Reign of terror

Syed Shoaib Hasan



On a cold December day in 2011, community leaders gathered at the home of the head of the Hazara community in Quetta, to discuss the drowning of dozens of Pakistanis off the coast of Indonesia as their ferry capsized. These illegal immigrants wanted to seek asylum in Australia and nearly all belonged to the Hazara community.

Their grief-stricken relatives started to stream in and out as it appeared that most of the dead were educated and belonged to well-off families.

With most of them being educated and from well-off families, why would they choose to be an illegal immigrant on a hazardous route? Perhaps they were misled — or ended up with some unsavoury travel agent who turned out to be a human smuggler.

“All of them knew they could be arrested — and there was a good chance that they could be killed as well,” said Sardar Saadat Ali Hazara. “They and their families knew what they were getting into. For them it was a chance to get away and live a better life than await a bullet or a bomb that would come eventually their way,” Sardar Aga explained.

The dead were from 18-40 years age group — a high-risk group in Quetta. As the militants become more brazen and indiscriminate, women and children have also been targeted. Fear hangs palpably in and around Quetta — especially in the Shia neighbourhoods of Marriabad and Hazar Ganji. It is not just the killings but also the fact that the militants are now using videos and SMS messages to terrorise people.

As reported by this scribe in a detailed article published earlier in Dawn, since Malik Ishaq’s release it has become easier for the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) leaders to move around, and they have started setting up new cells particularly in Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.

The cells comprising locals have been strengthened, especially in Balochistan — where they operate independently. The traditionally secular Baloch and particularly the 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. Perhaps the largest SSP seminary outside southern Punjab is in Mastung, the heart of the 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 them have dual identities — the second being outright sectarian and extremist. It is no surprise that the largest of the groups is considered to be the de facto LJ 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 Shia pilgrims in Mastung.

A senior member of the group accepts involvement in attacks to protect the Baloch community — but denies carrying out attacks on Shias.

“We are only carrying out defensive action against people who are supported by foreign intelligence services. The Baloch people are with Pakistan — it’s just that they are scared of militants.”

He adds that while their group isn’t anti-Shia, the community has elements who act as agents of Iran which must stop. The Baloch insurgents have always reacted strongly to attacks on the nationalist leaders. Some remain ambivalent on the issue of sectarianism, while others have even provided quiet support because of the suppression of the Sunni Baloch by the Iranian government. However, the leaders of the insurgent movement say that this is a conspiracy to divide and weaken the resolve of the Baloch.

“The agencies cannot suppress us in the field so now they are trying to use pro-government elements to malign the movement,” a rebel leader says. Increasingly, it’s LJ Balochistan that has the deadliest militants in the country, like Usman ‘Saifullah’ Kurd and Ramzan Mengal, each responsible for dozens of killings. Both men added to claims of official complicity when they literally walked out of a high-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, especially of the Raisani and Mengal tribes. Hazara leaders in Quetta openly accuse the Chief Minister Aslam Raisani and other prominent members of his government of allegedly protecting sectarian killers.

Others claim that tribal leaders have no choice; they are pressurised by intelligence agencies and their own increasingly militant Sunni tribesmen. For the Hazara community there appears no end to this reign of terror.

DAWN

Hope and fear mark countdown to NATO pull-out

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: In a spectacular valley swept by centuries of Silk Road history, the hopes and fears of Afghanistan’s only female governor capture the mood across the country as Western troops prepare to withdraw.

Habiba Sarabi’s hope springs from the transformation of Bamiyan province from a place of massacres and oppression of women under Taliban Islamists to one where most people live in peace and young girls flock to school.

It is fuelled by a belief that the historical, cultural and physical beauty of the central province could become a magnet for international tourists whose dollars would help support those gains.

The fear comes from the fact US-led NATO forces that have fought Taliban insurgents for the past 11 years will leave the country by the end of 2014 and all gains could be lost.

“If NATO totally makes the decision to withdraw I am sure a civil war will start,” she told AFP in an interview in her modest office in Bamiyan town, where donkeys vie for space on the roads with cars and few weapons are in sight.

Aged 56, she remembers the bloody strife that engulfed Afghanistan in the 1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops, when the West lost interest after backing the Afghan uprising against the Russians.

“If they repeat this mistake again it will be a disaster.”

Bamiyan is home to the Hazara people, a Shiite Muslim minority, and any chance of a return to power by the hardline Taliban — or even a share in power — is frightening, says Sarabi.

“The Bamiyan people suffered a lot during the Taliban. People can remember several massacres in Bamiyan and still we have mass graves here.”

If Afghanistan is spared the disaster Sarabi fears, it is not inconceivable that her dream of turning the area between the magnificent Hindu Kush and Koh-e-Baba mountain ranges into an international eco-tourist destination could be realised.

If not for 30 years of war since the Soviet invasion of 1979, it would likely have already drawn travellers seeking new places to ski in winter and fly-fish for wild trout in summer, while rubbing shoulders with the ghosts of Genghis Khan and Marco Polo.

