BANGALORE - Last
week's tit-for-tat suicide attacks by sectarian extremist groups
in Pakistan mark not only a dangerous new high in
sectarian violence in the country, but a changing
battlefield, one where suicide bombers are more frequently
being utilized. With there being no dearth of volunteers for
suicide missions - in some attacks more than one suicide
bomber has been used - the possibility of a surge in
such attacks in the coming months cannot be ruled out.
More than 75 people have been killed in sectarian
violence in the past fortnight alone in Pakistan. On
October 1, 30 people were killed when a suicide bomber
blew himself up during Friday prayers in a Shi'ite
mosque in the eastern district of Sialkot. A week later,
about 40 Sunnis were killed and more than 100 injured when
a bomb ripped through a crowd of mourners attending
a public rally in Multan to mark the first anniversary
of the shooting of Sunni religious leader Azam Tariq.
Most of the casualties were followers of the
Sepah-i-Sahab (Soldiers of Mohammad's Companions), an
outlawed extremist Sunni group that Tariq headed and which
has been blamed for many bloody attacks on
Pakistan's Shi'ite community. Last Sunday, four people were
killed in a Shi'ite mosque in Lahore when a suicide
bomber opened fire, then blew himself up. The
Sepah-i-Sahab has been renamed the Millat-i-Islamia.
A similar spate of attacks
was witnessed in May, most of them suicide missions.
However, the targets were mostly Shi'ites. On May 7, 15
Shi'ites were killed in a suicide attack on a Shi'ite mosque
in Karachi. A week later six members of a Shi'ite
family were shot dead in Lahore. A Sunni cleric was gunned
down on May 30. The following day, the Sunnis struck
back. About 20 Shi'ites were killed and more than 100 wounded in an
explosion in a Shi'ite mosque in Karachi.
While the schism between Shi'ites and Sunnis
goes back centuries to the very earliest days of
Islam, sectarian violence as it exists today in Pakistan dates
back to the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the same year.
Saudi and US funding of militant groups to fight
the Soviets in Afghanistan fueled Sunni extremism in
Pakistan and the region. On the other hand, the Islamic
Revolution in Iran, a predominantly Shi'ite country,
spurred a wave of Shi'ite radicalism in the region. The
measures taken by Pakistan's then military ruler General
Zia ul-Haq to consolidate his control added fuel to the
fundamentalist and sectarian fire. The roots of
sectarian extremist groups such as Sepah-i-Sahab and Sunni
Tehrik can be traced to the policies of those days.
The government of President General Pervez
Musharraf in 2002 outlawed several of the sectarian
extremist groups. But the outfits survived the
crackdown. They assumed new names and were back in
business. The government outlawed more groups last year,
but the violence continues.
What is particularly worrying
about the recent spate of violence is that Shi'ite
and Sunni extremist outfits are now deploying more
suicide bombers to settle scores. In the past, they used
guns and bombs against their rivals. This changed in
July last year, when for the first time Sunni extremists
carried out a suicide attack inside a Shi'ite mosque
in Quetta, killing at least 50 and injuring more than
60 others. Apparently the attackers first opened fire on
the worshippers, simultaneously hurling hand grenades at
them. When police opened fire on the assailants, two of
them who had explosives strapped to their bodies blew
themselves up.
Subsequently,
militant groups in Pakistan used suicide bombers to
target Musharraf as well as Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. On
December 25 last year, two militants tried to ram their
vehicles, each loaded with 20-30 kilograms of explosives, into
Musharraf's car as his motorcade drove through
Rawalpindi. They missed their target, but the explosion
left 15 civilians dead and 45 injured.
Prior to
the July suicide attack in Quetta, suicide attacks were
used by Pakistani militant groups either in the Indian
state of Jammu and Kashmir - local Kashmiris are said to
have carried out only 2% of the suicide attacks, the
rest being the work of Pakistanis or Afghans - or
against Western targets and Christians in Pakistan, such
as the May 2002 suicide blast that killed 11 French
engineers in Karachi and the June 2002 suicide blast
outside the US consulate in Karachi.
