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Murder and machination in Pakistan's backyard
By B Raman
The massacre of 53 members of the
Hazara tribe in an imambargah, a Shi'ite place of
worship, at Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province
in Pakistan, on July 4, while they were praying, by
three unidentified gunmen, comes close on the heels of
the massacre of 11 Hazaras undergoing police training
last month in the same city. This is an attempt by
Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives, who have taken shelter
in Pakistan's tribal belt, to drive out the Hazaras, who
are Shi'ites, from this area lest they be used by US
intelligence agencies to collect intelligence about the
presence of Osama bin Laden and his associates in the
tribal belt of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP)and
Balochistan.
All three gunmen are reported to
have perished during their attack. Two of them allegedly
blew themselves up after killing the Shi'ite Hazaras,
while the third allegedly succumbed to injuries
sustained by him in an exchange of fire with some
members of the security forces guarding the place.
The incident has led to violent disturbances in
Quetta, forcing the local authorities to impose a
curfew, which had not yet been lifted at the time of
writing these comments. The provincial administration
has ordered an inquiry into the massacre by a retired
major-general.
Since the general elections held
in Pakistan in October last, the NWFP has been ruled by
a coalition of six pro-bin Laden and pro-Taliban
religious fundamentalist parties grouped as the
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). It won an absolute
majority of the seats in the NWFP provincial assembly.
In Balochistan, the MMA did well in some Pashtun
majority areas, but not so well in the other areas
inhabited by the Balochis, where the Balochi nationalist
parties, demanding autonomy or independence for
Balochistan, and the pro-President General Pervez
Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Qaide Azam - PML-QA),
which is now in power in Islamabad at the head of a
coalition, did better. As a result, an absolute majority
eluded the MMA in Balochistan. It had to form a
coalition in association with the PML-QA.
When
the Taliban was in power in Kabul before October 2001,
it had carried out large-scale massacres of the Hazaras
in central Afghanistan with the help of al-Qaeda and the
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), the militant wing of the
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP).The Hazaras were targeted
as the Taliban suspected their collaboration with the
Northern Alliance and Iranian intelligence. There were,
however, no attacks on their kinsmen in the NWFP and
Balochistan at that time.
Now that the dregs of
the Taliban and al-Qaeda are using these two provinces,
with the complicity of the fundamentalist government in
power in the NWFP and the coalition with fundamentalist
participation in Balochistan, as sanctuaries for their
operations in Afghanistan, US intelligence has
intensified its operations in these two provinces. This
has been particularly so since the capture in March last
of Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, supposedly the chief of
operations of bin Laden, who had allegedly masterminded
the terrorist strikes of September 11 in the US.
Khalid was arrested by the Pakistani authorities
from the house of a women's wing leader of the
Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) in Rawalpindi and handed over to
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Immediately
after this, George Tenet, director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), had flown to Islamabad to
personally thank Musharraf for the arrest and handover.
The US authorities considered the arrest as their
biggest catch in al-Qaeda since September 11. Their
happiness with Musharraf over this was reflected in the
red carpet welcome accorded to him, reportedly on the
CIA's advice, at Camp David on June 24 and the
announcement of a US$3 billion aid package to Pakistan
from 2005, subject to certain conditions.
It was
reported immediately after the arrest that Khalid was
operating from a hideout in Karachi until September last
year, along with Ramzi Binalshibh, another important
lieutenant of bin Laden. When the Pakistani authorities,
prompted by the US intelligence agencies, arrested Ramzi
in the last week of September, Khalid managed to escape
to Quetta, where he had been given sanctuary by the JEI.
It is said that in the beginning of this year, US
intelligence was tipped off by a member of the Hazara
community in Quetta about the presence of Khalid in
their city.
At the prodding of US intelligence
officials, the Pakistani authorities mounted a search
for him. He escaped to Rawalpindi and obtained shelter
in the house of the JEI women's wing leader there, where
he was ultimately arrested. After he was transferred to
the custody of the FBI, the US authorities, with the
help of their Pakistani counterparts, mounted a search
for bin Laden and one of his sons, as well as for other
al-Qaeda members in the tribal belt of Pakistan,
particularly in Balochistan. Many managed to elude
capture and crossed over into the adjoining Balochi
areas of Iran, where some of them were arrested by
Iranian authorities.
