Zulfikar Mirza. - AP Photo

It was a bombshell, the explosion of a gathering storm. It created turmoil in an already tense province. It hit hard the main ally of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party and the most powerful political force in Sindh’s urban areas, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. And it unleashed a firestorm of speculation about what games the ruling party may or may not be up to.

Former Sindh Home Minister Zulfikar Mirza had been hurling accusations against the MQM for some time despite being in the provincial cabinet. In response, the party had been complaining to PPP high-ups about his attitude. That did not daunt Mirza’s spirit, though his party leadership had been trying to assuage the MQM — or at least that was the public posture all those days and weeks.

And then came the big blow. On Aug 28 Mirza addressed a marathon press conference that kept the whole nation glued to their television sets for about two hours. He resigned from the provincial cabinet and assembly and as senior vice-president of the PPP’s provincial chapter. He then proceeded to bring forth a number of serious allegations against the MQM: it is a terrorist organisation; its leaders have been involved in murders; its workers have confessed to killing people on their leaders’ advice; it is an organisation out to dismember Pakistan at the behest of the Americans. “I was once told by Altaf Hussain in London that the Americans had plans to break up Pakistan and that the party supported it,” Mirza announced.

As if the ‘disclosures’ at the press conference were not enough, he also found time for outbursts on several TV talk shows, creating so much tension in Karachi one could cut it with a knife. The Muttahida denied all the allegations at a hurriedly called press conference. But it was for the first time in years that anyone in a position of authority had come out with such scathing allegations against the mighty MQM, and that too on its home turf.

Speculation was rife, naturally: Could Mirza have done it on his own? Did he have the backing of President Asif Ali Zardari, since he had met him a couple of days earlier? What would the PPP have to gain from this? It had hardly been a few months since the MQM had come back into the fold after Governor Ishratul Ebad and the party’s provincial ministers had tendered their resignations.

There was much gossip, but no obvious answer.

A general impression, though without any substance, was that President Zardari was behind Mirza’s diatribe because they are old friends. But then came Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan’s statement that the party had nothing to do with his harangue, and the claim turned out to carry some weight. Mirza received hard-hitting replies from his party colleagues and his basic membership of the PPP was suspended. Some of his supporters were also removed from the party. Then provincial Information Minister Sharjeel Memon, who was caught by the media accompanying him to London, had to ‘resign’ from his post.

At the time this piece was written Mirza was in the United Kingdom, claiming he had gone to prove to Scotland Yard and the British government that the MQM, whose leader lives in London and is a British citizen, has been involved in terrorist activities. Whether he has succeeded is not yet clear, and even Mirza’s claim that he has met British police officials has not been confirmed by Scotland Yard.

In any case, some of the evidence he might have carried is available on the internet, mainly in the form of so-called confessional statements of people arrested in the aftermath of killing sprees in Karachi. Most of these statements were denied by the accused and have rarely been accepted as evidence in court.

As the former provincial home minister, Mirza must also have had access to joint interrogation reports that are not widely available. Many of them have not, however, been produced in court. Nor were they submitted to the Supreme Court, which had taken suo motu notice of killings in Karachi, or to the bench that the SC set up to monitor the situation.

Meanwhile, the MQM remains within the ruling alliance and Mirza is out. And his loss has been his boss’s gain. Never before has the MQM organised such large rallies in support of President Zardari. If Mirza had in fact been egged on by the president to carry out any of this, and if his outburst was scripted, as some say, he seems to have crossed his limits. If this was a conspiracy, it has not served its purpose.

— Idrees Bakhtiar is associate editor at Herald