I accept your point. My family were JI supporters, a distant relative is the party secretary general, but they did nothing for Karachi. Kemal is a positive politician, done a lot for Karachi. I consider myself more of a Kemalist then MQM supporter.
Its shame that people are spending so much time to discredit him.
I think there is obsession in Pakistan with Blackwater. While it is accepted that they are a nasty mercenary outfit, responsible for a large number of human rights abuses in Iraq.
They have no business being in Pakistan. But that doesn’t change the fact they are in Pakistan, because over the last three decades, the authority of the Pakistani state has disappeared. So who protects foreign diplomats. Our nikamma Interior Minister can’t even protect himself let alone the people.
On the social origins of the MQM leaders, the fact they represent the common man is a plus. Lalokhet is a mixed community, with many middle class educated families. I have relatives there, just as I have relatives in Bath Island. Lalokhetis speak the purest Urdu, unlike the rest who speak Urdlish. Most Muhajir families started of there in 1947, and then moved Nazimabad, and then Society, as these localties were built. If SMK was a Lalokheti, then that is something to be proud of. Actualy he is from North Karachi, and comes from an educated family. Plenty of his relatives are doctors in America.