Bamiyan’s physical attractions include the sapphire-blue Band-e-Amir lakes, which rise magically within a jagged, barren mountainscape without a river in sight — now centre of the nation’s first national park.

They lie about 75 kilometres (46 miles) from Bamiyan town off a smooth new South Korean-funded highway which winds through canyons and crags of bleached ochres and past a plateau where a new airport is planned.

One of the few foreign visitors last week was retired Swiss businesswoman Ruth Mordasini, realising a lifelong dream of returning to a landscape and culture she first saw as a 21-year-old travelling through Afghanistan in 1969.

“Bamiyan is so beautiful,” she said. “But when I told my son and daughter I was going to Afghanistan they thought I was crazy. It is sad that nobody knows what the future will be.”

Beyond the natural beauty lie centuries of turbulent history at a cultural crossroads of the old Silk Road trading route between Asia and Europe.

The modest Roof of Bamiyan hotel faces the cliffs where famed giant Buddhas stood for 1,500 years before being blown up by the Taliban in 2001, to international outrage.

The huge empty niches stand as a memorial to cultural barbarity, while the cliffs themselves are pockmarked by caves where people still live as they did centuries ago.

A glance to the right shows the ruins of Shahr-E Gholghola (City of Screams), where Mongol chieftain Ghengis Khan’s men slaughtered every inhabitant in the 13th century.

The massacre, according to legend, was to avenge the death of his son in the battle to capture the city, though there is some dispute over whether he was killed there or during the siege of the nearby Shahr-e Zohak, or Red City, carved into red sandstone cliffs and one of Bamiyan’s premier historical sites.

More recent history is visible in the old Soviet tanks scattered around the town and the mass graves of Taliban victims.

— Bringing change—

Despite its violent past, Bamiyan has been one of Afghanistan’s most peaceful provinces since the Taliban were overthrown in a US-led invasion in 2001 for harbouring Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

In the afternoons, streams of schoolgirls in their distinctive black tunics and white headscarves can be seen making their way home, some heading for caves in the cliffs near the blasted Buddhas.

But the road to Bamiyan from the capital Kabul can be dangerous, with recent kidnappings and executions, and the safest way into the valley is a half-hour flight over the snow-capped peaks of the mountain ranges.

There are no commercial flights at the moment. Only the UN and aid agencies make regular trips — but, like everything else connected to Bamiyan tourism, there are plans for commercial flights, a new airport, new roads.

Tour operator Gull Bayzadah, who drew 74 international tourists — many UN and aid workers already based in the country — to ski in Bamiyan last winter, shares Sarabi’s dream of developing the province’s potential.

But he also shares her fear about the departure of the NATO troops, and worries that deteriorating security might force him to abandon his business and leave the country.

“There is always hope that they might stay,” he says wistfully. “That they won’t waste their blood that has been spilled”.

Sarabi acknowledges the challenges of developing transport and infrastructure before tourism can take off.

But she is proud of her achievements as the only female governor in a country which, under the Taliban, was notorious for its suppression of women: girls were denied an education and women were not allowed to work.

Even after seven years as governor, she faces opposition from traditionalists uncomfortable with a woman holding power.

“No one would think that a woman could govern a province,” she says with a wry smile. “It’s a tough job to prove ourselves.

“But I’m happy and at least a bit proud that the people now realise that a woman can do a big job and can be a kind of role model for the other women and especially girls.”

Of Bamiyan’s 135,000 schoolchildren, 45 percent are girls, said Sarabi — up from virtually zero in the days of the Taliban.

The trained pharmacist, in elegant grey suit and white headscarf, said she has made a special effort to get girls into school — travelling personally in the summer months to remote districts not accessible during the snowed-in winters to encourage parents to allow their daughters to study.

“We now have the highest percentage of girls in school in the country,” she said.

But bringing change in the attitude towards women is a constant struggle.

When Sarabi allocated some shops in the main bazaar to women, creating an unheard-of mixed gender marketplace, the women were harassed by male shopkeepers and some quit.

“Day by day there are improvements, but there is definitely resistance from men to women’s progress — not only from men but also from tradition, so we have to change the mind of the people, their way of thinking.”

But even if she is winning the battle for women’s rights, Sarabi’s province remains desperately poor and economically underdeveloped — like most of the rest of the country.

Afghanistan has an estimated trillion dollars’ worth of minerals buried in its harsh landscape, but their exploitation depends — like Bamiyan tourism — on peace once the NATO troops depart. -- AFP

New Straits Times 

حمید سخی زاده در کوریای جنوبی..

Terror outfits nexus in Balochistan

November 02, 2012 - Updated 119 PKT
From Web Edition


ISLAMABAD: A nexus of Taliban, Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Jandola exists in the province, said the Federal Interior Minister, Rehman Malik during the Supreme Court hearing of the Balochistan law and order case on Friday here.

