The Governor of Pakistan's lawless Balochistan province says the Army may be summoned in the provincial capital city, Quetta, after a dramatic escalation in ethnic and sectarian violence. Zulfiqar Ali Magsi, the Governor, has strongly criticized the provincial government and suggested it to resign from the office due to its stark failure to curb thedeadly wave of violence targeting the Shia, Hazara minority community. If not immediately contained, the governor fears, this spate of violence may push the gas-rich region bordering Iran-Afghanistan into a state of civil war...Continue Reading...
Monday, April 16, 2012
Sectarian violence: Another Hazara shot dead, six escape separate attack
By Shehzad Baloch
Published: April 16, 2012
QUETTA: The security plan devised by the Government of Balochistan to target terrorists fanning sectarian violence in Quetta appears to have failed as yet another man belonging to the Hazara community was gunned down in broad daylight on Quarry Road, while six others escaped unhurt in a separate attack on Spinny Road.
Salman Ali, an elderly man, was sitting at a tyre shop when two assailants on a motorbike appeared and shot him in the head and chest. The attackers fled from the scene after the incident. The police reached the site and took the body to Provincial Sandeman Hospital.
Police termed the killing a case of sectarian targeted killing saying the victim was Hazara and a resident of Marriabad, a neighbourhood of the Shia community.
The incident triggered panic and most of the shops and markets on Quarry Road, Prince Road, Mezan Chowk and Liaquat Bazaar were closed.
The police and traffic police deputed in these areas were seen advising the people to go home by saying the situation had gone worse again.
The killing was reported in the heart of the city where a heavy contingent of police, Frontier Corps (FC) and other law enforcement agencies were deployed a few days ago following the targeted killings of six people on Monday.
A few hours earlier, members of the Hazara community in a yellow cab escaped unhurt when a group of armed men opened fire at them on Spinny Road.
“The people were on their way to Marriabad from the Hazara town when they were attacked by armed men. However, the people escaped unhurt in the attack,” Shia Conference stated in its statement to condemn the killings.
“It is ironic that the chief minister chaired a high-level meeting with the participation of high officials of law enforcement agencies and very next day, killing of innocent people resumed,” the Shia leaders said.
A number of Hazara people blocked the highway on Western Bypass to condemn the previous targeted killings. They raised slogans against the government and law enforcement agencies for their failure to break up the chain of target killers.
“The inaction on the part of law enforcement agencies is raising questions on their sincerity to protect the Hazara community,” Muhammad Ali, a young protestor said, adding that the Hazara community is peaceful in Quetta but they are being pushed against the wall.
Angry protestors also burnt tyres at Mezan Chowk and on Alamdar Road to register their protest.
Chief Minister Balochistan Nawab Aslam Raisani returned to Islamabad after chairing a high-level meeting pertaining to the law and order situation in Quetta.
Banned outfit Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) claimed responsibility for the targeted killings of Hazara community.
The spokesperson of LJ who introduced himself as Ali Shair Haideri told local media in Quetta that his organisation carried out targeted attacks on Quarry Road and Spinny Road. Talking from specified location, he said his organisation will continue its attacks in the future.
Published: April 16, 2012
QUETTA: The security plan devised by the Government of Balochistan to target terrorists fanning sectarian violence in Quetta appears to have failed as yet another man belonging to the Hazara community was gunned down in broad daylight on Quarry Road, while six others escaped unhurt in a separate attack on Spinny Road.
Salman Ali, an elderly man, was sitting at a tyre shop when two assailants on a motorbike appeared and shot him in the head and chest. The attackers fled from the scene after the incident. The police reached the site and took the body to Provincial Sandeman Hospital.
Police termed the killing a case of sectarian targeted killing saying the victim was Hazara and a resident of Marriabad, a neighbourhood of the Shia community.
The incident triggered panic and most of the shops and markets on Quarry Road, Prince Road, Mezan Chowk and Liaquat Bazaar were closed.
The police and traffic police deputed in these areas were seen advising the people to go home by saying the situation had gone worse again.
The killing was reported in the heart of the city where a heavy contingent of police, Frontier Corps (FC) and other law enforcement agencies were deployed a few days ago following the targeted killings of six people on Monday.
A few hours earlier, members of the Hazara community in a yellow cab escaped unhurt when a group of armed men opened fire at them on Spinny Road.
“The people were on their way to Marriabad from the Hazara town when they were attacked by armed men. However, the people escaped unhurt in the attack,” Shia Conference stated in its statement to condemn the killings.
“It is ironic that the chief minister chaired a high-level meeting with the participation of high officials of law enforcement agencies and very next day, killing of innocent people resumed,” the Shia leaders said.
A number of Hazara people blocked the highway on Western Bypass to condemn the previous targeted killings. They raised slogans against the government and law enforcement agencies for their failure to break up the chain of target killers.
