How many more massacres?

By Editorial
Published: September 21, 2011

Pakistani Shiite Muslims shout slogans against the killing of community members in Quetta on September 21, 2011. PHOTO: AFP
The massacre on September 20 of a bus full of Hazara Shia near Quetta is another grotesque reminder of the slow, but steady, erosion of the religious state in Pakistan. It is not only the Quetta Shia who are the permanent target of terrorists. The Turi community — formed through historical migration from Afghanistan to Kurram Agency in the Tribal Areas — tells the same tragic story of Pakistan’s abandonment of its afflicted communities. The main road that links the agency’s headquarters Parachinar with Peshawar and the rest of the country has been more or less closed since 2007 because of the Taliban and their allied militants in the area. Unfortunately, the government has not able to keep it open for more than a few days, despite a much-heralded agreement earlier this year between the various tribes of Kurram. As for the September 20 massacre, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, whose leader Malik Ishaq was recently released from a jail in Punjab, claimed the attack, which resulted in the cold-blooded execution-style killing of 29 Shia pilgrims on their way to Iran.
Pakistan is struck with amnesia about the Hazaras every time a massacre takes place. The one on the last Eidul Fitr was forgotten; this one will be forgotten too. In the last three years, 230 of them have lost their lives as citizens of Pakistan. When Pakistan was supporting the Taliban regime in Afghanistan starting 1996, it began offering the sacrifice of its citizens to Mullah Umar and his renegade state as proof of its loyalty. And the killings didn’t begin in the 1990s but much before, around the time of General Zia’s Islamisation when the s0-called jihad against the Soviet Union was in full swing. The state tolerated the killing of the Shia by the Taliban in Mazar-e-Sharif, and did nothing when the Taliban regime that it supported in Kabul went after the Hazara in their heartland of Bamyan. In 2001, following America’s invasion of Afghanistan, al Qaeda fighters escaped to Pakistan and found shelter here, thanks in part to a network of sympathisers. When this happened, many of the homegrown sectarian killers found a readymade host in al Qaeda with its virulently anti-Shia ideology. In 2003, when the Shia were massacred during Ashura in Quetta, the local Shia leaders showed pamphlets issued by all major madrassas of Pakistan which had declared their sect as heretical.
The main sectarian organisation called Sipah Sahaba circumvented the ban placed on it by splitting into several smaller parts, and as it did this, the state did nothing. One splinter was the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the other was the Jaish-e-Muhammad. The first has joined al Qaeda as a member of Brigade 313 where Tehreek-i-Taliban and Jundullah are featured together with members of al Qaeda. The Lashkar and Jaish are both products of south Punjab, based in Bahawalpur and Rahimyar Khan respectively with links to the madrassa network headed by a well-known seminary in Karachi.
Pakistan’s turning away from the international community, as symbolised by its pulling out of the IMF programme and its escalating estrangement from America, could well place it in a completely isolationist corner. In fact, if that were to happen, it will only further encourage the forces of obscurantism and extremism, which have already made their significant presence felt across the length and breadth of Pakistani society. In this context, the assassination in Kabul through suicide bombing of the leader of the Tajik community in that country, Burhanuddin Rabbani, also on September 20, could further push Pakistan into this isolationist corner, not least because the rest of the world assumes, rightly or wrongly, that most Taliban attacks inside Afghanistan originate from Pakistan. Those who think that terrorism started in 2001 because Pakistan joined America’s war on terror, should know that attacks on Shias have been happening since the 1980s and since that period non-state actors have been involved in them, and that most of these have links to the Taliban and al Qaeda of today. The question to ask is: how many more massacres are we going to see of the Shias before we wake up and decide to purge the monster of sectarianism from within us?
Published in The Express Tribune, September 22nd, 2011.

Source,

The Express Tribune

Balochistan killings

IT is not for the first time that Hazara Shia minority is targeted by sectarian outfits in Balochistan.

According to media reports, 29 pilgrims were killed while going to Iran, including three other people who were trying to bring the injured to a hospital.

According to the bus driver, Khushhal Khan, the victims’ identity cards were checked before they were assassinated to ascertain their sectarian background.

Fortunately the bus driver and cleaner were left unharmed.

The assistant commissioner of Mustang has called it a sectarian attack, as the banned outfit Lashkar-i-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for both the attacks.