While Iranian authorities
have not so far revealed the identity of those allegedly
held by them, there has been media speculation that the
arrested included some top leaders of al-Qaeda,
including possibly a son of bin Laden and Ayman
al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, who was No 2 to bin Laden.
This media speculation has not so far been confirmed.
The arrests of Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Shaikh
Mohammad, Waleed bin Attash, a suspect in the case
relating to the attack on the US naval ship USS Cole at
Aden in October,2000, in April in Karachi, and two other
al-Qaeda made the al-Qaeda leadership suspect that the
Shi'ite members of the Hazara community in Balochistan
and of the Kashmiri community in Gilgit in the Northern
Areas (NA) had been collaborating with the US
intelligence in its hunt for them and the Taliban.
While the Shi'ite Hazaras had grounds for anger
against al-Qaeda and the Taliban for the reasons
mentioned above, the Shi'ite Kashmiris had grounds for
anger due to the role played by bin Laden and his Sunni
tribal supporters in helping the Pakistan army in
ruthlessly suppressing a Shi'ite revolt in Gilgit in
1988, resulting in hundreds of deaths of the local
Shi'ites.
On February 22, a group of three
unidentified terrorists opened fire on some Shi'ites
watching a World Cup cricket match, outside an
imambargah in Karachi. Nine persons were killed,
eight of them Shi'ites, all Kashmiris belonging to
Gilgit. Subsequently, there were violent disturbances in
Gilgit when the bodies of five of them were taken there
for burial. In an article immediately thereafter, I
commented as follows, "The Shi'ites of Pakistan by and
large kept away from the street protests against the US
bombing of Afghanistan because they had not forgiven the
massacre of the Shi'ites of Afghanistan [the Hazaras] by
al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They have not joined the
recent street demonstrations against the planned US
attack on Iraq either. The TEJ [the Tehrik-e-Jaffria,
the main Shi'ite political organization of Pakistan] and
the Sipah Mohammad [the TEJ's militant wing] have
maintained a studied silence on Iraq and have refrained
from criticizing the US on its attitude towards the
Saddam Hussein government.
"The Sunni extremist
elements belonging to the LEJ [Lashkar-e-Jhangvi], which
was declared by the US State Department as a foreign
terrorist organization under a 1996 law last month, have
started depicting the Shi'ites of Pakistan too as US
surrogates and have been accusing them of helping the US
intelligence in their actions against the LEJ and other
Pakistani components of the IIF [bin Laden's
International Islamic Front]. It has also been alleged
that some members of the Shi'ite community of Gilgit,
presently living in Karachi, have been actively involved
in assisting the US intelligence in the hunt for Khalid
Shaikh Mohammad, a Pakistani supposedly of Iraqi origin,
who is considered to be the master-mind of September 11.
Two members of the LEJ were recently arrested by the
Karachi police. The attack on the group of Kashmiri
Shi'ites from Gilgit at Karachi on February 22 is
probably in retaliation for what the LEJ views as their
collaboration with the US intelligence and their support
to the Shi'ite leaders of southern Iraq who have been
collaborating with the US."
In the past, the
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), a Sunni extremist
organization demanding the declaration of Pakistan as a
Sunni state and of the Shi'ites as non-Muslims, had
carried out the massacres of a large number of Shi'ites,
including the educated leaders of their community, in
the Pakistani Punjab, the NWFP and Karachi, but they had
not indulged in any violent activities in Balochistan.
Public shock and Iranian anger over the murder of a
number of Shi'ite doctors in Karachi forced Musharraf to
declare the LEJ and the Sipah Mohammad as terrorist
organizations and ban them on August 14, 2001. When this
did not stop the attacks on the Shi'ites and the
reprisals by the Shi'ites against the Sunnis, he
declared the SSP and the TEJ also as terrorist
organizations and banned them on January 15, 2002.
Despite these bans, the LEJ, which is a
component of bin Laden's IIF, actively participated,
along with other Pakistani components of the IIF, such
as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (Al Alami-International),
the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM)and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET)
in the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US
journalist, the suicide car bomb explosion outside a
Karachi hotel which killed some French engineers working
in a submarine assembly project, the hand grenade attack
on a group of foreigners worshipping in an Islamabad
church resulting in the death of the wife and daughter
of a US diplomat, the car bomb explosion outside the US
consulate in Karachi in which some Pakistanis were
killed and in the attack on a group of European tourists
on the Karakoram highway to Xinjiang in China.
