Alessandro Digaetano Photographer

Syed Haider Abbas Rizvi Mna, MQM Deputy parlamentary leader in the National Assembly of Pakistan. "We are the most educated people in Pakistan but, at the same time, we are from the lower and middle class of Pakistan. In the parliament there's no room for lower and middle class. In the last 62 years we were ruled by a feudal system , doesn't matter if they are from PPP or PLM, and they are linked each other as well, because they are people with the same background. They use all they can to stop us, burocracy, media, state agency, MQM-H, drug mafia sometimes, Talebans, they use whatever they need to make this kind of perception of MQM. But we are explaning to get over this and we have no choice but to deal with this situation. We are the only secular party and the only who give hope to all classes." *** General Caption *** Muttahida Quami Movement, generally known as MQM , ("United National Movement" in English) is an progressive liberal secular centre left party in Pakistan (initially on quasi-socialist lines) founded on 11 June 1978 as a student organization of "muhajir" (immigrants), the All Pakistan Muhajir Students Organization or APMSO, at the University of Karachi by Altaf Hussain who continues to remain its chief. Supposedly it represent the majority of immigrants who migrated from India to Pakistan in 1947. APMSO then gave birth to the Muhajir Quami Movement (MQM) on March 1984. From 1992 to 1994, the MQM was the target of the Pakistan Army's Operation Cleanup leaving hundreds of civilians dead. On July 26, 1997, MQM officially removed the term Muhajir from its name, and replaced it with Muttahida ("United"). In 1992, after the operation "Clean up", there was the split with key members of the party: the MQM-H or MQM Haqiqi, the "real" MQM, was born. Since then have not stopped the target killing from both sides. The target killing is getting intensified in Karachi with the military's ongoing counterinsurgency operation in Swat and Malakand. The MQM party is