By Syed Shoaib Hasan | From the Newspaper |
A Pakistani rescue worker is seen through the bullet-riddled window of a passenger train following an attack by unknown gunmen in Mach near Quetta.—AP Photo
KARACHI: It is a chilling scene once one realises what is going on, the real horror coming from the cool and unhurried manner of the killers.
Passengers are forced off a bus by what appear to be militants. As a jihadi anthem blares in the background the militants surround them and force them to sit on the ground. Seconds later they open fire with Kalashnikovs, with the resulting carnage being graphically recorded.
A young boy is then seen clasping his hands and begging for mercy. A militant answers by calmly shooting him dead. Another militant walks around the bodies — slowly and deliberately firing into them, to ensure no one escapes. When it’s all over; the camera lens points to the ground as a militant, seen in the shadow, pumping his fist in delight.
This is a video — now posted on the internet — of the massacre of Hazara Shia pilgrims in Balochistan’s Mastung district last year.
For Pakistan’s government, Balochistan remains the most prominent policy failure. Violence has continued to escalate across the province since the PPP-led coalition took power in 2008.
A battle between nationalist insurgents and the Pakistani state is now a dirty and no-holds-barred war in which hundreds of civilians have been killed.
The latest disturbing trend is the increased targeting of Shias, especially the Hazara community. Over a hundred people belonging to them have been shot dead in the province.
The trend is disturbing as Balochistan has always been among the more tolerant of Pakistan’s provinces and sectarian attacks remained rare until 2001.
All that changed after extremist groups such as Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan and Jaish-i-Mohammad were banned by General Pervez Musharraf in 2002. A crackdown by the regime followed, forcing their most dangerous militants and ideologues to move to the tribal region.
Punjabi Taliban
Here they came in contact with Taliban militants; both influenced each other and a new sectarian breed came into being in the form of the Punjabi Taliban, now led by Asmatullah Muavia and loyal to Hakimullah Mehsud.
Initially based in South Waziristan, the Punjabi Taliban were ousted after the military operation in 2009. In reprisal, they carried out high-profile attacks such as the one on GHQ in Rawalpindi. Sources say that that particular incident was the turning point and led to a re-think by the establishment.
Security officials — who wish to remain anonymous — say this was because the GHQ standoff was resolved not just by army commandos but mainly through negotiations by Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, chief of the SSP, who convinced those inside to surrender.
Army officials dismiss these claims. They say military action broke the siege and that the so-called Punjabi Taliban remains their number one enemy.
It may well be that both stories are true, as one security official points out. Ludhianvi’s intervention — while crucial — was definitely only limited to the GHQ attack. He appears to have little control over the Punjabi Taliban leadership, which continues to wreak all sorts of havoc across Pakistan.
Official protocol
However, it’s also clear that Ahmed Ludhianvi now enjoys official protocol. The SSP and Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, Sipah-i-Sahaba’s current title, are both supposedly proscribed, yet these organisations hold rallies in major cities with ease where arms are openly displayed.
Today it’s clear that the SSP and Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, an even more extreme sectarian outfit, are inter-linked. Maulana Ludhianvi admitted as much to the BBC when he said in an interview that Malik Ishaq, the LJ chief, was released on his guarantees and that the notorious militant now answers to him.
Since Malik Ishaq’s release it’s become easier for the LJ leaders to move around, and they have since started expanding and setting up cells in Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.
These cells are made of locals and have been greatly strengthened, especially in Balochistan — where they operate independently of the LJ central command. There the traditionally secular Baloch — and particularly Brahui — are increasingly turning to the radical Islamist militancy espoused by SSP/LJ.
Security officials — and Shia leaders — say this turn of events is complemented by the growth of sectarian madressahs there. Perhaps the largest Sipah-i-Sahaba seminary outside southern Punjab is in Mastung, in the heart of territory controlled by the Raisani tribe.
Another major reason, according to Shia leaders, is the alleged support by intelligence agencies to groups of pro-government Baloch tribesmen.
Most of these have dual identities — the second being outright sectarian and extremist. It is no surprise, then, that the largest of the groups is considered to be the de facto Lashkar-i-Jhangvi in Balochistan.
All that is perhaps irrelevant for the intelligence agencies, whose main aim is the tried tactic of using religion to suppress nationalism.
