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COMMENTARY
Pakistan's sectarian
monster
By Amir Mir
The sectarian war between Pakistan's
Shi'ites and Sunnis is bloody and deadly.
Available figures indicate that between January
1989 and May 31 this year, a total of 1,784
Pakistanis were killed, and another 4,279 injured
in 1,866 incidents of sectarian violence and
terror across the country. This averages out to
more than 100 persons per year over the past 17
years, with no end in sight. And there are some
indications that the trends may worsen.
Thus, 187 persons were killed and another
619 were injured in 19 incidents of sectarian
violence in 2004. Within the first five months of
2005, 120 Pakistanis have already lost their
lives, and 286 have been injured in 30 incidents
of sectarian violence. The worst of the incidents
in the current year include:
May 30: Six people, including two of the three
assailants, among them a suicide bomber, are
killed and 19 people sustain injuries during an
explosion in the courtyard of a Shi'ite mosque at
Gulshan-e-Iqbal in Karachi.
May 27: At least 25 people, including a
suspected suicide bomber, are killed and
approximately 100 others sustain injuries during a
powerful explosion at the Bari Imam shrine of the
Shi'ite sect located in vicinity of the diplomatic
enclave in the capital, Islamabad.
March 19: At least 50 people are killed and
more than 100 others sustain injuries during a
suicide bombing at a crowded gathering near the
shrine of a Shi'ite saint at Fatehpur village in
the Jhal Magsi district of Balochistan province.
In view of the current wave of sectarian
violence, it seems that the government has simply
failed to curb the activities of the banned jihadi
and sectarian groups, despite repeated claims by
President General Pervez Musharraf of having
adopted strict administrative measures against
them. The unfortunate fact remains that most of
these groups continue to enjoy a free hand under
the very nose of the administration, which is more
interested in taking cosmetic steps instead of
doing something practical to scotch the evil.
It was the support extended by the
country's third military ruler, president General
Zia ul-Haq, to the jihadi and sectarian groups
during the Afghan war of the 1980s that created
these unmanageable monsters who now rise to
consume their own creators. The sectarian and
ethnic essentialism that came into its own in an
organized, militant form during the Zia period now
poses an ever more serious challenge to the state.
The genie of sectarian violence refuses to be
bottled, and even as Musharraf exhorts the people
of Pakistan to adopt "enlightened moderation", the
country's tentative quest for a non-discriminatory
liberal democracy continues to unravel. Indeed,
the ideology of fundamentalist Islam appears to
remain at the heart of the Musharraf
establishment's strategy of national political
mobilization and consolidation, despite talk of
enlightened moderation. Pakistan continues to be
caught in the trap of extremist Islamic militancy
and terror that its mighty military establishment
constructed as part of its Afghan and Kashmir
policies. Official support - both explicit and
implicit - to Islamist terrorist groups continues,
even while the state struggles to cope with the
internal fallout of the burgeoning terrorist
community.
Since the overall direction of
Pakistan's military establishment remains
committed to an Islamic ideological state, some of
the militant groups that are supported by the
regime are often found involved in bloody acts of
sectarian violence. The Musharraf administration's
support for the jihadis fighting in Jammu &
Kashmir (J&K) and Afghanistan - and the
growing nexus between the jihadi and sectarian
outfits - has indirectly promoted sectarian
violence in Pakistan. The linkages between
militants active in J&K and Afghanistan, on
the one hand, and those within Pakistan, on the
other, are not surprising, since these jihadis
share the same madrassas (seminaries),
training camps and, often, operatives. Thus,
though the Pakistani military establishment's
support for these groups has kept the Indian army
tied down in J&K, it has created a serious
"principal-agent" problem on the domestic front.
By facilitating the actions of irregulars in
J&K, Pakistan actually promotes sectarian
jihad and terrorism back home.
