Fighting the Terror of the Terrorism Information Providers

As a die-hard Karachiite, I have been studying MQM for many moons now. MQM is a radically different political party, which has created nightmares after nightmares for the existing power structures, such as, corrupt bureaucracy, commerce-happy army, feudal lords, illiterate mullahs, etc., in Pakistan. No wonder, it has been accused of many things over the years. Those accusations kept on expanding through ink and bytes.

It is unfortunate that MQM's media wing never confronted such information. The party still seems to have the opposition mentality. They complain, complain and complain some more, instead of legislate, enforce and then legislate some more. They now claim that they have created a "Media Cell". What a name, goes perfectly well with "terrorist cell" :(

Since the event of 911, all kinds of terrorism portals have either been launched or enhanced. Think tanks are working over time to produce largely useless reports about Pakistan by barely informed analysts, of course, with big titles. These entities have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that MQM is a run-of-the-mill terrorist organizations, and have chosen to take, hook, line and sinker, the politically-motivated negative propaganda generated by successive Pakistan governments against MQM, along with those parties which MQM replaced in Sindh, especially in Karachi.

Is MQM a party of angels? Not really. But, like any other political party, it has to be evaluated in the background of the existential realities in Pakistan.

Let's come to the terrorism information providers. When I found all kinds of erroneous information about MQM, I decided to evaluate the information on the intellectual merit which turned out to be very little. Since I am in the process of compiling my research on MQM in a publishable format, I started challenging such information providers to see how they react.

The response has been all over the map, but NONE of it has to do with the intellectual merit or factual correctness. Most of it has to do with the bureaucracy involved in getting the information removed. MQM will have to deal with it. I am going through an exercise of evaluating such information because MQM is only entity I know most about.

The erroneous information, in those information providers' websites, is a much bigger story compared to the existence of the MQM there.

Stay tuned...I will keep you posted.