ANITA JOSHUA
Outraged by the targeted killing of 29 Shia pilgrims in Balochistan on Tuesday, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) on Wednesday said persistent lack of action against “sectarian militant groups” had emboldened them. They were taken off a bus, lined up and shot down after scrutiny of their identity cards.
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) has claimed responsibility for the attack first on the pilgrims and then some of the ambulances that were going to their assistance. Given that sectarian violence has been going on for years now — particularly in Balochistan — and LeJ’s own agenda, the HRCP questioned the absence of action against the outfit which is technically banned in the country. “How do they still manage to roam free with their weapons and vehicles?”
Meanwhile, in Quetta, the government came under scathing attack for continued attacks on the community as Shias gathered for a mass funeral of those killed in the targeted killing.
In a statement, the HRCP said it was appalled by the gruesome killing of Shia pilgrims near Mastung and found the utter lack of protection for them outrageous, particularly when pilgrims travelling in the area — en route Iran to visit shrines there — had been attacked previously and were known to be at risk.
Referring to the provincial administration’s contention that the pilgrims had not informed the Home Department about their pilgrimage nor sought security, the HRCP said: “How convenient that instead of finding those who failed to perform their duty, the victims have been blamed. This just adds insult to injury.”
Describing Tuesday’s attack as a failure on many levels that once again exposed the diminishing writ of the state, HRCP asserted that “continued sectarian bloodshed across the country, particularly in Balochistan, is a direct consequence of the authorities’ perpetual failure to take note of sectarian killings in Quetta which have been going on for many years”
Of the view that official condemnations following such attacks are futile in the absence of follow-up action, the HRCP urged the government to move beyond rhetoric and its current casual and reactive approach to law and order challenges and start functioning as a responsible authority.
The Shia community of Quetta — was not even spared on Eid this year with a blast targeting them as they were returning from their prayers on August 31; killing ten people and injuring several others. What makes them all the more vulnerable in Balochistan is that they are predominantly Hazaras who have very distinctive Mongoloid features.
Source,
THE HINDU
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Mastung carnage
Harris Khalique
Friday, September 23, 2011
After the Mastung carnage the other day when people were dismounted from the bus, lined up and shot, followed by attacks on the attendants of the injured and mourners of the deceased in Quetta, I am really worried about the safety and security of Quaid-e-Azam’s mausoleum and Allama Iqbal’s tomb.
Twenty-nine Shia Muslims belonging to the Hazara community of Balochistan lost their lives. Many are wounded. This was not the first time. Shia Muslims in the length and breadth of Pakistan, from Gilgit to Karachi, are being targeted in general. But those belonging to the Hazara community have taken the brunt in the last few years. They are continuously threatened, attacked and killed.
Some say that the cause of this violence against the Dari-speaking Hazaras is rooted in the conflict between the Taliban and the protégé of the erstwhile northern alliance in today’s Afghanistan. Others blame it on the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran being waged in our country for years unending. Some also say it is the Jundullah, the separatists from Iranian Balochistan who have adopted a certain religious hue. Then the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, ingrained in the interior of Punjab but now spread all over, takes the blame.
Without a doubt no one is spared in the killing fields of Pakistan. Sunni Muslims of different denominations are killed in their mosques, Christian churches and neighbourhoods are torched, Hindus are hounded out of Muslim areas if their children drink water from the same tap, Ahmadis are killed while saying their prayers, Pakhtuns, Baloch, Sindhis, Punjabis, Mohajirs, Seraikis, Hazarawals of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, all fight each other under the banner of different political outfits. School buses are attacked, houses and hotels are blown up, offices are ransacked, markets are bombed.
However, Shias are being identified and killed indiscriminately for many years by no one else but their own countrymen. Be they doctors in Karachi, worshippers in Quetta, processionists in Hangu, passengers in Talagang, bystanders in Gilgit-Baltistan, they are all targeted.
There is a newly found passion among a certain segment of Pakistanis for correcting the path our ancestors treaded and purifying our customs and rituals of any adulteration brought about by the spreading of Islam in the non-Arab world. That path is no other than the Saudi path. But something that always intrigues me is that it took the Arabs 1300 years to raze the graveyard of the family and companions of the Prophet (PBUH) in Medina to cleanse the faith from impurities.