Facing
international criticism over its status as a host
to numerous Islamist elements, the Musharraf
administration has, from time to time, sought to
take steps to deflect growing internal and
international criticism of the activities of
fundamentalist elements within Pakistan. Inner
contradictions within the ruling establishment
are, however, bound to hamper these efforts.
It is significant that, for decades, the
country's Shi'ite and Sunni sects lived side by
side without any major problems. The roots of
sectarian killing lie not in religious
differences, but in political and social
developments within Pakistan and the region. They
are intimately tied up with the country's wider
problem of militant and extremist Islam. With the
passage of time, the largely theological
differences between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims of
Pakistan have been transformed into a full-fledged
political conflict, with broad ramifications for
law and order, social cohesion and governmental
authority.
It was during the Afghan jihad
against the Soviet occupation, with dollars coming
from the American Central Intelligence Agency,
that the Inter-Services Intelligence promoted the
proliferation of a huge number of militant groups
and seminaries inside Pakistan. At that time,
Washington needed Islamists to wage jihad against
the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, while Islamabad
needed them to bring in billions of American
dollars. Consequently, both turned a blind eye to
the Islamists' radical ideology and methods.
The shortsightedness of the American
administration and its Pakistani proxies became
apparent soon after the withdrawal of the Soviet
troops from Afghanistan. While radical Islamists
in Afghanistan formed the Taliban, their brethren
in Pakistan turned their attention toward J&K
or to sectarian opponents inside the country. Each
act of sectarian killing provoked a cycle of
revenge killings, with the civilian governments
failing to curb the menace, either because they
also wanted the militants to fight in Pakistan's
corner in J&K or because they lacked the will
and the strength to do so. External factors other
than Kashmir also promoted sectarianism - the
foremost being funding of certain Pakistan-based
Shi'ite and Sunni sectarian groups by Iran and
Saudi Arabia, respectively. As successive
governments in Pakistan have allowed
Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite-dominated
Iran to fight a proxy war on Pakistani soil, the
country and the people have had to suffer the
devastating consequences.
When Musharraf
seized power in October 1999, he faced a
formidable foe: well-armed, well-trained and
well-financed Islamist-sectarian organizations,
with a huge resource pool of recruits in thousands
of madrassas in the country. Dealing with
such a foe was never going to be easy for an
isolated military dictator. Yet his task was made
somewhat easier by September 11, 2001, and the
worldwide backlash against extremist Islam that it
unleashed. Islamabad's decision to cut down
support to Kashmiri militants also boosted its
drive against sectarianism.
Once Islamabad
decided to put the Kashmir issue on the back
burner for the sake of better ties with New Delhi,
it no longer had to put up with the jihadi groups
operating in J&K, or the sectarian outfits
within Pakistan. The first clear sign of a shift
in the Pakistan government's attitude came in a
televised speech by Musharraf to the nation on
January 12, 2002. While announcing a massive
campaign to eradicate the sectarian menace, the
general banned three sectarian groups -
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, Tehreek-e-Jafria Pakistan
and the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi - and
put the Sunni Tehrik on notice. Another two
sectarian groups, Sipah-e-Mohammad Pakistan and
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, had been banned earlier, on
August 14, 2001.
Despite the government
ban, however, almost all these sectarian groups
continue to operate freely under changed names and
without much difficulty. Contrary to Musharraf's
much-trumpeted claims of having dismantled the
sectarian mafia in Pakistan, the hard fact remains
that his administration has hardly taken any
concrete measures to implement the ban in letter
and spirit, except in arresting and later
releasing some of the cadres of these groups.
Enforcement agencies arrest some of these cadres
every time there is an escalation in sectarian
conflict, but they are released shortly after the
wave of violence subsides.
The
organizational infrastructures of the banned
sectarian groups has essentially remained intact,
with most of the groups retaining the same office
bearers who refused to go underground even after
the January 2002 ban. Most of the banned groups
continue to operate out of their old office
premises, though some have shifted to new ones.