A three-member bench headed by the Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Cahudhry heard the case.

During proceedings the Chief Justice told the interior minister to go and catch hold of the Taliban, BLA and Jundullah and why they were not being arrested.

Rehman Malik said he would be giving a briefing about it.

CJ in his remarks said that whatever was happening in Balochistan was the responsibility of the provincial government. Those of us in Islamabad could not feel the heat of it. Is it possible for the people in Balochistan to move about freely, is anyone safe and secure in any place, he inquired and added that the chief minister’s own nephew was murdered and the murderer could not be arrested.

On this, interior minister said that this perception was not correct, "you come along with me, I will be driving the car," he said.

CJ said that you are good at driving, but Balochistan is not limited to Quetta, the Hindus have left from Kalat, all the shops are closed and the caravans move in security during the night in Kalat. Governor and chief secretary were subjected to firing. You sitting in Islamabad saying all is well.

Then, Rehman Malik said that your observations are correct, but is it the government machinating all this. He said that Taliban, BLA and Jundullah nexus exists in the province.

CJ appreciated the President’s statement stating that action should be taken instead of giving briefings.

Rehman Malik said that we have inherited these anomalies from former President General Musharraf.

Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja said that if you have information give it to the police. Some 800 such incidents occurred out of which 432 army and FC personnel were killed Tell me any case where the accused were caught.

The News

Taliban hell awaits asylum seeker

DateNovember 3, 2012

Dan Oakes

FOR much of the past decade, Bamiyan was the shining light for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan.

With its emerald green potato fields, snow-fed streams, pristine air and wealth of Buddhist relics, the central province is an area of extraordinary natural beauty. But it was the peaceful nature of the area that made it so valuable as an example of what could be achieved in Afghanistan.

Populated by the minority Hazara ethnic group, Bamiyan suffered horribly under the Taliban, with many inhabitants abandoning their fields and fleeing to refugee camps in surrounding countries.

Not content with slaughtering the Hazara, the Taliban - dominated by the majority Pashtun group - blew up the famed giant Buddhas carved into a cliff in the 6th century.
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But when the coalition invaded Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, the Taliban were pushed out of Bamiyan, the Hazara woke from their nightmare and the province became a byword for peace and stability.

When this reporter visited Bamiyan more than two years ago, New Zealand troops drove around in unarmoured utes, waving to children. Locals were talking about enticing tourists to the province, which was a stop on the hippie trail in the 1960s and 1970s.

However, a farmer warned, ''When the Taliban controlled this place, we fled to Pakistan, to Iran, to other provinces. Each household left one person here to watch over our land. We need the central government to protect us, so this does not happen again.''

Fast forward 2½ years. Five NZ soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in August and The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Taliban fighters are roaming openly in parts of the province.

There are no Afghan army units in Bamiyan, security is in the hands of an under-equipped and demoralised police force and the governor has to fly to Kabul for meetings as the Taliban control the roads.

The asylum seeker - who cannot be named - the federal government is trying to force back to Afghanistan comes from neighbouring Ghazni province, which also has a substantial Hazara minority but is one of the country's most violent and dangerous provinces.

There have been reports of the Taliban beheading Hazara in Ghazni (and in the Australia-controlled Oruzgan).

With foreign forces leaving Afghanistan, the Taliban moving back into Hazara areas and the history of brutality against the minority group, it is hard to understand how the Australian government could claim it is safe for the asylum seeker to return.

But to admit it is not safe would be to admit the last 11 years of occupation have done nothing to improve the security of an oppressed minority. And that raises questions about what exactly Australia, the US and their allies have achieved.

The Age

Read more:

The Nightmare Scenarios

Munir Uz Zaman/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAn Afghan woman and child in Kabul on Oct. 23.

By MATTHIEU AIKINS

KABUL — Two separate killings this past weekend sent a new kind of chill down the spines of observers in Kabul. The first was a suicide blast in a mosque in Faryab Province, in the northwest, during the Muslim festival of Id al-Adha, which killed at least 45 people, many of them civilians. In the second attack — which got much less attention — five Hazaras, a Shiite ethnic minority, were reportedly pulled off a van and killed in Ghazni, in eastern Afghanistan.

Although this country already sees a daily toll of civilian deaths from gunfights, I.E.D.’s and airstrikes, these killings were particularly worrisome because they suggest two types of nihilistic violence common in Iraq and Pakistan but that Afghanistan has yet to see: attacks designed to cause mass casualties among civilians and sectarian murders.

The conflict in Iraq has had a strong Sunni vs. Shiite dynamic, with Sunni militant groups bombing Shiite mosques and shopping areas, and Shiite death squads — often with links to the government — kidnapping and executing Sunnis. In Pakistan, the violence is more lopsided, with extremist groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi carrying out a campaign of assassinations against Shiites, mostly Hazaras, in the city of Quetta. It is also common for militants in Pakistan to target mosques and bazaars in reprisal for successful government operations against them....Continue Reading... 

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