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Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), officially known up to 26 July 1997 ()as Mohajir Qaumi Movement (Emigrant National Movement) , is a political party in Pakistan. MQM has no strong religious or political ideology, it should be more considered as a moderate liberal and secularist party, as well as an ethnic party.
MQM represents the urban Urdu-speaking Mohajir population which emigrated from India when Pakistan and India split in 1947. MQM agitates for Mohajir rights in Pakistan, and struggles to gain more political power for Mohajirs. The MQM also seeks to improve the low social and economic status of the Mohajir population.
Philosophy
MQM claims that official discrimination against Muhajirs began in 1958 when Muhammad Ayub Khan seized the presidency of Pakistan in a military coup. Ayub Khan systematically eliminated Mohajirs from important positions in the civil service, bureaucracy and local government. MQM accuses the subsequent administration of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of nationalizing Mohajir businesses, unfairly taxing them, and outlawing the use of Urdu by teachers and bureaucrats. MQM is strongly opposed to the domination of the rural population of the Sindh province by landed oligarchs, as well as the domination of the Sindh by Punjab, Pakistan's largest, wealthiest, and most populous province.
Nowadays, as clearly expressed on the party's website, MQM is against all sorts of religious extremism, discrimination and feudalism, which it considers responsible for having destroyed Pakistan's political and economic system. Because of the strong speeches of its leader Altaf Husain against the Muslim fundamentalists, he and his party are the targets of many attacks, including on the internet.
Political history
The MQM's formation had a lot to due with ISI funding and influence, as Zia ul Haq wanted a party to break the PPP's domination of Karachi. The MQM however went out of control and began a violent struggle for Mohajirs that turned Karachi into a warzone. It was finally in 1992 that an Army operation was launched in Karachi and the MQM's gunmen.armories and torture rooms were destroyed. The Army involvement is an indication of the seriousness of the crisis that MQM perpetrated in Karachi. Since the army operation and subsequent heavy activities of Pakistani police and paramilitary, the MQM has given up violent activities.
Current goals
In 1992, MQM split into two factions. The majority faction, led by the founder Altaf Hussain, was renamed Muttahida Quami Movement and is commonly referred to as MQM (A). The MQM (A) has become an exclusively political outfit. The smaller faction, MQM (H), retained the original name, Mohajir Qaumi Movement but added the suffix Haqiqi, which means "real". MQM (A) and MQM (H) are involved in a turf war in Karachi.
It was alleged that the split was engineered by the ISI, Pakistan's secretive intelligence agency, with the goal of destabilizing MQM's base by promoting the offshoot MQM (H) as a pro-government force against the anti-government MQM (A). MQM (H) was provided with arms and ideological backing by the Islamic fundamentalists that the ISI was already supporting in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The violent struggle between the factions and other ethnic parties in Karachi was eventually put down by Army and Police operations that were conducted with brutal efficiency.