They are still bringing out their periodical
publications, in most cases under the old names,
besides raising funds and holding congregations
without any check or fear. And the sectarian
tensions refuse to die down, given the fact that
the contending groups are well organized and well
armed. Their ability to maintain effectiveness and
to elude enforcement agencies also has to do with
an extensive support network that includes
madrassas, political parties, bases across
the border in Afghanistan, and financial support
from foreign countries, if not foreign
governments. The International Crisis Group notes
in its April report, "The State of Sectarianism in
Pakistan":
Sectarian terrorists in Pakistan are
thriving in an atmosphere of religious
intolerance for which its military government is
largely to blame. General Musharraf has
repeatedly pledged that he would eradicate
religious extremism and sectarianism and
transform Pakistan into a moderate Muslim state.
In the interests of retaining power, he has done
the opposite. The report notes
further, that as Musharraf is praised by the
international community for his role in the "war
against terrorism", the frequency and viciousness
of sectarian terrorism continues to increase in
his country. Regulating madrassas,
reforming the public education sector, invoking
constitutional restrictions against private armies
and hate speech, and removing all laws and state
policies of religious discrimination are essential
and overdue steps to stem the tide of religious
extremism. The choice that Pakistan faces is not
between the military and the mullahs, as is
generally believed in the West; it is between
genuine democracy and a military-mullah alliance
that is responsible for producing and sustaining
religious extremism of different hues.
The
report recommends to the Pakistan government that
it recognize the diversity of Islam in Pakistan,
reaffirm the constitutional principle of equality
for all citizens regardless of religion or sect,
and give meaning to this by repealing all laws,
penal codes and official procedures that reinforce
sectarian identities and cause discrimination on
the basis of faith. If these changes do not occur,
the situation can be expected to worsen. Arif
Jamal, a Pakistani writer on jihad, notes a
troubling trend in the patterns of sectarian
violence in the country:
... the Pakistani groups used to
carry out sectarian violence on the pattern of
non-sectarian violence in the country before the
9-11 attacks in the United States. The sectarian
violence became intense and brutal after the
jihadis had to leave Afghanistan in the
aftermath of the US attack. The sectarian
terrorists started using suicide attacks to
perpetuate sectarian violence in Pakistan in the
aftermath of the 9-11 attacks in New York and
Washington. Suicide attacks were unknown in
Pakistan in the pre-9-11 period and were largely
associated with the al-Qaeda network, although
the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups never used them
in Pakistan. However, a new mode of violence has
been introduced during the current wave of
sectarian conflict: a car bomb. It is for the
first time that the terrorists have used a car
bomb in Pakistan. And if the past is any guide,
they are likely to use this mode of violence
more frequently in the
future. Sectarian conflict and
violence are an unpleasant reality in Pakistan
today, and are becoming more and more intense.
Administrative measures taken by the Musharraf-led
government have failed to produce results so far.
Analysts believe that the sectarian problem cannot
be overcome by such administrative measures alone,
while the state itself remains in alliance with
extremist elements. The problem for Musharraf is
that it is difficult to promote the so-called
jihad in J&K without inadvertently promoting
many of the Pakistani sectarian outfits. In the
process, state authority stands eroded in one way
or the other. The increasing militarization and
brutalization of the conflict shows that there are
virtually no sanctuaries left - neither home, nor
mosque nor hospital. Not even a jail is safe. And
being innocent is not the issue. Just "being" is
enough - being Shi'ite or Sunni, Barelvi or
Deobandi. In a situation where different sectarian
groups are vying to prove themselves the
standard-bearers of Islam, one strategy to secure
prominence as a representative of "true Islam" is
obviously by displaying extreme hostility and
intolerance to those designated as being
"un-Islamic" by virtue of belonging to religious
minorities and minority sects.
Amir
Mir, senior assistant editor, Monthly Herald,
Dawn Group of Newspapers, Karachi.
Published with permission from the
South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
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