MQM, PTI love-hate ties

LAHORE: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf Chief Imran Khan had visited MQM headquarters at 90 (referred to Nine Zero)- Azizabad in the Federal B. Area of Karachi on December 16, 1996 to condole the murders of Altaf Hussain’s elder brother Nasir Hussain and nephew Arif Hussain, whose badly mutilated corpses were found in an isolated area of port city’s Gaddap Town on December 9, 1995.
It was a belated condolence actually as Imran had opted to visit Altaf Hussain’s 120-square yard residence a year after the 62-year-old Nasir Hussain and 27-year-old Arif Hussain were assassinated in mysterious circumstances.
Interestingly, during his December 16, 1996 visit to Altaf’s residence, Imran Khan had opined: “Altaf Hussain is a real patriot.” Nasir Hussain and Arif Hussain were killed just days after Ehsan Ali Shah, a government official and the younger brother of the then Sindh Chief Minister Syed Abdullah Shah, was shot dead along-with his two friends in Karachi.
Soon after the murders of Nasir Hussain, Arif Hussain and Ehsan Ali Shah (all residents of Karachi’s Samanabad locality in Federal B. Area), both MQM and PPP had vehemently accused each other of the killings, leading to 25 deaths in clashes between the loyalists of the two political parties in Hyderabad and Karachi within a span of a few days.
Apart from blaming the then sitting Syed Abdullah Shah Government in Sindh, MQM had also publicly alleged on December 7, 1995 that the Rangers had arrested Nasir Hussain and his son Arif Hussain from the Samanabad area of Karachi on December 4 and 6, 1995 respectively.
Though the Rangers had publicly denied any involvement in the arrests or abductions, the then MQM Coordination Committee Chairman Ishtiaq Azhar had expressed apprehensions that both Nasir and his son might be killed by the law enforcement agencies.
While the then sitting Sindh Chief Minister Syed Abdullah Shah had named Altaf Hussain and three others in the FIR of his brother’s murder case, the MQM Chief had paid back in the bigger coin by by accusing the incumbent President of the time Farooq Leghari, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Syed Abdullah Shah, Interior Minister Major General (R) Naseerullah Babar and the then Director General Rangers of being responsible for his brother’s murder.
But again, MQM and PTI have also nourished a strange love-hate relationship, not different from what we seen in the case of MQM-PPP ties or the oft-turbulent association between Premier Nawaz Sharif’s PML with PPP.
Not long ago on August 7, 2012, a key Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Farooq Sattar, following his Lahore meeting with leaders of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, has invited Imran Khan to visit Nine Zero once again.
Flanked by PTI leaders Messrs Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Javed Hashmi, the former Karachi Mayor and a Lower House legislator Farooq Sattar was heard saying at a joint media talk that political contacts by MQM were intended to steer the country out of current difficult phase and hence reconciliation was need of the hour.