Why Our Shia Citizens Are Suddenly Being Killed In Pakistan?

There is a sudden rise in sectarian attacks in Pakistan in recent weeks, especially focused on Karachi, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.

The question that all Pakistanis should ask is this:

Who benefits from inciting sectarian conflict in three strategic locations: in Pakistan's business hub, in the province where the Iran gas pipeline will pass, and near our only land link to China ?

The timing is interesting. It comes when Pakistan rebuffed desperate US calls to reopen the military supply route from Karachi to Afghanistan.

Some of the players behind this mess, like terror group BLA in Balochistan, and two militant Pakistani political parties in Karachi, have links to the United States and India. The TTP enjoys safe havens in US-controlled Afghanistan.

Washington continues to allow the Afghan territory it controls to host TTP terrorists responsible for suicide attacks inside out cities. The same is true for BLA, with the additional Indian involvement in this joint venture with CIA.

This is the kind of hostile environment that we face. It provides context to the violence in Karachi, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.

Pakistan faces one more thing: punishment for delaying the reopening of NATO supply route. This is where things get dirty.

As Pakistan continued to ignore US calls for a compromise after the deliberate US attack that killed 24 of our soldiers, pro-US Pakistani allies MQM and ANP, two militant parties that divide Pakistanis according to language, stepped up destabilization of Karachi. [President Zardari helped Asfandyar Wali, ANP leader, secretly meet then CIA director in Spring 2008 in Washington.]  In tandem with violence in Karachi, unknown elements launched assassinations of innocent Pakistani Hazara Shia citizens in Balochistan simultaneously with a similar campaign in Gilgit.

Make no mistake: Our enemies are using Pakistanis for this mayhem. So there is a foreign and a domestic element to this situation. But sectarian terror and groups were largely contained over the past decade. The sudden surge in sectarianism at three strategic Pakistani locations should raise alarm bells.

OUR SUNNIS & SHIAS

Internally, our state needs to come down with an iron fist on sectarian parties and militant political parties.

The Political Parties Act needs to be amended to ban any political group or party based on sectarian or linguistic agenda that seeks to divide Pakistanis and distract attention from real issues like prosperity, education and development.

Pakistan also needs to warn Iran against recruiting and financing Pakistani citizens of the Shia sect. The Shia-majority areas of Gilgit-Baltistan were peaceful until the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran which brought with it an Iranian policy of recruiting Shia citizens of neighboring countries. To be fair to Iran, it stopped this policy for more than a decade now but some hard-line elements in Iran continue to pump money and provide some training to extremist Shia groups in Pakistan. These extremist Shia groups do not represent all Pakistani Shia citizens but are better organized thanks to foreign backing.

Similarly, we should seek Saudi action against any private funding from Saudi sources to sectarian Sunni groups in Pakistan. Saudi Arabia ended that kind of support a decade ago but some Pakistani extremist Sunni groups could be receiving funding from private Saudi or other Gulf-based individuals and groups.

In short, both Tehran and Riyadh did limit their links to sectarianism in Pakistan over the past decade. But unfortunately some extremist elements in Iran and Saudi Arabia continue to fund Shia and Sunni extremists in Pakistan. If this is stopped, we can identify other terrorists, acting as Sunni or Shia, who are feeding sectarianism on orders from unknown elements in Afghanistan, a country where multiple countries are operating with different agendas. The Indians have a history of meddling in sectarianism during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. [The Americans are known to have used sectarianism as a policy tool in Iraq. Also, Israel appears to have links to a group called Jundullah, created as a Sunni group to hound Iran.]

STRONG FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Pakistan needs a strong federal government to deal with the external and domestic parts of this destabilization. Unfortunately, we are in the middle of a huge mess in our relations with a belligerent US, while a corrupt and discredited political elite is in power in Islamabad.

To put Pakistan on the right track, we need to get out of America's failed war [we can help them in all possible ways with their demands as they withdraw from Afghanistan on case-by-case basis but we should not be party to an American war of extermination against Afghan Taliban and Afghan Pashtuns.]

At the same time, Pakistan's federal and provincial structures need a revamp. The existing political parties are part of the problem and can't be part of a solution. Pakistan needs a break from general elections for a few years. The focus needs to shift from politics to moneymaking, education, arts. Parties need to be legally reorganized, by force if necessary, to allow new leaderships and new faces. We can reorganize Pakistan into smaller administrative units, each with its own elected chief executive and local parliament running local affairs, with a strong federal government in Islamabad. This would provide a good balance between local and federal governments, and forever end the politics of language and provincialism. Once this is done, we can embark on gradually reintroducing a new, stable and peaceful Pakistani politics and democracy in the country.

This kind of change is not possible through politics. It will need the cooperation of middle class patriotic Pakistanis, the judiciary and the armed forces. And whatever the reservations, we need the muscle of the armed forces to pull this through.

None of this should sound outlandish, not after the great transformations we have seen in places like Egypt and Tunisia. We have already wasted the first decade of the new century. We need to do something for our country and people before it is too late.

To Pakistan's Martyrs

Why has the US-backed Jundullah been attacking Shia mosques in Iran? To start a sectarian war.

The same thing is happening in Pakistan.

The rise in sectarian tensions from Lebanon to Pakistan after the Iraq invasion of 2003 is not all coincidental. It has taken a new more dangerous shape since America's Iraq war. It serves a purpose. It divides potential opponents of the US and provides strategic openings. Iraq has NEVER seen sectarian killings, never in its centuries-old cohabitation between Shias and Sunnis. Tensions didn't even rise after 1979 Shia Islamic revolution in Iran. The sectarian killing fields in Iraq were launched after the Americans landed there in 2003. This is an important fact: Shias and Sunnis never killed one another in Iraq before the US occupation.

