Sectarian Carnage in Quetta

A spate of bombings on Thursday, 10 January 13, left over 100 dead and 200 injured in Quetta,  the capital of restive Baluchistan province of Pakistan. There were five blasts in the city on Black Thursday, the bloodiest day in Pakistan, since assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The first of these in the afternoon was at Bacha Khan Chowk, the commercial district, targeted against the Frontier Corps and was claimed by the United Baloch Army (UBA), a militant nationalist group, which had earlier kidnapped John Solecki, former chief of UNHCR in Baluchistan.  Like most other attacks by Baloch nationalists, it was a targeted attack against security forces, with low casualties. However, the subsequent two blasts in Hazara dominated Alamdar Road were sectarian in orientation and led to widespread carnage.

At around 8.50 PM, a suicide bomber blew himself in a crowded snooker club located in the basement of a four storey building, which collapsed under the impact and 20 minutes later, when a lot of passers-by, police officials, personnel from media and rescue services had assembled to evacuate the injured of the first blast, another bomb planted in a car with timer devices went off. The second bomb was extremely powerful with over 100 kg of explosives estimated to have been used. This resulted in killings and injuries to a large number of media personnel. The target unambiguously was the Hazara community who inhabit the areas surrounding Alamdar Road and generally follow Twelver Shia school of Islam.  Hazaras, who started migrating from Afghanistan more than a century ago, number around 500,000 in Quetta and its vicinity.  They are ethnically Mongoloid, which makes their identification as Shias quite easy, unlike other adherents of Shia faith. Because of their easier identification, the Hazaras have been subjected to an indiscriminate orgy of violence.   Lashkar-e-Janghavi (LeJ), a rabid Sunni militant organisation, which considers Shias as apostate, promptly took credit for the killings.  It even threatened doctors treating the injured Shias with dire consequences, forcing them to be moved to military hospitals.

Sectarian violence in Pakistan is a natural corollary of ‘Two Nation Theory’.  Having been created on the basis of religious identity, the state was forced to accord primacy to religion.Consequently, the quest to define as to, ‘Who is a Muslim’ has troubled the ‘Land of Pure’ since fifties. Munir Kayani Commission, a judicial commission set up to investigate whether Ahmediyas were Muslims in 1954, could not give a ruling on the subject as no two ulema could agree on the basic definition of a Muslim.  

The Objectives Resolution further gave ulema a justification to overrule some of the acts passed by the legislature and this further aggravated the doctrinal differences between various sects and sub sects. After the separation of Eastern Wing, when the numbers of non-Muslims became insignificant in Pakistan, the fanatic adherents of the exclusivist ‘Two Nation Theory’ turned their ire towards their co-religionists, who differed from their own version of Islam.  Consequently, violence was used to settle scores not only between Shias and Sunnis, but also between different strands of same sect.  Since then there have been repeated demands for declaring adherents of various other sects and sub sects as apostates.

However, the dynamics of sectarian violence in Baluchistan has certain specific peculiarities.  Firstly in Baluchistan unlike other parts of Pakistan, the large Hazara community can be identified as Shias by their appearance.  As a result, unlike other regions where targeted killings are used against well-known Shias, in Baluchistan, Hazaras are indiscriminately killed, where Sunni sectarian militants on vehicles, kill Hazaras as opportune targets.  Consequently, of over 400 Shias killed in sectarian violence in Pakistan in 2012, the largest were Hazaras. Secondly, there are closer linkages between Sunni militant outfits and ‘the establishment’ in Baluchistan unlike other provinces of Pakistan. There have thus been occasions when dreaded Sunni sectarian militants have been let off or allowed to escape from custody in Baluchistan.

The security establishment perceives sectarian rift as a way of splitting the Baloch nationalist movement, which poses the biggest ethno-nationalistic challenge to the State of Pakistan. Many in ‘the establishment’, with a peculiar  mind set, perceive sectarian violence to be a minor price to be paid to resolve the Baloch challenge, which they consider as the biggest threat to Pakistan’s integrity. Therefore, apart from Hazaras, a large number of Shia pilgrims proceeding through Iran for pilgrimage to Shia holy places in Iraq and Iran or returning from there have been targeted in most brutal manner.  Just two days before New Year a convoy of three buses carrying Shia pilgrims and escorted by security personnel heading to Iran was targeted by a remote controlled car bomb at Mastung, 60 km from Quetta, resulting in death of 19 pilgrims and injuries to 25 others.  The fact that most of the attacks on pilgrims have taken place in and around Mastung shows the inefficacy of security forces, or even worse, their possible complicity.  The aim it seems is to cause sectarian fissures to diffuse the nationalist challenge. 

More significantly, ‘the establishment’ has succeeded in diverting the growing anger amongst Shias into resentment against the provincial government.  After the Quetta carnage, Shias refused to bury the victims and protested on the roads with their coffins, demanding army’s deployment and sacking of provincial government.  Their rage eventually led to the sacking of Chief Minister Raisani and the imposition of Governor’s rule, which in Baluchistan’s case is nothing but euphemism for GHQ’s indirect control.  Consequently, the Frontier Corps, which is widely despised in Baluchistan, has been given policing powers and Baluchistan appears headed for a bout of repressive policing, even though it is unlikely to put an end to the sectarian violence in the province.   Shias have of late realised the real culprits behind their tribulations and consequently, for the first time there were protests against General Kayani in Quetta.  Maulana Amin Shaheedi, who heads the Majlis-e-Wahdatul Muslameen, an umbrella organisation of Shias said “I ask the army chief: What have you done with these extra three years you got (in office)? What did you give us except more death?” The Shias perceive that the state has left them at the mercy of the LeJ and other terrorist groups.

The governor’s rule is not likely to change things. Having achieved their immediate objectives, ‘the establishment’ may ask its cohorts to pause this gory cycle of violence temporarily. However, for the long term solution of the problem the sectarian outfits operating in Baluchistan will have to be dealt with strongly.  On the political front, it may be prudent to go in for fresh elections and set up a more representative provincial set up.  It needs to be remembered that Raisani and his government was hardly representative as the last elections had been boycotted by most nationalist and religious parties.

The author is a Senior Fellow at CLAWS.

 Views expressed are personal.