“The inaction on the part of law enforcement agencies is raising questions on their sincerity to protect the Hazara community,” Muhammad Ali, a young protestor said, adding that the Hazara community is peaceful in Quetta but they are being pushed against the wall.
Angry protestors also burnt tyres at Mezan Chowk and on Alamdar Road to register their protest.
Chief Minister Balochistan Nawab Aslam Raisani returned to Islamabad after chairing a high-level meeting pertaining to the law and order situation in Quetta.
Banned outfit Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) claimed responsibility for the targeted killings of Hazara community.
The spokesperson of LJ who introduced himself as Ali Shair Haideri told local media in Quetta that his organisation carried out targeted attacks on Quarry Road and Spinny Road. Talking from specified location, he said his organisation will continue its attacks in the future.
Hazara killings
From the Newspaper
YET another series of attacks against the Shia Hazara community in Balochistan over the weekend has raised fresh questions about the state’s inability or, as some quarters darkly suggest, unwillingness to take on the sectarian killers in the province headlined by the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi Balochistan. To be sure, with only a small number of hardcore militants believed to be involved, stopping them will not be easy. But there are disturbing signs that the killings are yet to shake the political and security apparatus in Balochistan out of its stupor. Even more problematically, members of the provincial government are being accused by the Hazara community of either providing sanctuary to the killers or of turning a blind eye to their presence in certain areas.
What is clear is that Balochistan has a growing problem of radicalisation. A network of madressahs and mosques has mushroomed in Baloch areas like the districts of Mastung, Khuzdar, Noshki and Kalat. With little to no oversight of their operations, the network has injected into parts of the Baloch population a growing intolerance along sectarian, i.e. Sunni-Shia, lines. Add to that mixture the recruiting of LJ type militant outfits and a relatively small problem can snowball. In Balochistan, the surge in targeting the Hazara community this year and particularly in the last few weeks is not well understood. It could be that a ‘deadline’ for the Hazaras to leave Quetta, for example, set by the militants has expired. Or with the space for sectarian attacks in other parts of the country somewhat reduced, the Hazaras in lawless Balochistan are an easier target.
Whatever the reasons for the surge in killings and attacks, the matter seems to be beyond the control of regular law-enforcement agencies. Police in Quetta are themselves targets of sectarian killers and do not have the resources to fight back or defend themselves. And if the police’s political bosses in the provincial government are disinclined to take on the sectarian militants, there’s little the police can do anyway. Which leaves the intelligence apparatus. The LJ in Balochistan is precisely the kind of entity that intelligence agencies are meant to track and help dismantle. The damaging war against Baloch separatists being led by the intelligence agencies is real enough but it’s not reason enough to preclude other actions by those agencies. But what if the agencies see strategic reasons to leave some groups untouched? The Hazaras of Balochistan are truly caught between a rock and a hard place.
SMS from Quetta
Mansoor Ali Khan on 16, Apr 2012
“Important, I can provide you information about latest attack on Brewery Road, Quetta but I demand full secrecy.” This is the message I received on my cell phone today when I reached office. I called up the number. It was a student from a college in Quetta. His voice shaking with fear. My first question was where did he get my number from? He replied, I got it from your face book account. He said he had seen the people carrying weapons from his hostel which is situated on Brewery Road. The student replied, he was not willing to reveal his identity or talk on-air because he feared for his life. I told him I cant help him until I don’t confirm his identity but he was insistent on hiding his identity. I didn’t force him anymore cause I knew his life was much precious than anything in this world. I simply let him go but told him to contact me again if he wants to share anything else.
This is only one example of thousands of citizens of Quetta who are living in fear for the last 15 days now. Every day we recieve news of unknown gunmen coming on motorbikes and shedding bullets on innocent people who are either sitting at their shops or are waiting for the bus at the bus-stop. Immigration consultants have thriving business in this city where every week hundreds of families are applying for immigrations to Canada, Australia or America. I personally know at least five such families who have sold every thing they ever owned, who have left their ancestors’ graves in this city due to the fear of their lives. I had a chance to talk to one such family in Canada. I asked them do they miss Quetta and they replied the only thing they miss about this city is that they would never be able to see the graves of their ancestors anymore. My next question was if they would ever return to the city, their answer was quick “No” and a long silence.
What could one say about a province whose governor has been compelled to say that if things don’t work out soon enough, civil war might erupt in this region. Our channel talked to the Secretary Interior of Baluchistan, Naseeb Ullah Bazai, and asked him why the law-enforcing agencies seemed to be failing. He replied they are trying their best to control the situation but his reply sounded more like a warrior who is fighting a war without arms. He gave us figures of arrests, figures of under-trial detainees but nowhere did he mention a concrete plan to handle this situation. The only thing he had to announce was that they are holding another ‘meeting’ to assess the situation.