Led by a close relative of a senior politician from the province, some of LJ Balochistan’s more high-profile attacks include the killing of Baloch nationalist leader Habib Jalib Baloch and the attacks on the Hazara Shias pilgrims in Mastung.
A senior member of the group accepts it has been involved in attacks to protect the Baloch community – it denies it’s carried out attacks on Shias.
“We are only carrying out defensive actions against people who are supported by foreign intelligence services. The Baloch people are with Pakistan – it’s just that they are scared of the militants.”
He adds that while their group isn’t anti-Shia — the community has elements that act as agents of Iran in Pakistan and they should refrain from this.
Complicity
But Baloch nationalist leaders say a perception is being built up that the Baloch community are targeting the Hazara.
“The Baloch have always been a secular people – it’s the Pashtuns rather than us who have had problems with the Hazaras,” says Nawabzada Jamil Bugti.
“What’s happening is with the complicity of the agencies – everybody knows that the areas where most of the attacks take place – like Mastung – have several FC checkposts nearby.”
“How can the killers escape without their knowledge – or consent?”
While insisting that the Baloch as a whole are not involved in the killings, Nawabzada Bugti acknowledges that some Baloch may be involved.
“The agencies are doing what they did in Bangladesh – where they created groups such as Al Badr and Al Shams.”
“Here it’s the groups like the Baloch Musalla Difa Tanzeem – who regularly target Baloch leaders.”
“If they can kill their own people – what’s to stop them from killings Hazaras on the orders of the agencies?”
Increasingly, it’s LJ Balochistan that has the deadliest militants in the country, men such as Saifullah Kurd and Ramzan Mengal, each responsible for dozens of killings.
Both men added to claims of official complicity when they escaped from maximum-security Anti-Terrorism Force jail in Quetta’s heavily guarded cantonment area. Security officials say they continue to enjoy patronage by some senior Baloch tribal leaders. Hazara leaders in Quetta openly accuse prominent members of provincial Baloch government of allegedly protecting sectarian killers.
But others claim that tribal leaders have no choice; they are increasingly being held hostage to pressure from intelligence agencies and their own increasingly militant Sunni tribesmen. Whatever be the real reason, Balochistan is now being regarded as the biggest, and safest, sanctuary for the country’s fiercest sectarian militants.
The writer is the BBC’s correspondent in Karachi. The views expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of the BBC.
DAWN
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Hazara Muslims call for 10-day strike in SW Pakistan
Pakistan’s Hazara Democratic Party has announced a 10-day strike to protest the targeted killings of Hazara Shia Muslims in the southwestern province of Balochistan, Press TV reports.
A 10-day strike will be held from April 20 to 30, the party chairman Abdul Khaliq Hazara said in Balochistan’s provincial capital Quetta on Tuesday.
He also called for the holding of a conference involving all parties to discuss the killing of innocent Hazara community members.
The announcement comes a day after unknown gunmen riding a motorbike opened fire on a shoe shop, slaying six Shia Muslims and injuring three others in the Hazara region of Quetta.
Hundreds of people took to the streets across the Balochistan province on Tuesday, chanting slogans against the government for failing to arrest the perpetrators.
Meanwhile, shops, markets and educational institutions have been closed in response to the call for the strike over the killings.
Chief Minister of Balochistan Nawab Aslam Raisani has fired six police officials for dereliction of duty and 17 suspects have been arrested in connection with the incident.
No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the Monday's attack.
MS/MAB/MA
Press TV
Saving the Hazara
From the Newspaper | Rafia Zakaria |
IT has been a dark spring for the minority Shia Hazara in Balochistan. On Monday, at least six people from this community were killed and three others were injured in a drive-by shooting for which the banned group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility.
A group of people had been sitting in a shoe shop when four assailants on motorcycles opened fire on them, and then escaped.
This was the third such incident in the past 10 days.
On March 29, eight people had been killed in separate incidents of firing around Quetta. In the first attack, assailants opened fire on a bus full of passengers travelling from Hazara Town towards Quetta city. They managed to flee even as people lay injured and dying on the street.
The attack on the bus was a grim repetition of another that is etched on the bloody landscape of Balochistan. In September last year, a group of men and women from Quetta’s Shia Hazara community travelling to Iran were stopped by armed assailants. The attackers told the women, children and the driver of the bus, who was not Hazara, to remain inside.
