Over 400 killed in Balochistan sectarian violence: Report

By Zahid Gishkori
Published: July 1, 2012


Official data shows an alarming increase in killings. PHOTO: REUTERS
ISLAMABAD:

The government seems to be at a loss to explain the escalating sectarian strife in Balochistan, which has claimed more than 400 lives in more than 200 incidents of ethnic and sectarian violence in the past four years.

The decade-long insurgency recently turned into a battleground for politically motivated attacks on religious sects with banned outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi allegedly targeting the Shia and Hazara communities throughout the embattled province.

The provincial home department said in an official report last week that cross-border influence, among other factors, was fuelling the sectarian violence.

The official report which covers a period of four years states that over 400 Shias and Hazaras, who account for nearly a fifth of the country’s 170 million population lost their lives as a result of the aggression. Around 100 pilgrims have been killed in just the first half of the current year.

Another 450 people were injured in over 110 sectarian attacks from 2008 to 2011.

The increasing trend of violence is alarming. Over 120 members of the Shia and Hazara communities were gunned down last year while close to a 100 sustained injuries, compared to 81 fatalities and 200 casualties in 2010.

In 2009, 39 members of the Shia community were killed and 20 injured in over 30 incidents of ethnic violence, while only 15 were killed and 10 injured in 2008.

The police have arrested alleged terrorist Sher Dil, also known as Babu, for his reported ties with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in a bid to curb the violence. Others who have been arrested include Hafiz Muhammad Usman alias Abbas, Dawood Badeeni, Jalil Ababkki and Shafiq Rind. However, some suspects such as Usman Saifullah and Ziaul Haq still remain at large.

Alleged terrorists Khalid Bungulzai and Majeed Langove are said to have been killed in police encounters and the government has constituted a high-level inquiry committee headed by the home minister of Balochistan to further probe the incident.

The provincial government has decided to refer the investigation of “sensitive cases” to the Crime Investigation Department and called for a review of the regulations pertaining to the movement of pilgrims under the Travel Agency Act, 1976.

The provincial home secretary also held meetings with the Iranian consul general. Both sides agreed to beef-up security arrangements from Quetta to Taftan and discussed possible arrangements for facilitating the movement of members of the Hazara community between Marriabad to Hazara Town and Hazar Ganji.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 1st, 2012.

Hazara’s genocide

Rocket Attack on Hazara Pilgrims' Bus from an Artist's Perspective

Saturday, June 30th, 2012 3:33:03 by

  Faisal Farooq

The gruesome incident in which a bus of Shia pilgrims was attacked in Quetta coupled with numerous others in Balochistan over the past few months is part of baleful conspiracy to divide the country vertically and horizontally.

More than dozen people, who were returning from Iran, were lost their lives while another 30 sustained severe injuries when their bus was attacked in the outskirts of provincial metropolis.

If we focus on the pattern of attacks, the incompetency of the provincial government and law enforcement agencies to protect the community becomes the foremost reason of the dreadful incident.

This community mainly targeted along the set routes that buses take when transporting pilgrims to and from Iran, the neighboring Shia-dominated country.

Although law enforcement agencies increased security along these routes, they will have to develop a proper setup to monitor and identify suspicious activities in the future.

The police escorts which accompany pilgrims in these journeys are adequate at all. Local politicians of the province have been provided extensive and expensive security arrangements, but why not proper security and protection is being given to Hazara community.

Rather making efforts to prevent already planned attacks at the eleventh hour, the more effective way to tackle the issue is chasing the militants and dismantling their infrastructure.

The anti-Shia militancy in the province has modified itself into a force having its own motivations, operational bases and centers of propaganda and misinformation.

The law enforcement agencies have identified the locations of seminaries involved in propagating anti-Shia views. They also found some bases of the Lahskar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) who train militants and terrorists for such attacks.

Despite having information about the attacks and those behind them in the face of such a predictable pattern, the failure to prevent them has only intensified speculation that law enforcement agencies are deliberately not taking action against secretarial violence.