Islam frowns
on suicide. Yet Islamic extremists have gotten around
this problem by describing suicide attacks as acts
of martyrdom. They have been justified as attacks on
"infidels" and therefore a part of jihad. A suicide mission
in which the bomber is able to take the lives of Westerners
and Indians is thus not un-Islamic. Members of a
rival sect, too, are regarded as infidels and therefore
their killing through a suicide attack is not
un-Islamic.
Mosques, processions and rallies
have become vulnerable targets of suicide attacks by
rival sectarian outfits. Since the aim is to create
terror and maximum damage to the rival sectarian group,
suicide bombers target mosques on Fridays, when
thousands of worshippers attend prayers. And unlike
suicide bombers elsewhere who simply detonate their
explosive-strapped bodies, Pakistan's sectarian suicide
bombers first hurl grenades and shoot into the crowd to
inflict maximum damage, then top off their operation by
detonating themselves. They are also known to position
themselves near pillars so that the explosion will bring
down the roof causing more casualties.
Pakistan's police have their hands full trying
to protect the many thousands of mosques and processions
from suicide attacks. They have raided several terrorist
hideouts for potential bombers. But the terrorist
network is far too complex and widespread to fight. They
are now seeking the help of the public to eliminate
suicide bombers. Early this month, police in Pakistan's
Sindh province issued guidelines on how to spot a
suicide bomber. The guidelines point to anyone wearing
thick clothes (to conceal the explosives), mumbling to
himself (praying) or being freshly shaved and perfumed
(in preparation for burial). Most suicide bombers are
young - between 17 and 30 years of age.
So far all suicide bombers have been
male, but the possibility of women joining their ranks seems
only a matter of time. In an article titled "Jihad
and Roses" in the Pakistani newsmagazine Newsline,
the author cites a report submitted to the
Interior Ministry that speaks of an Uzbek woman named Aziza who is said
to be training female suicide bombers in northern Pakistan.
Aziza is the widow of Obaidullah, an activist
belonging to the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan who
was apparently killed in the army operations in South
Waziristan this year. Ansari also draws attention to
two Pakistani sisters, Arifa, 20, and Saba, 18, who left home
in July after telling their family members that
they were embarking on a suicide mission and have
been missing since. The two girls are nieces of Gul Hassan,
the brain behind the suicide attacks in Karachi in May.
Hassan, an activist of the Sunni Lashkar-i-Jhangvi who
is now in custody, apparently revealed that he had
"prepared" at least two girls for suicide missions and
that they were waiting for orders regarding who their
targets would be.
What complicates
tracing female suicide bombers such as Arifa and Saba, who come
from deeply religious and conservative backgrounds, is
that there are no photographs of them. Orthodox Muslims
are against human images. Consequently, police have
no photographs to help them track potential female suicide
bombers. Besides, many women in Pakistan wear
burqas, which conceal their faces.
It
was an organization - the Jaish-e-Mohammed - that
was launched by the Pakistani government in early 2000
that introduced suicide missions to Pakistani cadres. Set
up to target India, the Jaish-e-Mohammed is among the
best-funded terrorist groups active in Jammu and Kashmir
today. Its first successful suicide operation was
against India and took place on December 25, 2000, when
24-year-old Bilal, a Muslim from Birmingham who joined
the jihad in the mid-1990s, rammed his explosives-laden
car into the Indian army's headquarters in Srinagar,
killing nine people.
The Jaish-e-Mohammed's
expertise in suicide terrorism has spread to other
terrorist groups active in Pakistan. The human bombs
originally designed and nurtured to rip India apart are
now exploding inside Pakistan. Pakistan's chickens have
come home to roost.
Sudha
Ramachandran is an independent
researcher/writer based in Bangalore,
India. She has a doctoral degree from
the School of International Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi. Her
areas of interest include terrorism, conflict zones and
gender and conflict. Formerly an assistant editor at
the Deccan Herald (Bangalore), she now teaches at the Asian
College of Journalism,
Chennai.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