All the men and boys were taken out of the bus, lined up on the road outside and shot. When the bullets stopped flying, 29 lay dead or dying on the highway where the massacre took place. The place was Mastung, near the border with Iran, and it took the attackers half an hour to accomplish their grim mission.
Yet not a single one of the murderers has been caught. Nearly a month later, on Oct 19, a Crimes Investigation Department report submitted before the Balochistan High Court said that while an important clue had been found regarding the massacre, details could not be disclosed because that would affect further investigation.
And still the killings continue. In the months between last September and now, there have been repeated attacks on the Hazara, who can be physically distinguished from the other people of Balochistan because of their resemblance to their Central Asian and Mongol ancestors.
Again and again the Hazara Shia have been targeted, from poor daily-wage labourers living in Hazara Town to former Olympic athletes leaving their workplaces. They have been assassinated in full view of anonymous onlookers as part of the project of exterminating the Shia from the area.
Edicts issued by the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi in Balochistan, and published in local Urdu and Hazara newspapers, label members of the community as wajib-ul-qatl, or deserving of death. The community has been warned that its settlements in Hazara Town and on Alamdar Road will be transformed into graveyards as the war against them continues.
The words are grim and true; the war against the Hazara has continued in the days following the Mastung attack, with the latest set of killings representing just another episode in this macabre saga of death. Unsurprisingly, the Hazara community — that has not aligned itself with either the Baloch nationalists or the more recently settled Pakhtuns in the area — has become increasingly dejected about its future.
Just days before this latest incident of violence, a report issued by the Balochistan Home Department failed to note with any specificity the lethal conditions faced by the community.
Last week, during a hearing conducted by a three-member bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry expressed his alarm over the silence, asking members of the Balochistan administration to explain why no one suspected of dumping mutilated bodies or shooting down innocent people is ever apprehended.
Undoubtedly, the Shia Hazara are victims of the ineptitude that so incensed the SC justices last week. But there are other specifics that make the Hazara community particularly hapless among the many suffering people of Balochistan.
First, their small numbers and long-standing loyalties to the Pakistani state, displayed in the military service records of community leaders, puts them at odds with the Baloch nationalist movement.
Second, the location of their enclave in Quetta, sitting close to both the southward road to Karachi and the highways leading to Iran, has in recent years become the centre of global strategic interest which has created incentives for others to drive them out.
The extermination of the community, either through targeted attacks or through the massacres, thus accomplishes not just sectarian aims, but also forces scared Hazaras fleeing the area to either abandon property or sell it at low prices to waiting land-grabbers.
The lack of local avenues of recourse for a festering human rights issue is exacerbated further by the complexities faced abroad.
In previous decades, small minorities such as the Hazara, who have few local options for saving themselves in a milieu wracked by conflict, were able to avail the international human rights platform to draw attention to their plight. Even on this count, the Hazara face a particular disadvantage.
In the United States, last February’s introduction of a resolution by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has promoted the idea that all those fighting for justice in Balochistan are automatically inimical to the Pakistani state. This misperception is particularly harmful to the Hazara cause since it inaccurately conflates a human rights issue — their right to be free of religious persecution — with a nationalist cause that seeks secession rather than accountability as a solution.
All around the world, it is always the smallest, most peace-loving, least politically connected groups that are selected as targets by those seeking to scare the populations they seek to control.
For the Shia Hazara of Balochistan, who are seeking not independence but their rights under the Pakistani constitution, the dearth of local sympathy and the brashness of global generalisations have colluded to produce a landscape where hope seems as elusive as justice.
The writer is an attorney teaching political philosophy and constitutional law.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
DAWN
IT has been a dark spring for the minority Shia Hazara in Balochistan. On Monday, at least six people from this community were killed and three others were injured in a drive-by shooting for which the banned group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility.
A group of people had been sitting in a shoe shop when four assailants on motorcycles opened fire on them, and then escaped.
This was the third such incident in the past 10 days.
On March 29, eight people had been killed in separate incidents of firing around Quetta. In the first attack, assailants opened fire on a bus full of passengers travelling from Hazara Town towards Quetta city. They managed to flee even as people lay injured and dying on the street.
The attack on the bus was a grim repetition of another that is etched on the bloody landscape of Balochistan. In September last year, a group of men and women from Quetta’s Shia Hazara community travelling to Iran were stopped by armed assailants. The attackers told the women, children and the driver of the bus, who was not Hazara, to remain inside.