Such theories reflect mistrust among the stakeholders in the province, which is seen as being focused on cracking down against separatist forces.

The continued attacks on the Hazara community are increasingly becoming a massive abdication of responsibility on part of the state whatever it is thinking.

News Pakistan

’جب مرنا تو ہے پھر قسمت کیوں نہ آزمائیں

عزیز اللہ خان

بی بی سی اردو ڈاٹ کام، پشاور

آخری وقت اشاعت:  ہفتہ 30 جون 2012 ,‭ 14:30 GMT 19:30 PST

ڈوبنے والی کشتی میں دو سو سے زیادہ افراد سوار تھے

’مرنا یہاں بھی ہے اور وہاں بھی ، تو چلو آسٹریلیا جا کر اپنی قسمت آزما کر دیکھتے ہیں ، ہو سکتا ہے کامیابی حاصل ہو تو میں اپنے والدین اور گھر والوں کے لیے کچھ کر سکوں گا‘۔

یہ تھے نوجوان عمران علی کے الفاظ جو بلوچستان یونیورسٹی میں شعبہ انفارمیشن ٹیکنالوجی میں زیر تعلیم تھے، لیکن کوئٹہ میں حالات سے تنگ آ کر انھوں نے آسٹریلیا جانے کے لیے ایک خطرناک راستے کا انتخاب کیا۔ 

کوئٹہ سے تعلق رکھنے والے عمران علی ہزارہ قبیلے کے ان ترپّن افراد میں شامل تھے جن کی کشتی انڈونیشیا سے آسٹریلیا جاتے ہوئے بحر ہند میں کرسمس آئی لینڈ کے پاس ڈوب گئی تھی۔

اس کشتی میں ویسے تو دو سو سے زیادہ افراد سوار تھے جن میں ترپن ہزارہ قبیلے کے اور باقی کا تعلق قبائلی علاقے کرم ایجنسی سے تھا۔ عمران علی ان بیس خوش قسمت افراد میں شامل ہیں جنھیں کشتی ڈوب جانے کے بعد زندہ بچا لیا گیا ہے اور وہ اس وقت آسٹریلیا میں حراستی مرکز میں ہیں۔

عمران علی کے بہنوئی شجاعت علی نے ٹیلیفون پر کوئٹہ سے بی بی سی کو بتایا کہ ہزارہ قبیلے کو ٹارگٹ کلنگ کے واقعات کا سامنا ہے اور حالات دیکھ کر یہی لگتا ہے کہ ہزارہ قبیلے کے لوگوں کو جان بوجھ کر دیوار سے لگایا جا رہا ہے۔

انھوں نے کہا کہ آئے روز ہزارہ قبیلے کے لوگوں کے قتل عام کی وجہ سے عمران علی نے یہی فیصلہ کیا کہ وہ آسٹریلیا جا کر پناہ کے لیے درخواست دے گا اور وہاں سکونت اختیار کر لے گا۔

شجاعت علی کے مطابق عمران علی کو والدین نے بہت سمجھایا کہ یہ راستہ انتہائی خطرناک ہے جس پر عمران نے یہی کہا کہ مرنا یہاں بھی ہے اور وہاں بھی ، اس لیے آسٹریلیا جانے کی کوشش وہ ضرور کرے گا اگر کامیابی ہوئی تووہ اپنے گھر والوں اور والدین کے لیے کچھ کر سکے گا۔

"عمران علی کو والدین نے بہت سمجھایا کہ یہ راستہ انتہائی خطرناک ہے جس پر عمران نے یہی کہا کہ مرنا یہاں بھی ہے اور وہاں بھی ، اس لیے آسٹریلیا جانے کی کوشش وہ ضرور کرے گا اگر کامیابی ہوئی تووہ اپنے گھر والوں اور والدین کے لیے کچھ کر سکے گا۔"

