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Pakistan fights back
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI -
Pakistan is coming to dread Fridays, the traditional day
for prayers in the country. Last week, 53 worshippers
were massacred at a mosque in Quetta, the capital of the
southwestern Balochistan province. This Friday, a bomb
exploded at a building in the port city of Karachi,
killing at least two people.
In both instances, the location of
the attacks is of import, as are the fierce anti-Pakistani demonstrations
in Afghanistan that culminated in the
sacking of the Pakistani embassy in Kabul earlier in
the week. Afghan transitional administration chairman Hamid
Karzai was very quick to apologize for the
latter, saying to the media, "Whoever has done this,
they were not friends of Afghanistan. They were our
enemies, enemies of the honor of Afghans. We strongly,
strongly, strongly condemn the attack."
The most
recent attack in Pakistan, involving what police say was
a 10 kilogram remote-controlled device, took place at
the entrance of the 12-story Crown Plaza office
building, which is effectively owned by Mumbai (formerly
Bombay, India) underworld kingpin and the Pakistan
Inter-Services Intelligence's "Bombay connection",
Dawood Ibrahim, a notorious underworld figure who is
wanted in India.
The attacks in Quetta,
meanwhile, against Shi'ite Hazaras, have been widely
attributed to the sectarian violence that has plagued
Sunni-dominated Pakistan for decades. However,
Balochistan is a most unlikely place for such violence
as it has no history of sectarian strife.
The
Hazara tribe are of marginal significance in
Balochistan. They are economically mostly poor people
who generally serve as peons or pushcart owners.
Socially they are isolated as they speak Dari (an Afghan
dialect of Persian) or Farsi (an Iranian dialect of
Persian). They occupy specific areas in Quetta, and
number only about 300,000.
They do not live in
any other parts of Pakistan, although Hazaras are
present in Afghanistan as a part of the mostly
non-Pashtun Northern Alliance, but they have nothing to
do with their Pakistani counterparts.
But
many see Balochistan as the soft underbelly of Pakistan
as its diversified ethnic mix has the potential to
be volatile, and if stirred, Balochis could spread
unrest to North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which
borders Afghanistan. In terms of this theory, the attacks on
the Hazara worshippers were aimed at sparking discord between
Pashtun and non-Pashtun tribes in Balochistan and
beyond.
This is reminiscent of the situation in
the mid-1970s, when Pakistan and India used Afghanistan
and their proxy networks there in efforts to undermine
each other's interests.
The latest
string of events has set alarm bells ringing in the
Pakistan Army's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, and the
military has reacted with alacrity. It has demanded immediate
talks between the top army brass and the leaders of the
religious fundamentalist parties grouped as the
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which rules in NWFP on
its own and as part of a coalition in Balochistan. The
subject: What to do about the anti-Pakistan sentiment in
Afghanistan, and perceived spreading Indian influence in
that country.
Sources within the Pakistani
intelligence apparatus confirm that they have been
concerned with growing Indian activities, mostly in
Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad, under cover of diplomatic
missions in these cities, and as non-government
organizations. Pakistani intelligence claims that these
activities target the Pakistani border areas to
cultivate anti-Pakistan sentiment, and to block trade
between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The MMA, up
to this point, has been in direct confrontation with the
government over a number of issues, including the dual
role of Pervez Musharraf as president and head of the
army, and his widespread powers over the elected
government.
Significantly, though, the MMA
leaders agreed to shelve their opposition in the
interests of developing a strategy to support Pakistani
interests in Afghanistan. The chief minister of NWFP,
Akram Durrani, also affirmed the cooperation of his
provincial government.
The Quetta massacre
coincided with the end of Musharraf's visit to the US
during which he endorsed Pakistan's enhanced role in the
region in comparison to India's in the "war on terror".
Pakistan had just deployed troops for the first time in
100 years to the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas on
the border with Afghanistan to help the US contain
Taliban and al-Qaeda elements.
The attack had
the potential to set off violence in the whole country
and beyond, but this was mostly prevented, except for a
few incidents in Karachi, because the main Shi'ite
organization, the Islami Tehreek (the new name for the
banned Tehrik-i-Feqah-i-Jaferria) is a part of the MMA,
and it helped retain religious harmony.
The
Pakistani establishment believes that the Indian lobby
has played its cards against Pakistan through mobilizing
elements in Afghanistan to stand up against Pakistan and
in plotting the Quetta incident through proxies in
Afghanistan.
In return, regardless of whether
the interests of the United States are compromised,
Pakistan aims to hit back hard, and Afghan authorities
representing the Northern Alliance - with which India is
largely aligned - in the cities of Nimroze, Kandahar,
Zabul and Nagarhar have been put on notice.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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