I would just want to come back to where I started. Why is the Quaid-e-Azam’s mausoleum in danger? Because Mohammed Ali Jinnah was born into a predominantly Ismaili family, got married the Shia Isna Ashri way and offered his prayers with Sunni Muslims. And something that I have shared once before about Shorish Kashmiri asking him if he was a Shia or a Sunni, to which he responded, “Was our Prophet Shia or Sunni?”
Likewise, Iqbal says about himself in his poem Zuhd Aur Rindi (Piety and Profanity), “Suntey hain keh uss mein haiy tashayyo bhi zara sa... Tafzeel-i-Ali hum ney suni uss ki zabani (People say that there is a Shia tinge in his beliefs... He speaks of the primacy of Hazrat Ali). Iqbal’s son Justice (retired) Javed Iqbal quoted his father once, “I belong to the Ahl-i-Sunnat-Wal-Jama’at (Sunni sect) but in my view those who do not love and revere the Ahl-i-Bait (the members of the house of the Prophet) cannot be true Muslims.”
So what do you think readers, are the resting places of the Quaid and Iqbal safe?
The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and author. Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com
Source,
THE NEWS
Friday, September 23, 2011
After the Mastung carnage the other day when people were dismounted from the bus, lined up and shot, followed by attacks on the attendants of the injured and mourners of the deceased in Quetta, I am really worried about the safety and security of Quaid-e-Azam’s mausoleum and Allama Iqbal’s tomb.
Twenty-nine Shia Muslims belonging to the Hazara community of Balochistan lost their lives. Many are wounded. This was not the first time. Shia Muslims in the length and breadth of Pakistan, from Gilgit to Karachi, are being targeted in general. But those belonging to the Hazara community have taken the brunt in the last few years. They are continuously threatened, attacked and killed.
Some say that the cause of this violence against the Dari-speaking Hazaras is rooted in the conflict between the Taliban and the protégé of the erstwhile northern alliance in today’s Afghanistan. Others blame it on the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran being waged in our country for years unending. Some also say it is the Jundullah, the separatists from Iranian Balochistan who have adopted a certain religious hue. Then the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, ingrained in the interior of Punjab but now spread all over, takes the blame.
Without a doubt no one is spared in the killing fields of Pakistan. Sunni Muslims of different denominations are killed in their mosques, Christian churches and neighbourhoods are torched, Hindus are hounded out of Muslim areas if their children drink water from the same tap, Ahmadis are killed while saying their prayers, Pakhtuns, Baloch, Sindhis, Punjabis, Mohajirs, Seraikis, Hazarawals of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, all fight each other under the banner of different political outfits. School buses are attacked, houses and hotels are blown up, offices are ransacked, markets are bombed.
However, Shias are being identified and killed indiscriminately for many years by no one else but their own countrymen. Be they doctors in Karachi, worshippers in Quetta, processionists in Hangu, passengers in Talagang, bystanders in Gilgit-Baltistan, they are all targeted.
There is a newly found passion among a certain segment of Pakistanis for correcting the path our ancestors treaded and purifying our customs and rituals of any adulteration brought about by the spreading of Islam in the non-Arab world. That path is no other than the Saudi path. But something that always intrigues me is that it took the Arabs 1300 years to raze the graveyard of the family and companions of the Prophet (PBUH) in Medina to cleanse the faith from impurities.
I would just want to come back to where I started. Why is the Quaid-e-Azam’s mausoleum in danger? Because Mohammed Ali Jinnah was born into a predominantly Ismaili family, got married the Shia Isna Ashri way and offered his prayers with Sunni Muslims. And something that I have shared once before about Shorish Kashmiri asking him if he was a Shia or a Sunni, to which he responded, “Was our Prophet Shia or Sunni?”
Likewise, Iqbal says about himself in his poem Zuhd Aur Rindi (Piety and Profanity), “Suntey hain keh uss mein haiy tashayyo bhi zara sa... Tafzeel-i-Ali hum ney suni uss ki zabani (People say that there is a Shia tinge in his beliefs... He speaks of the primacy of Hazrat Ali). Iqbal’s son Justice (retired) Javed Iqbal quoted his father once, “I belong to the Ahl-i-Sunnat-Wal-Jama’at (Sunni sect) but in my view those who do not love and revere the Ahl-i-Bait (the members of the house of the Prophet) cannot be true Muslims.”
So what do you think readers, are the resting places of the Quaid and Iqbal safe?
The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and author. Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com
Source,
THE NEWS
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
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
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
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.
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