The Hazaras who migrated from Central Asia over 100 years ago have been an easy target because of their distinct Mongoloid features.

They have been targets of religious violence since the mid-1980s; however, the attacks on them began to intensify after the start of the ‘war on terror’ when the Taliban scattered in Pakistani cities, particularly in the tribal belt and Quetta.

According to media reports, almost 500 Hazaras have been killed since 2000. Unfortunately most of the right-wing politicians who have been very vocal against drone attacks have failed to raise their voice against these brutal attacks.

I want to remind the government of its basic duty of protecting the lives of its citizens.

IRFAN HUSSAIN
London

Shocking news

WHILE the whole country is reeling under the shock of unprecedented rains and floods which have caused untold damage, particularly in Sindh, we get another horrifying news of the massacre of 30 pilgrims in Mastung.

One news said that these poor pilgrims were taken out one by one from the ill-fated bus and shot. How can a human being be so cruel?

I have been wondering why and for what cause such dastardly acts are committed.

S.M. ANWAR
Karachi

Source,

The Dawn

State failure

Here is a tally of killings and establishment policies that tell a terrifying tale of state failure.

Editorial By Najam Sethi

Over 500 Shia Hazaras have been killed in Balochistan by Sunni extremists in the recent past. Last Tuesday, a bus was waylaid near Quetta by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorists who mowed down 26 Shia passengers in cold blood. A month earlier, a story in this paper had warned that such a massacre was being planned in Quetta by self-avowed "Shia killers" of a "banned" organisation. But it was blithely ignored by the establishment. Two months ago, an extremist leader of a banned organization was set free from prison because the police, witnesses and judge weren't ready to do their duty. As he roams the land, thundering against Shias, the PMLN Punjab government in particular, and the PPP federal government in general, are inclined to make deals with him in order to further their electoral interests in at least 40 local constituencies.

Over 30,000 citizens and 3000 soldiers have lost their lives at the murderous hands of the Tehreek-e-Taliban in the last three years. The Economic Survey 2011 claims this war has cost Pakistan upwards of $60 billion so far, which is nearly one third of our gross national income. FATA is squarely in the hands of Al-Qaeda and various Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and Jihadi outfits. Dir and Chitral in the Northern Areas are now threatened by terrorists seeking sanctuaries and base areas. Many of these groups were once state adjuncts; some are still assets. A few are in the process of reorganizing themselves, collecting funds and flexing their muscle again. The police are either too scared or helpless to do anything since establishment policy is murky. Now the TTP has announced a campaign of suicide attacks and kidnapping-for-ransom in the urban areas of Pakistan. Last week, the Karachi Defence Society house of DIG Police, Aslam Qureshi, was attacked in broad daylight by a truckload of explosives, killing all the guards and passersby. Last month, Shahbaz Taseer, the son of the murdered former Governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, was kidnapped and whisked away to Waziristan. A pamphlet is circulating in Karachi which exhorts the Faithful to target a number of politicians and media-persons and, failing them, their family members. Each intelligence agency has circulated secret lists of targets to governments and mainstream political parties. Assassination is the name of the game.

In Karachi, over 400 people were killed in the most recent wave of inter-party killings over August and September. The MQM is said to have at least 35,000 fully armed cadres who can be called out for action in the blinking of an eye - over 1 million arms licenses are reported to have been issued to them so far. The ANP's Pakhtun supporters don't need arms licenses because they have grown up brandishing Kalashnikovs and TT guns. The PPP's Zulfikar Mirza says he has personally issued 300,000 arms licenses to his Sindhi supporters for combating the MQM. Each of these parties is now allied to Karachi's traditional land, gun and drug mafias that are fattening by the day on the basis of their new political alliances.

In Balochistan, separatist insurgents are attacking the police, Baloch and non-Baloch government functionaries and Punjabi settlers. In retaliation, the Frontier Corps and the intelligence agencies, which are arms of the Pakistan Army, are swooping down on suspects and making them "disappear". A number of armed non-state groups have mysteriously emerged in the province, all proclaiming robust Pakistani patriotism, to abduct and kill Baloch nationalists.

The whole country has become one big killing field.

Under the circumstances, with the police and civilian administrations wringing their hands in despair, there is only one institutional force that can establish the writ of the state and restore law and order. That is the Pakistan Army. But the Army is busy fending off the Americans, neutralizing the Indians, hiding and protecting the Afghan insurgents and fighting the Pakistani Taliban to have any energy or inclination to do any domestic cleansing. Are we therefore doomed?

