New nine-zero?

Published August 26, 2016
HYDERABAD: Rangers personnel removing banners of MQM chief Altaf Hussain from the city on Thursday.— Online
HYDERABAD: Rangers personnel removing banners of MQM chief Altaf Hussain from the city on Thursday.— Online

KARACHI: Late in the afternoon, Gaanchi, the community centre in Pir Illahi Bakhsh (PIB) Colony, named after the migrant Gujarati Muslim population, presents a deserted look. Employees of an event management company are busy putting white, freshly pressed covers on wrought iron chairs for a wedding ceremony that is to take place after an hour. A few activists of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement sit outside to guide other party workers to the MQM deputy convener of the coordination committee, Dr Farooq Sattar, to get information about the venue for an upcoming meeting.

One worker amongst them says that a meeting at the community centre had ended earlier in the day, “with a lot of reporters and a few party workers”, and that another might take place later in the day, after a decision is made about the venue.

The decision to change the venue, the worker says, came after reporters and cameramen attending the earlier meeting complained that they were not receiving mobile signals on their phones through which they were uploading and sending news to their respective newsrooms. The phone jammers installed at the nearby central jail had affected the mobile network at the community centre and inside PIB Colony, the worker adds.

With the MQM headquarters Nine-Zero sealed along with the party’s sector offices in New Karachi, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, North Nazimabad, etc, PIB Colony is the only available place for the party to hold its routine meeting. Though the workers say they are looking for another office a few blocks ahead “for the convenience of other members”, the fact is there are not many attendees.

“The workers are not gathering over here as much as we need them to at the moment. Some are not attending their phones. But it is understandable,” says another party worker looking sideways and standing a bit straighter as a Pakistan Rangers mobile enters the street for routine patrolling.

Two meetings have been held so far at the Gaanchi Community Centre, located in the middle of PIB Colony which received Gujarati, Sindhi-Memon, Ismaili and Bohra migrants in the early 1960s, a worker adds.

To the right of the Gaanchi Community Centre, a narrow lane leads to a yellow tent. Four women accompanied by a young man sit under the tent that is situated right outside Dr Farooq Sattar’s two-storey house.

As soon as they are called inside to speak to Dr Sattar, who is standing near a staircase, they start quizzing him about North Nazimabad town in-charge Masoor Zai who was taken away by the Rangers during an operation in Buffer Zone around noon. Dr Sattar, while surrounded by men awaiting further orders about the venue of the next meeting, tries to calm them down and asks them to “pray to God and trust the party”.

The town in-charge’s wife, Shazia Masoor, is having none of that; she keeps questioning what the party is doing to get her husband back. “Not a single ticker is running on the news channels. How do we know the party is doing something?” she asks, as one of the men requests her help in writing down the details.

“That’s all we can do, right now,” says Dr Sattar. “I’m.not giving you false hope; but it would help if you can be patient for the time being. Nothing is in our control at the moment,” he tells her, as his office boy and other men around him look on.

Apart from the sealed sector offices, reports about MQM chief Altaf Hussain’s posters being removed from the surrounding areas of Azizabad earlier in the day, as well as “general confusion among MQM workers” about his “deal” with the Pakistan Rangers after being whisked away from outside the Karachi Press Club on Monday, is adding to the anxiety, adds Dr Sattar.

“There’s no deal. The Rangers only asked us to identify workers involved in the attack on a media house on Aug 22, which we did,” he begins as he sits inside a small living room. “Also, there’s no race for the top leadership. The party structure is still the same. Minus-one is not the issue; the issue is to implement party policies and make sure workers are on the same page, which we will ensure,” he adds in the same breath.

Just then, another worker walks in to ask about the meeting of the ‘welfare department’ and where it will be held. Dr Sattar gets busy giving the man instructions about where to arrange the meeting; another man walks in with a reporter’s visiting card to interview him. His question is the one that is on everyone’s mind these days — what will be the fate of the MQM in the coming days?'

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2016

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