Yemeen Ur Rahman

(Editor’s Note: There is now a very welcome mushrooming of efforts and avenues through which we can give cash or kind assistance to the victims of the Pakistan floods. A lot of people, in Pakistan and abroad, have risen to organizes collection drives and also are choosing to provide relief goods directly by making ‘Survival Boxes’ with essential items needed by those in immediate relief goods. In this post, one reader has outlined some useful steps in going about organizing for relief collection and providing such relief boxes, especially for those outside Pakistan who wish to do so. We are also including a useful video made by Fakhr Alam for PIA on this subject. We hope this information will be useful to our readers. While both these are especially targeted at Pakistanis abroad, we would love to hear from those in Pakistan about what is working best there. We also request readers to please share with us their own experience and ideas about what are the things to do, or not do).

Based on our experience of trying to collect and prepare ‘Survival Boxes’ for flood victims in Pakistan, here are some practical lessons that may also be useful for others.

Adil Najam

Adil Najam

The murder of Dr. Imran Farooq – one of the founders of MQM, a central figure in the development of the party and a key architect of its conceptual and ideological foundations – in London has sent shock around Pakistani political circles, particularly in Karachi.

Once second in prominence in MQM circles only to Altaf Hussain, Imran Farooq has been out of political news for many years now and had distanced himself – or been distanced – from mainstream day-to-day MQM affairs. The reasons why have remained unclear but the stuff of rumor mills. His murder in London is bound to reignite the rumor mills again. Indeed, they already have.

It remains unclear what happened in London. But it is clear that the repercussions of what happened there will be felt in Karachi and beyond well into and after the 10-day “mourning period” declared by MQM. Right now all television channels seem more engrossed in showing MQM leader Altaf Hussain’s near hysterical breakdown at MQM’s London offices, but we need to also begin thinking through the many critical questions that remain unanswered: Was this a run of the mill mugging and murder in a large international metropolis, or an international political targeting? If the later, who was behind it and why? But most important of all: what, if anything, does this mean for MQM; and by extension for Karachi and Pakistan?