All the men and boys were taken out of the bus, lined up on the road outside and shot. When the bullets stopped flying, 29 lay dead or dying on the highway where the massacre took place. The place was Mastung, near the border with Iran, and it took the attackers half an hour to accomplish their grim mission.
Yet not a single one of the murderers has been caught. Nearly a month later, on Oct 19, a Crimes Investigation Department report submitted before the Balochistan High Court said that while an important clue had been found regarding the massacre, details could not be disclosed because that would affect further investigation.
And still the killings continue. In the months between last September and now, there have been repeated attacks on the Hazara, who can be physically distinguished from the other people of Balochistan because of their resemblance to their Central Asian and Mongol ancestors.
Again and again the Hazara Shia have been targeted, from poor daily-wage labourers living in Hazara Town to former Olympic athletes leaving their workplaces. They have been assassinated in full view of anonymous onlookers as part of the project of exterminating the Shia from the area.
Edicts issued by the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi in Balochistan, and published in local Urdu and Hazara newspapers, label members of the community as wajib-ul-qatl, or deserving of death. The community has been warned that its settlements in Hazara Town and on Alamdar Road will be transformed into graveyards as the war against them continues.
The words are grim and true; the war against the Hazara has continued in the days following the Mastung attack, with the latest set of killings representing just another episode in this macabre saga of death. Unsurprisingly, the Hazara community — that has not aligned itself with either the Baloch nationalists or the more recently settled Pakhtuns in the area — has become increasingly dejected about its future.
Just days before this latest incident of violence, a report issued by the Balochistan Home Department failed to note with any specificity the lethal conditions faced by the community.
Last week, during a hearing conducted by a three-member bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry expressed his alarm over the silence, asking members of the Balochistan administration to explain why no one suspected of dumping mutilated bodies or shooting down innocent people is ever apprehended.
Undoubtedly, the Shia Hazara are victims of the ineptitude that so incensed the SC justices last week. But there are other specifics that make the Hazara community particularly hapless among the many suffering people of Balochistan.
First, their small numbers and long-standing loyalties to the Pakistani state, displayed in the military service records of community leaders, puts them at odds with the Baloch nationalist movement.
Second, the location of their enclave in Quetta, sitting close to both the southward road to Karachi and the highways leading to Iran, has in recent years become the centre of global strategic interest which has created incentives for others to drive them out.
The extermination of the community, either through targeted attacks or through the massacres, thus accomplishes not just sectarian aims, but also forces scared Hazaras fleeing the area to either abandon property or sell it at low prices to waiting land-grabbers.
The lack of local avenues of recourse for a festering human rights issue is exacerbated further by the complexities faced abroad.
In previous decades, small minorities such as the Hazara, who have few local options for saving themselves in a milieu wracked by conflict, were able to avail the international human rights platform to draw attention to their plight. Even on this count, the Hazara face a particular disadvantage.
In the United States, last February’s introduction of a resolution by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has promoted the idea that all those fighting for justice in Balochistan are automatically inimical to the Pakistani state. This misperception is particularly harmful to the Hazara cause since it inaccurately conflates a human rights issue — their right to be free of religious persecution — with a nationalist cause that seeks secession rather than accountability as a solution.
All around the world, it is always the smallest, most peace-loving, least politically connected groups that are selected as targets by those seeking to scare the populations they seek to control.
For the Shia Hazara of Balochistan, who are seeking not independence but their rights under the Pakistani constitution, the dearth of local sympathy and the brashness of global generalisations have colluded to produce a landscape where hope seems as elusive as justice.
The writer is an attorney teaching political philosophy and constitutional law.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
DAWN
Six target killing victims buried in Quetta
By Mohammad Zafar
QUETTA: Six people of Hazara community, who were shot dead on Monday, were buried in their ancestral graveyards on Tuesday.
The funeral prayers of four victims were offered in Hazara graveyard in Eastern-Bypass and two in a graveyard near Alamdar Road. Score of religious scholars and leaders of the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) participated in the funeral prayers.
Six people were killed and three others were injured when a group of armed men opened fire on a cobblers shop on Prince Road. All the victims were shoemakers. The banned outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed the responsibility of the killings. Talking to the media, Shia Conference President Ashraf Zaidi said the government was not serious in arresting the culprits behind the killings of Hazara community members. Stringent security measures have been adopted in Quetta with the deployment of security forces and police to maintain public order. Most of the shops on Prince Road remained closed to mourn the death of innocent people.