Not necessarily. The Army's troubles are mainly self-inflicted. If it can bring itself to de-link its raison d'etre (reason to be) from India, if it can conceive national security to have an economic and military dimension in equal measure rather than a military one exclusively, if it can consider national security to be an element of the national interest rather than synonymous with it, if it can stop extrapolating the national interest with core strategic outreach in Afghanistan, then perhaps some of our troubles will go away. In short, if the Pakistan Army can focus on concentrating its energies on securing domestic law and order and internal security instead of monopolising foreign policy within a failed security matrix, we can put our house in order by rooting out terrorism and reviving the economy, thereby giving increasingly desperate Pakistanis a sense of hope in the future.

Source,

The Friday Times

پاک ایران سرحد ایک بار پھر بند

مستونگ میں بیس ستمبر کو شیعہ زائرین کی بس پر نامعلوم افراد کی فائرنگ کے نتیجے میں انتیس افراد ہلاک ہو گئے تھے

پاکستان کے صوبہ بلوچستان میں سانحہ مستونگ کے بعد ایران نے تفتان کے مقام پر پاکستان کے ساتھ اپنی سرحد کو ایک بار پھر بند کر دیا ہے۔

کوئٹہ سے بی بی سی کے نامہ نگارایوب ترین کے مطابق ایرانی حکومت نے جمعرات کو تفتان کے مقام پر پاکستان کے ساتھ اپنی سرحد کو بند کر دیا ہے جس سے نہ صرف دونوں ممالک کے درمیان تجارت متاثر ہوئی ہے بلکہ مسافروں کی آمدو رفت بھی معطل ہوگئی ہے۔

کمشنر کوئٹہ نسیم لہڑی نے کہا ہےکہ آئندہ دو دنوں میں تفتان کے مقام پرایران کے سرحدی حکام سے بات چیت کر کے سرحد دوبارہ کھولنے کی کوشش کی جائے گی۔

تفتان میں پاکستان حکام نے کہا ہے کہ ایران نے یہ فیصلہ دو روز قبل مستونگ کے علاقے میں شیعہ زائرین کی ایک بس پر فائرنگ کے بعد کیا ہے جس میں انتیس افراد ہلاک ہوئے تھے۔

سانحہ مستونگ کے خلاف ہزارہ برادری سے تعلق رکھنے والے خواتین نے کوئٹہ پریس کلب کے سامنے احتجاجی مظاہرہ بھی کیا ہے
سرحد کے بندش کے خلاف تفتان میں تاجروں اور ٹرانسپورٹروں نے شدید احتجاج کیا ہے اور حکومت پاکستان سے فوری طور پر دونوں ممالک کے درمیان سرحد کھولنے کے لیے اقدامات کرنے کا مطالبہ کیا ہے۔

خیال رہے کہ تفتان سرحد کی بندش کے باعث بلوچستان کے سرحدی علاقوں میں رہنے والے لوگ شدید مشکلات سے دوچار ہوجاتے ہیں۔کیونکہ بلوچستان کے مغربی سرحدی علاقوں میں رہنے والوں کے خوراک اور دیگر روز مرہ استعمال کی چیزوں کا دارو مدار ایرانی سامان پر ہے اور ان علاقوں میں پاکستانی چیزوں کے مقابلے میں ایرانی سامان قدرے سستا ہے۔

دوسری جانب سانحہ مستونگ کے خلاف ہزارہ برادری سے تعلق رکھنے والے خواتین نے کوئٹہ پریس کلب کے سامنے احتجاجی مظاہرہ بھی کیا ہے۔

مظاہرے میں خواتین اور بچوں کی بڑی تعداد نے شرکت کی اور حکومت سے سانحہ مستونگ میں ملوث ملزمان کی فوری گرفتاری کا مطالبہ کیا ہے۔

پولیس نے سانحہ مستونگ کے بعد کوئٹہ اور مستونگ کے علاقوں سے تین سو سے زیادہ مشکو ک افراد کوحراست میں لیا ہے۔

یاد رہے کہ اس سے قبل بھی ایرانی حکومت نے ایران کے اندر بم دھماکوں اور خودکش حملوں کے بعد کئی بار تفتان کے مقام پر پاکستان کے ساتھ سرحد کو بند کیا ہے۔ بعد میں پاکستان اور ایران کی سرحدی فورسز کے درمیان ہونے والے مذاکرات کے بعد کھول دیاگیا تھا۔

BBC URDU

Mastung killing: Shutter down strike in Quetta

QUETTA: Man is comforted by his relative after he arrived at the local hospital in Quetta, to find a family member shot dead.

