before 2005-2006, the training was given to a small number of mid-ranking members of the MQM,” the official was quoted as saying. More recently greater numbers of more junior party members have been trained, the report added.
The MQM is at a road cross where the patriots belonging to the party have to make a choice, the earlier the better, whether to be the part of an anti-state outfit or revert to the loyalty. Till date MQM claimed to be the only voice of Urdu speaking people of Pakistan and Karachi categorically but the latest startling revelation has put a dent in the MQM’s stature and the myth is broken. The downfall of a bunch of blackmailers seems to be on the cards.