The Muttahida Qaumi Movement, still reeling from the ongoing Rangers-led operation launched in the city in September 2013, has found itself in a graver crisis. Thanks to its founder and supremo Altaf Hussain’s diatribe against the country and incitement to the party workers to attack media houses.

For over a week, a large number of the MQM leaders and workers were on a hunger strike in a camp staged outside the Karachi Press Club against "enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killing of workers". The party, which had become isolated in the recent past, received a positive response from civil society groups and political parties, especially the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and the Pakistan People’s Party.

Meanwhile, in the afternoon of August 22, party chief Hussain made the fateful telephonic address to the protesting workers camp from London, where he is on a self-imposed exile for the past 25 years. He incited his party workers to carry out attacks on media outlets and also the Rangers headquarters and Sindh government’s secretariat. His speech triggered an attack on a tv channel that left one dead and fifteen injured.

Within hours, the Rangers picked up the party’s top brass, including Farooq Sattar, MQM’s parliamentary leader in the National Assembly, and sealed the party headquarter -- the famous or infamous Nine Zero -- for the first time.

Analysts say Hussain has provided another strong excuse for a strict action against the MQM activists in Pakistan. It was for this reason that the party’s Karachi-based leaders, who have been repeatedly embarrassed by Hussain’s outbursts, officially disowned his remarks and curtailed his organisational powers for an indefinite period.

"The MQM has been registered in Pakistan and its country leadership will now run the party affairs," said Dr Farooq Sattar at a press conference on August 23 at Karachi Press Club, after his release.

Flanked by other senior party colleagues including Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, Nasreen Jalil and Khawaja Izharul Hassan, Sattar said the MQM could not afford damage time and time again.

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Hours after Sattar’s presser, Hussain also handed over complete powers of re-organisation, policymaking and decision-making to the Rabita Committee. However, the next day, another controversial speech of Hussain where he was addressing party workers in the United States surfaced and the MQM leaders in a press conference the following night distanced themselves from his new statement.

For analysts, things are not so simple. As Hussain’s ‘anti-Pakistan’ speech triggered countrywide condemnation and a crackdown on the party offices by the Rangers, analysts believe Sattar’s press conference, which he conducted after consultation with party’s top leadership in London including Hussain, was in fact part of efforts to calm down the tense situation. "You can say it was a damage-control exercise," says a Karachi-based journalist.

But a section of analysts think that Karachi-based MQM leaders are under severe pressure to defend Hussain’s controversial statements and that the "announcement of disagreement with Hussain could be a first step towards complete disassociation with him".

"For me, it is separation, not divorce," says Owais Tohid, a senior political analyst. He says that the popular party slogans such as Hamain Manzil nahi Rahnuma Chayie and Jo Quaid Ka Ghaddar Hai, Wo Mot ka Haqdar Hai show "the party operates around the personal clout of Altaf Hussain".

"For Sattar and other leaders, the major challenge is on the streets where party’s hardcore supporters, especially sectors and units -- the main organisational power of the party --- run the party affairs in the city," he says.

In fact, Altaf Hussain does not hold any designation in the party which has been registered in Pakistan in the name of Dr Sattar. From his residence and party secretariat, Hussain runs the day-to-day affairs of the party over phone; he directly calls the workers in most of the cases.

But party workers on the street are confused, especially when the Rangers released Sattar and other leaders after brief detention, while an anti-terrorism court handed over three of its leaders -- MNA Kanwar Naveed, Qamar Mansoor and Shahid Pasha -- to the police for remand.

"It may be the party’s strategy that Sattar should run the party affairs in Pakistan on a temporary basis until the situation becomes quiet," says a unit-level worker of MQM in Korangi neighbourhood, where graffiti on a wall reads Altaf Hamaray Roohani Baap hain. "But we will not accept any MQM without Altaf Hussain in the future."

The MQM leaders in Karachi are also aware about their acceptability among the Mohajir community, from which the MQM draws its main support.

On the other hand, both federal and provincial authorities in an August 24 meeting in Karachi, chaired by federal interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, termed Hussain’s controversial speech as a part of pre-planned move to disturb law and order situation in the city.

Officials in law enforcement agencies also say that there is zero-tolerance policy for any group -- whether political or militant -- that causes law and order problem, and that the crackdown in the city is across the board.

"We have dismantled the networks of Taliban militants, criminal gangs of Lyari and sectarian outfits," says a paramilitary official involved in the ongoing operation. "Similarly, we have arrested militants of political parties, including the MQM, the Awami National Party, the PPP and the Sunni Tehreek."

"We respect the MQM’s electoral support base but we will not allow [a free hand] for their wrongdoings," he says.

The Karachi leadership of MQM, that has controlled the city for decades through the powerful combination of a large support base from Mohajir community and armed gangs, is also uncertain whether the military establishment will allow them to work, especially from Nine Zero. The party that could shut down the city within minutes is not able to do so because of the weakening of its armed front. However, its electoral strength is still intact, though its vote bank has been steadily shrinking. Also, defections of its known lawmakers and members to the dissident Pak Sarzameen Party led by former city mayor Mustafa Kamal and senior party leader Anis Qaimkhani, and return of its arch-rival MQM-Haqiqi to its previously controlled area were key challenges the party has been facing recently.

But the important question is whether the MQM’s new organisational arrangements will be acceptable for the security establishment. Meanwhile, Rangers have continued to crack down on the MQM activists and arrested two parliamentarians and, sealed and razed a number of offices in the city.

Analysts believe it now totally depends on how the MQM Karachi leaders reach an understanding with the establishment. Tohid says the establishment would ideally want complete disconnection between Hussain and Karachi and non-violent politics in the city. "It would be the main condition for the MQM," he says. "But security establishment and other political parties should give some space to the newly-separated leadership of the MQM."

But there is always the fear that Hussain may react and incite hardcore militants to turn against Sattar and Co. "That, I believe, will be the deciding moment for the local leadership to call it a day and announce its divorce," says Tohid.

Most interesting was an August 24 press release from Rangers, that claimed the arrest of two accused involved in killings and dacoities, in which the paramilitary force showed their affiliation with the militant wing of the MQM London Secretariat. "[It shows] Rangers started differentiating between good MQM and bad MQM," tweeted Gibran Peshimam, a Karachi-based senior journalist.