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Shi'ite warning shot in
Pakistan
By B Raman
When the
Shi'ites of Pakistan are angry, the Pakistani army and
its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) tremble.
Because they have not forgotten what happened in
1988. Faced with a revolt by the Shi'ites of the
Northern Areas (NA - Gilgit and Baltistan) of Jammu
& Kashmir (J&K), under occupation by the
Pakistan army, for a separate Shi'ite state called the
Karakoram, the Pakistan army transported Osama bin
Laden's tribal hordes into Gilgit and let them loose on
the Shi'ites. They went around massacring hundreds of
Shi'ites.
The resulting Shi'ite anger most
likely led to the death of military ruler General Zia
ul-Haq in a plane crash in August 1988, the end of the
military regime and the subsequent assassination of
Lieutenant-General Fazle Haq, a retired army officer,
close to Zia and hated by the Shi'ites because of his
suspected role in the assassination of a respected
Shi'ite leader. The inquiry report on the crash of Zia's
plane has not been released by the Pakistan army, but
many in Pakistan believe that the crash was caused by a
Shi'ite airman from Gilgit, who was a member of the
crew.
The army and the ISI imposed an effective
iron curtain around the NA after the genocide of the
Shi'ites of the area by bin Laden's hordes. As a result,
the world was ignorant of the extent of the anti-Shi'ite
carnage until the Herald, the monthly journal of the
prestigious Dawn group of Karachi, pierced the curtain
in its issue of May, 1990. It was helped by leaks from a
somewhat tamed ISI, then headed by the late
Major-General Kallue, a retired officer of the army
close to the late Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, who had been
hand-picked from retirement by Benazir Bhutto after she
came to power in an attempt (since proved futile) to
reform the ISI.
The Herald wrote, "In May,1988,
low-intensity political rivalry and sectarian tension
ignited into full-scale carnage as thousands of armed
tribesmen from outside Gilgit district invaded Gilgit
along the Karakoram Highway. Nobody stopped them. They
destroyed crops and houses, lynched and burnt people to
death in the villages around Gilgit town. The number of
dead and injured was put in the hundreds. But numbers
alone tell nothing of the savagery of the invading
hordes and the chilling impact it has left on these
peaceful valleys."
Now the Shi'ites of Pakistan
are angry again and on the warpath. This is evident from
the daring assassination of Maulana Azam Tariq, the head
of the anti-Shi'ite Sunni extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba
Pakistan (SSP) in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, on
October 6.
They have many grounds for anger
against Azam Tariq - for the role of the SSP in the
massacre of hundreds of Hazara Shi'ites of Afghanistan
before September 11 because they were sympathetic to the
Northern Alliance of Afghanistan; for the SSP's
proximity to bin Laden's al-Qaeda and the International
Islamic Front (IIF); for its targeted killing of dozens
of Shi'ite doctors and other intellectuals in Karachi
since President General Pervez Musharraf came to power
in October1999; and for its massacre of the Gilgitis of
Karachi and the Hazara and other Shi'ites of Balochistan
since the beginning of this year.
The latest
incident of massacre of Shi'ites took place in Karachi
on October 3 when unidentified gunmen, suspected to be
from the SSP, attacked a bus carrying employees of the
Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission, killing
at least six people and wounding eight. All the injured
and four of the dead were Shi'ites, while two – the bus
driver Raza Ali and a Pakistan army soldier Mohammad
Rafiq – were Sunnis. The Shi'ites of Karachi have viewed
this incident as a continuation of earlier massacres in
Karachi and Balochistan and feel that the SSP has
embarked on anti-Shi'ite carnage in different parts of
the country due to a suspicion that officers of the US's
Federal Bureau of Investigation, now based in Pakistan,
have been using Shi'ites as human agents in their hunt
for bin Laden and the dregs of the al-Qaeda and the IIF.
While the ISI and the army have remained silent
on who is responsible for the anti-Shi'ite massacres
since the beginning of this year, police officers in
Karachi say that the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), the
militant wing of the SSP, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen
al-Alami (HUM-AA) and the Harkat-ul- Jihad-al-Islami
(HUJI) have formed a new outfit called 313, which has
been operating on behalf of the IIF. According to them,
while its attacks are presently directed at Shi'ites, it
is likely to target American and other Western lives and
interests soon. All three are members of the IIF.
It has not yet been established who was
responsible for the assassination of Azam Tariq, but the
needle of suspicion points to members of a new, as yet
unidentified Shi'ite terrorist organization. It is seen
as an act of reprisal for the earlier massacres of
Shi'ites in Balochistan and Sindh.
The Shi'ites
have cause for anger against Musharraf, too. He banned
on August 14, 2001, the SSP and the Tehriq-e-Jaffria
Pakistan (TEJ), a Shi'ite organization, after declaring
them terrorist organizations. He further banned on
January 15, 2002, the LEJ and the Sipah Mohammad, the
militant wing of the TEJ. Shi'ites complain that while
the ban against their organizations have been enforced
strictly, the bans on the SSP and the LEJ have not been.
Surprisingly, and much to the anger of Shi'ites,
Musharraf facilitated the election of Azam Tariq to the
National Assembly in October last year by ordering the
withdrawal of cases pending against him under the
Anti-Terrorism Act. Azam Tariq denied any association
with the SSP, and announced the formation of a new
organization called the Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan, but
the Shi'ites believe that it is the SSP, which is now
functioning under the new name to circumvent the ban,
and that Azam Tariq continued to direct the activities
of the SSP and the LEJ from his safe sanctuary as a
member of the National Assembly.
Are there any
signs of the Shi'ite anger turning against the army,
with unpredictable consequences for Musharraf and his
military rule? None yet, but one has to watch carefully.
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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