Pakistan must bring anti-Shiite terrorists to justice: Analyst

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Interview with Syed Tariq Pirzada, political and strategic affairs analyst from the Pakistani capital city of Islamabad to shed more light on the issue at hand. Q: Mr. Tariq Pirzada, is the government, would you say, responsible for a rise in Shiite killings?Pirzada: Well, who else? The government has all the powers, the government enjoys the support of the parliament, the government enjoys, as it claims, the support of the party, which is the people’s party and its coalition partners.They are in control, they have the army under them, the have the ISI under them, they have the MI and the other intelligence agencies under them; they have the frontier constabulary, which is a paramilitary force under them.They have all the tools available to them, then the courts are very active in the country.If you find the culprits, gather the evidence, take them to the court, make them an example and prosecute and send them to prison or to the required punishment, what would happen?The result would be, a massage would be sent to the extremists in the country that there is no room for them but because they are not getting the massage, because the government in Islamabad is more worried about engaging in corruption, that is what they are doing.Q: We have put the issue of this debate on our Facebook page and on that page we did put the question of why we are seeing this happening?I would just like before we go to the next question take a look at one of the comments that has been put on our Facebook page. We are seeing that Pakistani Shiite Muslims are increasingly under terrorist attacks. We are furious at a lack of protection from local and national forces in the face of these repeated attacks.Why do you think is the reason for these increasing attacks on Pakistani Shiite Muslims?Mr. Umar Musa has said that “Pakistani Shiites are citizens of Pakistan, so the government should take serious action.” And that brings me to the question, Mr. Pirzada if you can respond to this, is there a mentality, do you think, in parts of Pakistan, maybe even among the politicians, that these people, the Hazara Community, the Shiite Community, should not be considered as part of the Pakistani people?I mean I was reading one article suggesting that it is time for those Shiites to, actually, move out of Pakistan.Pirzada: Well, I would not consider the last suggestion as a reasonable suggestion.As you said in the early part of your question, the Shiites and Sunnis, they are all the citizens of Pakistan, all communities belong to Pakistan. This is their country, so exit or exodus is not the solution.The solution is the enforcement of law, the quick dispensation of..., administration of justice. The issue is: can the government establish its writ in every street and corner of Baluchistan and in the rest of the country.Look! Three thousand people..., lets explain the question, three thousand people died last year in Karachi, they were brutally murdered; not a single person was brought to justice and nobody has been appropriately sentenced, or punished, number one.Number two, in the NWFP, the former province of NWFP, which is now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is along the Afghan border, we see suicide bombings day in and day out, day in and day out.Then of course the city of.., province of Punjab, the whole of Pakistan is burning and I hate to say that..., let me point out that the person who is the President of Pakistan and the head of the Peoples’ Party, he is the person of the Shiite faith, as a matter of fact and it is a shame that he cannot take action, for which he enjoys the absolute support of all the communities as was demonstrated by today’s general strikes in Pakistan from the Sunnis to the Shiites.Q: Mr. Pirzada do you think that the government is, as our guest there was saying earlier on, Mr. Ghauri, is basically incapable of dealing with the situation because it has gotten out of control and that there are some forces involved here who are funding these groups who have their own aims behind this?Pirzada: I said in some of those shows that when you put together two thousand Pounds of explosives and use them in one incident, obviously you are talking about putting together technology; you have some people from across the boarder, be it Afghan elements or be it the Indian-supported elements who are obviously very much interested in seeing a destabilized Pakistan and to destabilize Pakistan that efforts continue.That does not mean that the sectarian violence is not there. The issue is that when a huge tragedy like this happens, you have to ask a question. How was this arranged? Who was behind it?Because, you know, if you take a look at the sectarian violence itself that we have been seeing in Pakistan, but quantum and the magnitude of the violence has never been this huge so the last two incidents, the one in January and the one that happened two days ago they were unique and then the Baluchistan Liberation Army that has been trying to secede from Pakistan.This is what they have been trying because they are in very small number, they have been trying to hide under the cover of these kinds of situations that are sectarian violence and all those things...Q: Mr. Pirzada, would you agree with that? [The previous guest’s comments].Pirzada: No I do not. Look! leaving aside whether the government knows anything or not, suppose you want to protect the Hazara Community and suppose that there are four buses that leave from Quetta to Mashhad, where Imam Reza [PBUH] is buried. Ok! All you can do is to proved strong armed escort to those busses on daily basis and that would become a very safe journey from Pakistan to Iran. That is just a minor example; but is the government, A: Able to do that? B: Are they competent to do that? And number three: Are they interested in doing that?Look at Mr. Zardari, he is more ..., look at him, he has..., and I have nothing against him. He has only one thing that he is doing these days, whenever he holds a meeting he has a son as a successor seating next to him, whom he is trying to nurture.If he was worried about the people of Pakistan, there would not be three thousand dead last year in Karachi, there would not be any Hazara dead in Baluchistan, there would not be any done strikes which are happening with the connivance and the tacit approval of the government of Pakistan. /129