Seven police officials, including an inspector, have been suspended following the directives of Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani. Police have conducted raids in different parts of Quetta and detained dozens of suspects for interrogation. Three separate teams of CID, investigation and district police were constituted to investigate the killings.
HDP Chairman Abdul Khaliq Hazara announced that Hazara community will hold protest demonstrations outside foreign missions besides registering their protest with International Human Rights Organisation to highlight the incessant killings of Hazara community in Quetta.
Daily Times
QUETTA: Six people of Hazara community, who were shot dead on Monday, were buried in their ancestral graveyards on Tuesday.
The funeral prayers of four victims were offered in Hazara graveyard in Eastern-Bypass and two in a graveyard near Alamdar Road. Score of religious scholars and leaders of the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) participated in the funeral prayers.
Six people were killed and three others were injured when a group of armed men opened fire on a cobblers shop on Prince Road. All the victims were shoemakers. The banned outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed the responsibility of the killings. Talking to the media, Shia Conference President Ashraf Zaidi said the government was not serious in arresting the culprits behind the killings of Hazara community members. Stringent security measures have been adopted in Quetta with the deployment of security forces and police to maintain public order. Most of the shops on Prince Road remained closed to mourn the death of innocent people.
Seven police officials, including an inspector, have been suspended following the directives of Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani. Police have conducted raids in different parts of Quetta and detained dozens of suspects for interrogation. Three separate teams of CID, investigation and district police were constituted to investigate the killings.
HDP Chairman Abdul Khaliq Hazara announced that Hazara community will hold protest demonstrations outside foreign missions besides registering their protest with International Human Rights Organisation to highlight the incessant killings of Hazara community in Quetta.
Daily Times
Sectarian killing: Hazara community seeks to make protest heard internationally
By Our Correspondent
Published: April 10, 2012
Hazara Democratic Party to hold protests outside several embassies against targeted killings. PHOTO: REUTERS/ FILE
QUETTA: The Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) announced that the Hazara community will hold protest demonstrations outside the embassies of European, Asian countries, America, Australia and United Nations offices against targeted killings.
Chairman HDP Abdul Khaliq Hazara announced during a news conference on Tuesday that the protests will also be registered with International Human Rights Organisation to highlight the rampant targeted killings of the Hazara community in Quetta.
“This decade was really painful for the Hazara community during which hundreds of Hazara tribesmen were killed in incidents of targeted killings and suicide attacks,” he told reporters. Khaliq was accompanied by his party leaders among other activists.
Ironically there has been no progress in investigation nor any culprit brought to justice, Khaliq said adding that inaction on the part of government and its law enforcment agencies affirm the notion that they were patronising the culprits.
“Six labourers were brutally killed on the busy Prince Road on Monday night which shows the lawlessness and utter apathy of the government. I believe no religion allows such inhumane act.
“The Members of Provincial Assembly do not even have time to condemn these killings. The chief minister is running affairs of Balochistan from Islamabad which reflects his sincerity with the suffering people of his province have to bear,” he added.
The HDP announced that they will register their protest with the international community since the provincial and federal governments have failed to curb the unending targeted killings of the Hazara community and had given a free hand to criminals.
The HDP will stage protest demonstrations in front of embassies of Asian, European Countries, America, Australia and United Nations from April 20 to 30. The Hazara community residing abroad will also register their protest with International Human Rights Organisations.
The party also announced to stage a sit-in outside the Governor House and Chief Minister’s Secretariat and convene an All Parties Conference on April 15, inviting all political and nationalist parties to evolve a strategy on a future course of action.
“The province is on the brink of civil war; all the parties and responsible people have to show sincerity, otherwise the ongoing unrest will result in an unexpected crisis or a civil war,” the leaders of the Hazara community warned.
Express Tribune
Published: April 10, 2012
QUETTA: The Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) announced that the Hazara community will hold protest demonstrations outside the embassies of European, Asian countries, America, Australia and United Nations offices against targeted killings.
Chairman HDP Abdul Khaliq Hazara announced during a news conference on Tuesday that the protests will also be registered with International Human Rights Organisation to highlight the rampant targeted killings of the Hazara community in Quetta.