22 September, 2011

QUETTA: The 22 people of the Hazara community shot dead in Mastung on Tuesday were laid to rest in Hazara town graveyard on Wednesday while a shutter down strike was observed in different localities of the city against the killings.

Eminent religious scholar Allama Juma Asadi led the funeral prayers, attended by a large number of people, mostly belonging to the Hazara tribe, and political leaders. The 22 people were buried in Quetta, while the bodies of four others were dispatched to their native towns in Loralai district and Afghanistan for burial.

The funerals of the 22 people were taken out from Imambargah Wali Asar Hazara town, where large numbers of the Hazara community thronged to the funerals. The shops and businesses concerns located on Alamdar road, Marriabad, Hazara town were completely closed while shutters of shops in different parts of the city were pulled down to protest the assassination of 26 people, a majority of them pilgrims. The traffic also plied below the normal in different parts of the city.

While the burials were taking place, hundreds of women belonging to the Hazara community staged a protest demonstration in Hazara town demanding that the government provide security to the citizens. They chanted slogans against the government. "What is our offence; what are we being punished for," asked 10-year-old Murtaza Ali whose father was a victim of the Mastung incident.

Despite the passage of 24 hours since the carnage, authorities in Balochistan failed miserably to trace the attackers though police claimed to have rounded up 200 suspects in different raids conducted in Quetta and its outskirts.

On the other hand, the provincial government formed a committee headed by the Provincial Home Minister Mir Zafarullah Zehri to probe the incident. The committee comprises Secretary Home and Tribal Affairs, IGP Balochistan, CCPO Quetta, Commissioners of Quetta and Kalat divisions as well as the Deputy Commissioners of Quetta and Mastung. The committee will submit its findings to the provincial government within 15 days.

Meanwhile, addressing a news conference, chairman Hazara Democratic Party (HDP), Abdul Khaliq Hazara appealed to the Supreme Court of Pakistan to take cognisance of the target killings in Balochistan as was done in the case of Karachi. He said only people belonging to the Hazara community were being targeted in Balochistan. He said the Hazara Shias had requested the federal and provincial governments to take notice of target killings of a particular community, but to no avail. "We are approaching the Hazara people living in foreign countries to take up the issue abroad," he added.

Khaliq Hazara announced that the Hazara community throughout the country would stage protest demonstrations on October 1, to press the government to come out of hibernation. He also appealed to human rights organisations to take up the mater.

Replying to a question, he alleged that the provincial government and some officials of the law enforcement agencies were patronising target killers in Balochistan. He hoped that the Supreme Court would take notice of the situation, since it was the last ray of hope.

APP adds: A large number of people staged demonstrations and took out rallies in different areas of the city on Wednesday to protest the Mastung killings.

The protesters including men and women took out rallies in different areas including Marriabad, Alamdar road, Hazara town, Ali Abad, Kirani road, Barori road and others. They demanded that the government provide security and protection to life and property of citizens.

The protestors set three houses on fire on Kirani road on the outskirts of the city.

PPI adds: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has slammed the killing of the Shia pilgrims near Mastung, calling the absence of security for them outrageous and adding that the killers had been emboldened by a persistent lack of action against sectarian militant groups.

A statement by the Commission said on Wednesday that the HRCP was appalled by the gruesome killing of Shia pilgrims near Mastung and found the utter lack of protection for them outrageous, particularly when pilgrims traveling in the area had been attacked previously and were known to be at risk.

"It is difficult to comprehend why no action has been taken against the banned militant group that has claimed responsibility for this ghastly attack and for numerous sectarian killings earlier. How do they still manage to roam free with their weapons and vehicles?" the Commission said. "We fear that the utter lack of competence and inability to adequately respond to the security situation is bound to contribute to further bloodshed. The government must move beyond rhetoric and its current casual and reactive approach to law and order challenges and start functioning as a responsible authority."

INP adds: More than 200 suspects, including 100 Afghan nationals, on Wednesday were arrested in different parts of the city in a search operation conducted by police and Levies Force personnel after the target killing incident in Mastung.

