Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain said on Friday that if Pakistan Army, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the MQM joined forces, there was no superpower in the world that could challenge them, and offered the MQM’s cadres if the need arose.
In a three-hour video conference live from London on Friday, which was broadcast simultaneously in Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi, Altaf spoke at length of an international conspiracy to divide Pakistan and claimed he might be murdered “because I am the only thing standing in the way of the plans to divide Pakistan”. He claimed to have drawn up a last will, which he would hand over to “two people” coming to London from Karachi. He said the party would decide his political successor because it was a democracy and he was not a feudal lord. He also displayed a map of the region in which Pakistan was broken up into several countries. Altaf accused the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) of paying MQM-Haqiqi members to open fire on an MQM rally in the May 12 Karachi carnage and of fueling the violence that took place in Karachi on that day. He demanded action against the JI’s “militant wing called Thunder Squad”. He said 16 MQM workers were killed and 65 were injured on May 12.
He said that innocent people were tortured and slaughtered by terrorists in Karachi in the last month, and if he were not the chief of his party, “I would have been killed or taken someone’s life”. He called on President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minster Yousaf Raza Gilani, Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and ISI chief Lt General Ahmad Shuja Pasha to view a torture video made by criminals from the Lyari Amn Committee and decide for themselves what was really going on in the embattled city. Without mentioning any names, Atlaf criticised former Sindh home minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza for placing the Holy Quran on his head during his explosive news conference around two weeks ago, and mockingly repeated Mirza’s gesture. He said the Quran was for reading and obtaining knowledge, not for swearing oaths. Altaf said the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Nawaz Sharif had failed to implement the Charter of Democracy, and called it a document of false promises. However, he said the MQM was willing to work alongside the PPP to ensure peace in Karachi.Addressing Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the MQM chief said the Supreme Court had issued several orders but they were not implemented.
“If you make a decision against the MQM, it might actually be implemented,” he said, in a veiled criticism of the government’s refusal to implement Supreme Court orders in several cases. Accusing the current Awami National Party (ANP) leadership of misguiding Pakhtuns, Altaf said ANP chief Asfandyar Wali Khan was provided several million dollars by the United States to win the 2008 elections. “If I was against Pakhtuns, then why was there support for the MQM when it announced its day of mourning across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa?” Altaf asked. He said that in 1986, he had said that Khan Ghaffar Khan was not a traitor and even though he was against the creation of Pakistan, he had accepted it once it had been created. He added that the history of Pakistan being taught in schools was false and the country was a far cry from the vision of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was secularist and spoke of equality for all. Turning his guns towards the media, he said anchorpersons were saying that the MQM alone should not be allowed to rule Karachi, which was a completely arrogant attitude and amounted to “dictatorship”.
Altaf heats up political pot