“This decade was really painful for the Hazara community during which hundreds of Hazara tribesmen were killed in incidents of targeted killings and suicide attacks,” he told reporters. Khaliq was accompanied by his party leaders among other activists.
Ironically there has been no progress in investigation nor any culprit brought to justice, Khaliq said adding that inaction on the part of government and its law enforcment agencies affirm the notion that they were patronising the culprits.
“Six labourers were brutally killed on the busy Prince Road on Monday night which shows the lawlessness and utter apathy of the government. I believe no religion allows such inhumane act.
“The Members of Provincial Assembly do not even have time to condemn these killings. The chief minister is running affairs of Balochistan from Islamabad which reflects his sincerity with the suffering people of his province have to bear,” he added.
The HDP announced that they will register their protest with the international community since the provincial and federal governments have failed to curb the unending targeted killings of the Hazara community and had given a free hand to criminals.
The HDP will stage protest demonstrations in front of embassies of Asian, European Countries, America, Australia and United Nations from April 20 to 30. The Hazara community residing abroad will also register their protest with International Human Rights Organisations.
The party also announced to stage a sit-in outside the Governor House and Chief Minister’s Secretariat and convene an All Parties Conference on April 15, inviting all political and nationalist parties to evolve a strategy on a future course of action.
“The province is on the brink of civil war; all the parties and responsible people have to show sincerity, otherwise the ongoing unrest will result in an unexpected crisis or a civil war,” the leaders of the Hazara community warned.
Express Tribune
Weapons smugglers thrive in chaos of western Pakistan
BY TOM HUSSAIN
McClatchy Newspapers
KARACHI, PAKISTAN -- The P226, a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol made by the weapons manufacturer SIG Sauer, is a favorite of law enforcement agencies and militaries worldwide, from the FBI and Navy SEALs to NATO troops in Afghanistan and police departments across the United States.
But the shipment of 232 pistols that arrived in the Pakistani city of Quetta in January was intended for a different recipient: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an al-Qaida affiliate that's accused of targeting Shiite Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The group used some of the pistols in deadly attacks and distributed others to favored militants - sort of a jihadi version of a corporate bonus - according to militants and criminals in Quetta.
Even more troublesome to U.S. officials, however, is the purported source. A Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant who received two of the pistols, and who gave his name only as Raees, told McClatchy Newspapers that smugglers had purchased the shipment from a gang of corrupt Afghan National Army soldiers, who'd pilfered them from a NATO armory in Afghanistan.
The prospect that al-Qaida affiliates are using the same weapons as the SEAL team that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden last May illustrates the ease with which Pakistani criminal and militant gangs draw on a network of gunrunners that operates from neighboring Afghanistan and Iran to procure a wide range of Western, Russian and Chinese weapons.
In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official said that while he couldn't confirm the report, it was troublesome to consider that the U.S.-led NATO coalition's weapons were making their way into al-Qaida hands.
"But it's more worrying that they continue to get resourced at a level that would allow them to make purchases like that," said the official, who wasn't authorized to be quoted by name.
The weapons pipeline is fraught with shadowy deal-making and persistent danger - McClatchy correspondents were detained twice while reporting this story - but it's served the militants well. Pakistani human rights organizations calculated that 89 people were killed last year alone in sectarian attacks in the western province of Baluchistan, including 63 in the provincial capital of Quetta. In the deadliest attack, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants hijacked a bus that was carrying Shiite pilgrims to neighboring Iran in September, executing 26 of them.
The weapons have contributed to a worsening crisis in remote Baluchistan, where a variety of armed groups hold sway. The sparsely populated terrain of scrubland and hills, ruled mostly by tribal chiefs with little interference from the government, has allowed nationalist insurgents to wage an eight-year rebellion against vastly superior Pakistani security forces - and makes it ideal for smuggling.....Continue Reading...
McClatchy Newspapers
KARACHI, PAKISTAN -- The P226, a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol made by the weapons manufacturer SIG Sauer, is a favorite of law enforcement agencies and militaries worldwide, from the FBI and Navy SEALs to NATO troops in Afghanistan and police departments across the United States.
But the shipment of 232 pistols that arrived in the Pakistani city of Quetta in January was intended for a different recipient: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an al-Qaida affiliate that's accused of targeting Shiite Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The group used some of the pistols in deadly attacks and distributed others to favored militants - sort of a jihadi version of a corporate bonus - according to militants and criminals in Quetta.