According to Levis sources, on a tip off, police and Levies personnel made joint raids at various houses in several parts of the city, apprehending more than 200 suspects, including 100 Afghan nationals during the search operation. The arrested suspects were shifted to an undisclosed location for interrogation.

UNICEF aims to reduce the rates of infant and maternal mortality in Afgh...(Daikundi)

Massacre in Mastung; Foreign Policy

By Saba Imtiaz Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - 4:17 PM

Twenty-six Shi'a Muslim pilgrims, en route to Iran, died at the hands of the militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) in Baluchistan's Mastung area Tuesday evening. According to news reports and eyewitness accounts, attackers armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers stopped the bus and forced passengers to get off. While women and children were reportedly spared, they witnessed the execution. A car arriving to rescue the pilgrims was also fired on, and three people died in the second attack.

According to the bus driver "The attackers asked passengers to step out of the bus and shot them after identifying them as Shi'as"

The attack was not an isolated incident, but was instead part of a systematic campaign of violence in the province directed towards the Shi'a. In July, 18 people were killed within 16 hours in Quetta in targeted attacks by the LeJ, including seven pilgrims waiting for transportation to Iran. On the Eid-ul-Fitr holiday, a suicide bomber reportedly intended to attack the congregation of 25,000 people praying at a mosque in the Shi'a-populated area of Marriabad in Quetta. His explosives-laden car still killed 12 Shi'a and injured 32.

The campaign of anti-Shi'a violence has largely been directed towards the predominantly Shi'a Hazara community in Baluchistan. According to a recent report in Newsline, "at least 347 Hazaras have been killed in [targeted] killings and suicide and other attacks since 1999. Of the 328 Hazaras killed up until December 31 last year, as many as 105 had been killed in 2010 alone."And government inaction is only helping the problem spread. According to Amnesty International, "Successive [Pakistani] governments have failed to address the increasingly explicit threats faced by Shi'a Muslims from groups like Lashkar-e Jhangvi, operating openly in the Punjab and Karachi and apparently striking their victims at will in Balochistan and other parts of the country.

The LeJ, the militant wing of the virulently anti-Shi'a Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), has claimed responsibility for several of the attacks, and has vowed to kill more Shi'a. The Deobandi group's stronghold is in southern Punjab, and since its inception in 1985, it has spread its campaign of anti-Shi'a incitement and violence throughout Pakistan.

The group is officially banned in Pakistan, but the ban has been far from effective. The state supported the creation of the SSP, as General Zia-ul-Haq's regime propped up Deobandi movements to counter its perceived rival Iran.

Zia's death in 1988 did not end state patronage of such groups. Hundreds of Shi'a have been killed since then, and the state continues to support groups such as the LeJ, and has called on its leaders for assistance in times of crisis. For instance, LeJ leader Malik Ishaq was reportedly flown out of jail by the Pakistan Army to talk to the militants that had stormed the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009. Ishaq was released this year after serving 14 years in jail. He was accused of killing 70 people and faced charges in 44 cases.

It was revealed after his release that his family was given a stipend by the Punjab government while he was in jail, and that he had been provided with police guards -- while the witnesses who testified against him lived in fear of possible repercussions. Ishaq's freedom -- after being acquitted in 34 cases and being bailed out on 10 -- was met with a display of adoration by his supporters, who showered rose petals on him.

Since then, he has embarked on a public speaking tour, addressing crowds in Sindh and Punjab. His message has been consistent: he believes he was on the right path, and vows to work to further the SSP's mission. And despite knowing that the intelligence services and government are keeping an eye on him, the crowds still show up to hear Ishaq speak, helping validate the belief held by Ishaq and his followers that the SSP's mission is right.

In a letter to The Friday Times journal, the Pakistan Ulema Council has urged "different segments of society to stop making assumptions about Ishaq's release and help him become a useful citizen" while heralding his services to the army in the 2009 headquarters siege. But for anyone who has seen Ishaq's speeches, readily available on several social media platforms, it is hard to not foresee a bloody future ahead for the Shi'a community in Pakistan. The speeches conclude with the crowds chanting anti-Shi'a slogans, while in Balochistan, a bloodied community continues to mourn its dead.

Saba Imtiaz works as a correspondent for The Express Tribune newspaper and can be reached at saba.imtiaz@gmail.com

Source,

Foreign Policy