Killing the Shia

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - They braved the bitter cold and icy rain for three days in Quetta—where three bomb blasts in two separate attacks claimed at least 92 lives and left some 120 injured on Jan. 10. The sit-ins by Shia Muslims from the ethnic Hazara group were all the more powerful because the bereaved families brought with them the bodies of their loved ones, refusing to bury these until the federal government fulfilled their demands. Chief among them: return to martial law. Hazara men and women, young and old, held protests across Pakistan—in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Multan, Rawalpindi—and in the U.K. Uniformly, they held that only Pakistan’s Army could restore semblance of law to the lawless, Taliban-infested southwestern province of Balochistan. The protests resonated with Pakistanis across the country. Politicians, and especially the ruling coalition, realized that nostalgia for military rule can’t be helpful with elections just months away. Early morning on Monday, Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, who had gone to Quetta to condole with the mourning protesters, announced imposition for at least 60 days of federal rule, casting aside the ineffectual local government led by his own party. “After holding consultations with all the stakeholders, we have decided to invoke Article 234 of the Constitution,” Ashraf said at the site of the Alamdar Road snooker-hall blasts. “Governor’s rule is being imposed in the province and the provincial government is being dismissed.” By sunrise, as word of Islamabad’s concession became known, the Shia called an end to their protests and the remaining 87 Quetta dead were finally buried. One of Pakistan’s deadliest days in years, Jan. 10 saw four separate blasts in two cities—Swat and Quetta—on opposite ends of the country. The most recent count has 125 people dead, with hundreds more injured. Shortly after the attacks, the now defunct Balochistan government, which bore the brunt of the carnage, announced three days of mourning and $10,279 as compensation for families of civilian victims and $20,558 for families of deceased police officials. Prime Minister Ashraf announced an additional $10,279 for the families of the deceased and $1,027 for the injured. President Asif Ali Zardari ordered a C-130 aircraft available to transport the Quetta injured to hospitals in Karachi for specialized treatment. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks, saying: “These heinous acts cannot be justified by any cause.” U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland termed the attacks “senseless and inhumane.” But Balochistan’s now former chief minister Aslam Raisani refused to cut short his time in London to take charge at home. He has since blamed his government’s ouster on Western powers, including the United States and Germany. “This has been done under political pressure,” independent analyst Hasan-Askari Rizvi told Newsweek of Islamabad’s decision to abolish the Quetta government. “The federal government will now have to prove that this decision was the right one by helping reduce terror attacks and ensuring the safety of the people. This may not be feasible.” Pakistan’s Shia comprise around 20 percent of the country’s population, with the subset Hazara community numbering less than 500,000, according to census reports from 2001, the last time that one was undertaken. Prior to the Jan. 10 attacks, militants had been engaged in a systematic targeting of Pakistan’s Shia—with more than 400 killed last year alone, according to advocacy group Human Rights Watch. The Hazara are particularly vulnerable to the Taliban because of their recent history with the militants in Afghanistan. While a bulk of the ethnic minority residing in Quetta has been living in Pakistan since Partition in 1947, there have been rare migrations from Afghanistan, especially during years of political unrest. In 1997, the Afghan Taliban assaulted the Shia dominated northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, punishing people for “un-Islamic” behavior, which includes photographing the human form, even fully clothed. In retaliation, the Hazara of the city rebelled and killed scores of Taliban. This did not sit well with the extremists, who returned in force a year later and ransacked the city—killing anyone who resisted. The Taliban even attacked the central Afghan region of Bamiyan, which has a majority Hazara population, and starved thousands to death. Taliban-allied groups in Pakistan, including the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi—which claimed responsibility for the Alamdar bombings—and Jaish-e-Muhammad are following in these footsteps. “Both dissidents and religious extremists have grown bold due to the provincial government’s inaction of the past two years,” says Rizvi. “It lacked a strategy to identify and remove their threat.” While the new administration led by Gov. Zulfiqar Magsi has yet to announce its plans to prevent future terror attacks, the assumption is that the prime minister’s directive calling for greater paramilitary presence will be implemented first. This could cause problems of its own. “If the paramilitary forces leave the dissidents and separatists alone, there should be few problems,” says Rizvi. The secular separatist groups, including the “Balochistan Liberation Army” and “United Baloch Army,” among others, do not engage in sectarian violence but are quick to react if attacked. “The government will have to ensure they are not targeted in cleanup operations or risk causing further unrest,” Rizvi adds, noting that the first attack on Jan. 10—an improvised explosive device planted under a Frontier Corps van in which 22 died—was perpetrated by separatists, not sectarian killers. Meanwhile, the extremist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has yet to be mentioned, much less condemned, by the majority of Pakistan’s political leaders. Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan, who is working to disprove claims he is pro-Taliban and who was one of the few politicians to visit the Quetta protesters, tweeted: “Condemn Lashkar-e-Jhangvi for its genocidal campaign against Shias particularly Hazaras.” There are also reports that Awami National Party’s Bushra Gohar shouted slogans against the extremist organization at an Islamabad sit-in. But the federal government has yet to comment. And it is unlikely that it will. Already under pressure from Tahir-ul-Qadri’s “Islamic revolutionaries” and a sadistic, grandstanding chief justice, the government does not want to make matters worse for itself by fueling militant reprisals in the lead-up to general elections. So the government will hope to quietly work on containing terrorism, and offer no strong sound bites of unequivocal condemnation against specific terrorist groups. Pakistan, and especially its Shia, must also hope that this silence doesn’t prove fatal./129