In any other country if such a situation had come-up the Prime Minister would have been forced to move to the city to handle the situation but our Prime Minister seems too busy handling the contempt of court case against him, the new drug scandal against his son and yes, last but not the least increasing the number of ministers in the cabinet.
The Hazara community’s prominent representative in the National Assembly, Syed Nasir Ali, belongs to the ruling People’s party and is on a token strike for quite some time now but just like the people of Quetta, his token strike is apparently doing no good. I called the Secretary General of the Hazara Democratic Party, Ahmed Kuzak and told him about the sms I had received but I was shocked to see that he wasn’t surprised. He said we already know that there are elements in the city that are at play here, but the government machinery seems to have failed miserably. He told me that since March 26, 27 people, from the Hazara community have been shot dead in target killings. The attackers have been so confident about their approach that they are targeting people on two different spots in an interval of 5 minutes and no one from the police or the law-enforcing agencies seemed to get a clue about what is happening. Kuzak further stated that after the Mastung incident when 22 pilgrims who were on their way to Iran were brutally killed; there was a grave silence in the target killing incidents but since March 26 there has been a new wave seizing the city. The secretary general further mentioned that Quetta has become such sensitive area for policing that 27 posts of SPs and DSPs are lying vacant in the province since last year but no police officer is willing to take up the charge.
The political leadership, the police and even the clerics seemed to have failed in ensuring peace in this region. If things don’t work out soon enough, no laptops, Tsunamis, or Pakistan Khappay slogans will be able to the stop this wave of anger and sorrow and all that will be left for us do is to appoint another Hamood-ur-Rehman commission.
EDITORIAL: Hazara community’s sorrows
With eight more Hazara community members killed in Quetta on Saturday, the litany of the sorrows of the community seems unrelenting. In one incident, assailants ambushed a taxi on Brewery Road, killing the six occupants, in an eerie repeat of an earlier such ambush on a vehicle carrying Hazara community members. Minutes after the first incident, the assassins killed another two members of the community in a rickshaw in the same area. Virtual riots broke out in the city in reaction, with arson and violence on display against the police and authorities. The sky was punctuated by aerial firing, which wounded a student. The authorities responded by deploying the police as usual and calling in 10 more Frontier Corps (FC) platoons to beef up the security presence. That may have helped defuse the immediate violent reaction, but whether this post-facto response is the answer to what is by now clearly a pattern of attacks on the Hazara community is shrouded in doubt. Quetta in particular has become the theatre of this sectarian genocide. It must be stopped before the peaceful Hazara community loses patience and decides to protect and defend itself against the sectarian terrorists by force of arms, given that the Balochistan government and the FC have signally failed to do their duty. The ‘absent’ Chief Minister Aslam Raisani made the ritual announcement of doing all within the government’s power to bring the sectarian mayhem to an end. Balochistan Home Secretary Nasibullah Bazai offered a mealy-mouthed response, saying the government could not provide complete security to citizens. Let alone “complete” security, what security has the provincial government provided to any citizen? He goes on to assert that a comprehensive security plan has been devised that would be implemented after approval by the higher authorities. Nobody takes these ‘declarations’ seriously any more. Amidst the announcement of days of mourning, the Shia community in Quetta has called for the inept Balochistan government’s resignation. Governor Balochistan Zulfikar Magsi, a frequent critic of the provincial government’s (lack of) performance, warned the other day that if the provincial authorities could not handle the situation, the army may have to be called out. What would remain of the tattered credibility of the provincial government if this were to come to pass?
The Shia community is under attack in the country from Khurram Agency to Gilgit-Baltistan to Balochistan. The sectarian terrorists aligned with the Taliban and al Qaeda are seeking to sow the seeds of sectarian strife to such an extent throughout the country, from north to south, that a sectarian civil war breaks out to destabilise the country as a whole. While the Shia tribes in Khurram Agency are under the pressure of the Taliban and their mentors the intelligence agencies to allow safe passage to the Taliban for attacks in Afghanistan on pain of death, the Shias of Gilgit-Baltistan are being massacred without let or hindrance. Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s proposal of a judicial commission on the sectarian violence in Gilgit-Baltistan is a non sequitur. It does not take a judicial commission to know the facts on the ground when Shias are picked off en masse every other day. Protests of solidarity with the Hazara community in Balochistan and Shias throughout the country were held on Saturday in Islamabad and even Washington. The purpose of the sectarian terrorists should leave no one in any doubt. Pakistan is to be reduced to rubble through a sectarian civil war that could destroy democracy and the country itself. They must not be allowed to succeed in their nefarious designs by pussyfooting authorities or inept law enforcement. It is in the interests of the system and all governments, federal and provincial, to rise to the challenge and conduct an effective campaign of suppression against these mad fanatics. *
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