At one point, even the puppet Iraqi regime caught British special ops agents dressed as sectarian killers. They agents were never able to explain what mission they were on. They were released after an extra-constitutional intervention from the top. Iraqis, Sunnis and Shias, will tell you many similar stories and recount similar incidents.

The war that the Saudis and Iranians have been fighting in Pakistan through proxy groups in the 1980s and '90s died and ended by the year 2000.

Don't confuse the recent attacks with the Saudi-Iranian proxy sectarian battles that Pakistanis witnessed in the '80s and '90s. The new attacks may have the same foot soldiers but there are new paymasters and masterminds.

What you are seeing now is new players entering the stage: Players located on the Afghan border, drawing support from inside Afghanistan, and attacking exclusively Pakistani Shias and other Pakistanis like the Ahmedis, and almost everyone else. Today, America's 'war on terror' has only one casualty: Pakistanis, by the dozens. Old cadres of sectarian groups, like SSP, and of other groups are low-level foot soldiers but the masterminds are no longer SSP and indigenous Pakistani groups. It's the new players on the Afghan border. And these new players will continue to receive money and arms and training from shadowy sources until the war racket in Afghanistan [and Pakistan] is ended for good.

All Pakistanis must be told this a hundred times: There is no sectarian clash in Pakistan but there are attempts being made to create one. The martyrs in Quetta, Karachi and Lahore over the past three days are OUR martyrs. It is important to avenge the blood of our brothers who died there by understanding the game and keeping Pakistanis united.

Quetta Attack: The Responsibility Of Jundullah, Afghanistan And The Organizers - Was Quetta Rally Necessary?

A suicide attacker targeted the Al-Quds rally today in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province. Fifty Pakistanis are dead and the figure could rise in the next few hours because the injured are in excess of 100.

It is highly irresponsible on the part of the organizers of the rally -- and the government officials that gave it the green signal -- to endanger the lives of Pakistani citizens only two days after twin attacks that targeted public events. In pure security terms, this is a serious lack of judgment on the part of the organizers. The Pakistani government must proceed with criminal charges against the organizers who, in their callousness, put politics before the lives of our citizens at a time when we face foreign-backed terror. The relevant government officials who licensed the procession should be questioned about the sources of their assessment that it was safe to hold huge rallies in these times.

This Al-Quds Day rally was organized by Pakistani Shia organizations that support Iran's call for Al-Quds Day to be held on the last Friday of Ramadan. But by no means is this a Shia religious event. A majority of Pakistanis support al-Quds Day, regardless of religious affiliations. I personally fully support Tehran's courageous stance on Al-Quds, the holy city under Israeli occupation. It's also important to remember that the Al-Quds Day is a political event launched by the government of Iran. It is not a religious event.

Inside Pakistan, the organizers of the rally should have put the safety and security of Pakistani citizens ahead of everything else. A smaller, symbolic public event could have been arranged instead of a large one. The crime of the organizers is especially compounded by the knowledge of what happened in Karachi and Lahore two days earlier.

Unfortunately, Saudi- and Iranian-backed proxy sectarian groups have endangered the lives of Pakistanis for years and put foreign interests before Pakistani national interests. These groups must and should be banned.

It is also important to avoid playing into the hands of the terrorists who did this. Everyone knows we have sectarian groups in the country. But is every attack on one group the work of the opposite group?

Not necessarily.

In other words, Pakistan’s indigenous sectarian groups have been weakened over the years and their foreign support, from Saudi Arabia, Iran or elsewhere, has been considerably curtailed. What is happening is that their remnants are being reorganized by someone else on the Afghan border, arming them and financing them and providing them a new safe haven.

So there is a bigger chance of the recent attacks being the work of the terror-export enterprise that hides in Afghanistan and has been targeting Pakistan since 2005. The first evidence of this is the fact that the attacks have been claimed by a terror group based on the Afghan border.

With an attack on a minority worship place of the Ahmedis earlier in the day in Mardan preceding the Quetta attack by a few hours, it is clear this is not a sectarian issue but an organized campaign by Pakistan's regional enemies. And surely they will find supporters inside Pakistan. Apart from the existing sectarian groups, it is easy to recruit and brainwash poor young Pakistani teenagers, convince them to wear explosive belts and blow themselves up anywhere.

And it's not just Pakistan. Iran has seen attacks on Shia mosques by elements claiming to be Sunnis. But there are no Sunni sectarian groups in Iran. The terrorists who have been attacking Iranian targets are based in US-controlled Afghanistan claiming to represent Sunnis. The attacks in Quetta today and in Karachi and Lahore on Wednesday share the same origin as the attacks in Iran: they are masterminded by terrorists who hide on the border with Afghanistan and have links to foreign intelligence agencies based there. We know that Indians have shown a lot of interest in these groups and established contacts with elements linked to them.

Let us also remember there are external powers in our neighborhood that have an interest in perpetuating chaos in the region. We’ve seen how uneasy United States officials and commentators became when the whole focus in Pakistan turned to the floods and the humanitarian disaster and no one was talking about Washington’s terror war. That’s when at least one US media outlet spun into action and contacted terror ‘spokespersons’ on the Afghan border and solicited statements that can best be described as spreading panic during a national emergency.

It is important that non-religious and non-essential public events in Pakistan -- political and religious -- be curtailed under these circumstances, regardless of sect and politics. If the government and the army can call off parades on days of national significance, including our Independence Day, then unnecessary public congregations can be curtailed as well.

Patriotic Pakistanis, Shias and Sunnis, must step forward and show courage in telling our emotional religious figures that saving the lives of Pakistanis is more important for the time being, especially when none of these public events and processions have any religious sanction.

Pakistani religious figures that refuse to do this and hide behind weak religious pretexts must be charged with endangering the lives of Pakistani citizens.