These incidents brought pressure on Musharraf
from the West to act decisively against these
organizations. He did act vigorously against the LEJ,
which is not involved in terrorist violence against
India in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and the HUM
(al-Alami), but avoided action against the JEM and the
LET, which are used by Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence in its operations in Indian territory.
The action against the LEJ did lead to a drop in
anti-Shi'ite violence in Pakistan in the second half of
last year. But the situation started heating up again
after the October elections. Musharraf ordered the
withdrawal of terrorism related cases against Maulana
Azam Tariq, the leader of the SSP, which has since
changed its name to avoid action under the
Anti-Terrorism Act, to enable him to contest the
elections to the National Assembly, which he won. Since
his election, he has been travelling frequently all over
Pakistan to revive the activities of his followers.
While Musharraf has been taking strong action
against the members of Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan
People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) and Nawaz
Sharif's PML (N) even for firing with air guns on
festive occasions such as marriages, he has not taken
any action against the maulana and his followers, who
have been moving around with AK-47s and other deadly
weapons in violation of the laws banning the carrying of
weapons by civilians.
Balochistan has been on
the boil since October last year. In addition to the
anti-Hazara anger referred to above, another reason for
the disturbed situation in the province, unrelated to
the presence of the al-Qaeda and the Taliban elements,
is the growing anger of the Balochi nationalist elements
over the payment of inadequate royalty by the Islamabad
government to the Balochi tribes for the oil and gas
found in their territory and over the resettlement of a
number of Punjabi ex-servicemen in the Mekran coast to
work in the Chinese-aided project for the construction
of the Gwadar port and a highway along the coast
connecting the area to Karachi.
The Gwadar port
has great strategic importance for Pakistan. It would
reduce the present dependence of the Pakistan economy
and navy on the Karachi port, which is within striking
range of the Indian navy. Following the mobilization of
Indian troops and their deployment on the India-Pakistan
border in the wake of the attack by the LET and the JEM
on the Indian parliament in December, 2001, Beijing
agreed to a request from Musharraf to expedite the
construction of the Gwadar port in order to complete it
in four years instead of five as originally planned.
To enable this expedited construction and to
prevent any sabotage of the project by Balochi
nationalist elements, he has given preference to the
employment of Punjabis imported from other parts of the
country. The resulting anger in the Balochi community
has taken an anti-Islamabad turn. While there have been
a number of attacks by unidentified elements on the gas
pipelines supplying gas from Balochistan to Punjabi
industries, so far no acts of violence have been
directed against the Gwadar project.
The Corps
Commanders of the Pakistan army as well as the cabinet
of Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali held a
number of meetings earlier this year to consider the
worrisome situation in Balochistan. One of the options
considered was to dismiss the provincial government and
impose army rule in the province. Jamali, a Balochi
himself, is viewed by the Balochis as an army stooge
and, as such, does not command much respect and
authority from fellow-Balochis. Musharraf appointed
Lieutenant-General Abdul Qadir, who retired as the Corps
Commander recently, as the governor of Balochistan to
keep a strict watch over the activities of the
provincial cabinet headed by Chief Minister Jam Mir
Muhammad Yousuf and to ensure the restoration of law and
order. He has not so far been effective. One should not
be surprised if Musharraf resorts to the military rule
option.
To keep the non-Punjabi areas of
Pakistan under effective control, a stock response of
the Pakistan army has always been to resettle Punjabis,
particularly ex-servicemen, in non-Punjabi areas. Former
dictator Zia ul-Haq had a large number of Punjabis
resettled in Sindh, in the Northern Areas and in
Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. Musharraf has embarked on a
similar policy of resettling a large number of Punjabis
in Balochistan. This policy is expected to be expedited
in the wake of the disturbed situation there.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret),
Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently
director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; former
member of the National Security Advisory Board of the
Government of India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He was
also head of the counter-terrorism division of the
Research & Analysis Wing, India's external
intelligence agency, from 1988 to August, 1994.
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