OWEN Bennett-Jones is a respected name in English journalism. His report may be correct factually, but to feed people’s curiosity something needs to be filtered out first.

First, the timing of the report surprisingly synchronises with the recent MQM overture of rallying behind the PPP when the latter was being castigated after a brief oratory and catharsis gimmick against the establishment by Asif Ali Zardari.

Second, even if the report is true what kind of training was imparted to the MQM and what was such a special art that could be downloaded to MQM’s muscle in India only?

Last, how was the training used and against whom?

I could see that the MQM was hiding from the Taliban during the 2013 election campaign. It seems that the training wasn’t really effective after all.

I don’t subscribe to the MQM’s version of ethnicity-based politics. But it is also true that while dealing with popular political parties, the path should be tred with caution. After all, it represents the inspiration of millions of our co-citizens.

Bahadar Ali Khan

Toronto, Canada

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2015

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