شجاعت علی

شجاعت علی نے بتایا کہ عمران کا ایک بھائی اور دو بہنیں ہیں اور وہ تعلیم میں پوزیشن ہولڈر رہا ہے۔ ان کا بھائی ایئر فورس میں ہے اور مالی اعتبار سے ان کا خاندان کافی بہتر ہے۔

ان کے مطابق عمران علی نے اپنے سفر کا آغاز اپنے دوستوں کے ساتھ اس سال مارچ میں شروع کیا اور پہلے قانونی طریقے سے تھائی لینڈ گئے جہاں سے وہ ملائیشیا اور پھر انڈونیشیا پہنچے۔

اس کے بعد انھوں نے کشتی سے غیرقانونی سفر انیس جون کو شروع کیا جبکہ انھیں حادثہ اکیس جون کو پیش آیا تھا۔

شجاعت علی نے بتایا کہ عمران کے مطابق رات کے اندھیرے میں کشتی کا سفر شروع کیا اور انھیں اس وقت تک معلوم نہیں تھا کہ کشتی میں کل کتنے افراد سوار ہیں کیونکہ وہاں لوگ پیسے کی خاطر انسانی جانوں کا خیال نہیں رکھتے۔

انھوں نے کہا کہ کشتی ڈوب جانے کے بعد عمران نے بارہ سے چودہ گھنٹے سمندر میں گزارے جس کے بعد آسٹریلوی حکام موقع پر پہنچے اور انھیں وہاں سے نکالا۔

انھوں نے کہا کہ ان کے علاقے کے بیس سے پچیس افراد اب تک لاپتہ ہیں جبکہ کرم ایجنسی کے ستر سے زیادہ افراد کا اب تک کچھ علم نہیں ہے کہ وہ کہاں ہیں

BBC URDU

Dawn urdu khabrain News Package Quetta Funeral

Routine advocacy becomes national photo exhibition.

In the slaughterhouse

Posted on June 30, 2012

How many Hazarganji has this beleaguered nation been left out to witness? And for how long? Now for months together, the Hazara community in Balochistan has its head in the crusher of sectarian slaughter. Its pilgrims are massacred while travelling on buses and vans for pilgrimage. Its religious congregations are fatally attacked with terrorist bombs and blasts. Its community members are mowed down in targeted shootings. Its mayhem continues right inside and outside the metropolis of Quetta. And no end is anywhere in sight to its carnage as yet.

Then where are the enforcers of law? Have they lapsed into a swoon or a stupor? Why are they not doing something to stop this holocaust of this community? Why are they not nabbing the masterminds, financiers and perpetrators of this brutal slaughter? Surly, the shady characters wreaking this horrific bloodbath on the Shia community of Hazaras do not descend from the skies. They are very much present on the ground. They have their sleeper cells in the province and in the metropolis of Quetta. They plot their vile acts there. Their money bags sit there. Their handlers are ensconced there. Their slayers fatten in their own stables. Why then are not their lairs being sought out and they being smoked out? Where are the intelligence hounds of the provincial security apparatus? Haven't they been tasked to bust the hideouts of sectarian monsters and dismantle their terror networks? And why federal agencies are not going after these vile characters when terrorism, sectarian or otherwise, is no region specific but a countrywide vine, spreading all over the land in an interlinked manner. Terror groups are no longer monolith monstrosities, either. Quite perceptibly, terrorists of various hues and stripes have ganged up together, helping and assisting one another in their sinful criminality. 

And even those wearing the masks of spurious religiosity have linked up with criminal gangs of the underworld. This is a very vicious combination that indeed has transformed the entire land veritably into a slaughterhouse. No place is immune from the wickedness of this vile terrorist-criminal axis. Every province, every region, every niche of the land is in the eye of the storm. Terrorists and criminals kill and maim wherever and whenever they want. And every time, they just go scot-free. 