Even more troublesome to U.S. officials, however, is the purported source. A Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant who received two of the pistols, and who gave his name only as Raees, told McClatchy Newspapers that smugglers had purchased the shipment from a gang of corrupt Afghan National Army soldiers, who'd pilfered them from a NATO armory in Afghanistan.
The prospect that al-Qaida affiliates are using the same weapons as the SEAL team that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden last May illustrates the ease with which Pakistani criminal and militant gangs draw on a network of gunrunners that operates from neighboring Afghanistan and Iran to procure a wide range of Western, Russian and Chinese weapons.
In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official said that while he couldn't confirm the report, it was troublesome to consider that the U.S.-led NATO coalition's weapons were making their way into al-Qaida hands.
"But it's more worrying that they continue to get resourced at a level that would allow them to make purchases like that," said the official, who wasn't authorized to be quoted by name.
The weapons pipeline is fraught with shadowy deal-making and persistent danger - McClatchy correspondents were detained twice while reporting this story - but it's served the militants well. Pakistani human rights organizations calculated that 89 people were killed last year alone in sectarian attacks in the western province of Baluchistan, including 63 in the provincial capital of Quetta. In the deadliest attack, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants hijacked a bus that was carrying Shiite pilgrims to neighboring Iran in September, executing 26 of them.
The weapons have contributed to a worsening crisis in remote Baluchistan, where a variety of armed groups hold sway. The sparsely populated terrain of scrubland and hills, ruled mostly by tribal chiefs with little interference from the government, has allowed nationalist insurgents to wage an eight-year rebellion against vastly superior Pakistani security forces - and makes it ideal for smuggling.....Continue Reading...
Monday, April 9, 2012
Six (Hazaras) killed in Quetta sectarian attack
By Mohammad Zafar
QUETTA: Six people belonging to the Hazara community were killed and three others were injured when armed men opened fire at a cobblers shop on the Prince Road in the provincial capital on Monday night.
Police termed the incident a case of sectarian violence and started investigation.
According to official sources, the shoemakers were sitting inside their shop when assailants on two motorcycles opened fire on them with automatic weapons, killing six of them instantly while injuring three others.
The bodies and injured were taken to Sandeman Hosptial. “At least six dead bodies and three injured were brought to the hospital,” doctors at the hospital said.
The deceased were identified as Mama Karim, Muhammad Hassan, Saeed Ahmed, Qurban Ali, Nadir Ali and Shabir Hussain while injured as Yunus, Lala Musa and Ustad Hadi.
Score of people belonging to the Hazara community reached the hospital and raised slogans against the government and law enforcement agencies for their failure to protect life and property of citizens.
Quetta Police Deputy Inspector General Qazi Wahid said that all the victims belonged to Hazara community and it appeared to be a case of sectarian target killing. A group of angry people blocked the Jinnah Road and forcibly closed shops in the area to mark the protest. Some people armed with sophisticated weapons harassed the doctors and journalists and surrounded the hospital.
Daily Times
QUETTA: Six people belonging to the Hazara community were killed and three others were injured when armed men opened fire at a cobblers shop on the Prince Road in the provincial capital on Monday night.
Police termed the incident a case of sectarian violence and started investigation.
According to official sources, the shoemakers were sitting inside their shop when assailants on two motorcycles opened fire on them with automatic weapons, killing six of them instantly while injuring three others.
The bodies and injured were taken to Sandeman Hosptial. “At least six dead bodies and three injured were brought to the hospital,” doctors at the hospital said.
The deceased were identified as Mama Karim, Muhammad Hassan, Saeed Ahmed, Qurban Ali, Nadir Ali and Shabir Hussain while injured as Yunus, Lala Musa and Ustad Hadi.
Score of people belonging to the Hazara community reached the hospital and raised slogans against the government and law enforcement agencies for their failure to protect life and property of citizens.
Quetta Police Deputy Inspector General Qazi Wahid said that all the victims belonged to Hazara community and it appeared to be a case of sectarian target killing. A group of angry people blocked the Jinnah Road and forcibly closed shops in the area to mark the protest. Some people armed with sophisticated weapons harassed the doctors and journalists and surrounded the hospital.
Daily Times
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