After every strike, the law enforcers are very prompt in telling the weight of the explosives used. But what they conveniently tell not unabashedly why had they failed so scornfully in preventing the use of these explosives. After all, they are not there to tell the explosives' weight. They are paid not to allow anyone to murder with those explosives. But no heads ever roll. No questions are even asked; no explanations demanded. It seems the top echelons have taken that so long as they are safe and secure, it hardly matters if the commoners are killed and maimed in terrorist assaults. No extraordinary concern is perceptible in their echelons even as the country has become a sprawling abattoir of terrorists and their criminal accomplices.
It really is disconcertingly shocking that stray ideas and plans the top echelons had condescended to take up to beat out the terrorists are lying undone unattended for these top echelons' disinterest. Almost four years down the road, a contemplated nodal agency, national counter-terrorism authority, is nowhere near formation. The plan is lying stuck up some in the official labyrinths forgetfully. A proposed amendment to tighten up the anti-terrorism law is gathering dust in the Senate chamber for more than three years. For long, one is hearing of plugging up the holes in the evidence act but nothing has as yet come of it. 

This disinterest of the top echelons is self-hurting. They must understand. Terrorists will not keep confined to killing and goring the commoners. They will get the top echelons too. Already, a few of them have come under their attack. But if these echelons keep up with their disinterest, it will not be Hazaras alone to suffer fatally at the terrorism monsters' hands. Their vile hands will reach up to higher throats more frequently. The state security apparatus perforce needs to get out of its hibernation and move out systematically, methodically and powerfully against the terrorist thugs before they pull down the fa�ade of the state structure with their thuggery.

The Frontier Post

Editorial; Tales of terror

Editorial

Saturday, June 30, 2012
From Print Edition

Messages of hatred, through bombs and killings, continue to be delivered across the country with militants – motivated by different ideas and ‘inspired’ by different aims and ideologies – striking at will in various places, in various ways and aiming at different targets. Reports narrating the details of these attacks have become the norm, with their tales of death and injury. Now we read such a story again, once more from Quetta where a bus carrying Hazara pilgrims across the border from Iran on Thursday was attacked as it entered Hazar Ganj. Thirteen people were killed and 40 on board the bus were injured. The bomb that caused that havoc appears to have been planted in a car along the route. Like those before it, the attack was well-planned and expertly executed. The toll of the dead may rise given the gravity of some of the injuries suffered by the victims now lying in hospital. Clearly the motive was sectarian as it has always been in similar attacks in the past and the present. There was another incident of terrorist violence on that same day. In the Bara area of Khyber Agency, an army vehicle was attacked with a home-made explosive device killing eight soldiers of the Pakistan Army including a captain. Again it is not hard to know who was responsible or why the army personnel died. Many other similar attacks have taken place before.

What is difficult to know and understand in the former case is the ‘unchecked’ consistency with which a particular community is being targeted with the government and the law-enforcement agencies playing a role no better than that of a bystander. The pain and agony suffered by the Hazaras is immense. Living constantly under the fear of death, so many of them have been forced to abandon their work and education. Even if terror has become so much a part of life in many areas of this country, it still boggles the mind how a process of systematic elimination of the Hazaras in Balochistan by sectarian extremists belonging mostly to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has gone on undeterred, with little apparently being done by those at the helm of affairs to protect the community that is being attacked and slaughtered and punish those who, it seems, would have nothing less than genocide as their aim. After the latest incident, words of condolence and directions for an enquiry have, once again, come from the prime minister and other officials, as they always do. Such condolences have started to sound obscene now. A government’s job is a bit more than just mourning along with the grieved as their neighbours do. And such enquiries, if they are indeed held, lead nowhere. Protests and demonstrations have been held and strikes observed after each such incident by parties representing the Hazaras and also other groups, and Quetta is seeing more of these after the latest carnage. Will these rallies, and slogans of protests raised by them, ever shake the government out of its criminal slumber and move the intelligence agencies into doing their job – that of identifying those planning this crime and tracking them down?

The News