Related post: In defence of Shia rituals on Ashura – by Fawad Manzoor

To a not-so-victim, from a real victim!

Mr. Saleem Ali,

I read your articles and followed your twitter timeline in an attempt to understand your argument in this whole episode of you first writing a childish article and then scurrying for clarifications after having been blasted by those who had taken affront to it. I tried to deal with the issue with a positive bias towards you in order to better understand your perspective and know where you actually come from, but trust me, you appear to be highly ill informed and insensitive at best, and a bigot at worst. I will nonetheless go with the former.

I will spare you a lecture on inappropriate, rather derogatory use of language, since you realized it and later corrected yourself after public admonition. I will also ignore your lame justification of it being inflammatory only according to ‘Pakistan’s religious sensibilities’. See, I did not miss it, I am ignoring it. Suffice it to say that your choice of words was not only inflammatory in Pakistan’s context, but highly offensive in any case. But let us move forward.

Mr. Ali, you kept wailing and wallowing after your article was thoroughly deconstructed and critiqued on Twitter. You have, ever since, defended your right to free speech and reaffirmed your commitment to what you call constructive confrontation. In the same breath, you have also castigated the Shia Muslims for holding a different view of history and criticizing certain individuals they consider usurpers. How can you claim for yourself the right to offend while asking the Shia not to even practice their religion fearing it might offend others?

By saying what you did, you disallowed Shia Muslims not only freedom of expression, but also freedom of religion. You are asking them to conform to the dominant (or majority) form of ‘acceptable’ Islam and forego their own ‘lunatic’ version of it. This is not possible because there is nothing such as ‘one Islam’, or at least, you cannot make people agree on any common ground. Not only the ritualistic, but even the doctrinal and historical fissures of sectarian divide within Islam are too deep and too vast to be reconciled by an American-Muslim with limited understanding of the complex historical and ideological distinctions.

Mr. Ali, you referred to the Zuljanah as ‘drunken horses’ and the mourners of Imam Hussain (a.s.) as ‘people high on testosterone (and God knows what else)’. Do you have any idea how hallowed the symbolic reference to Imam Hussain’s horse is considered among the Shia Muslims? They are not drunken horses, but are treated with utmost respect and care. Had it come as an example from the West, an apologist like you would have tirelessly sung praises of their concern for animal rights. But since it comes from the South Asian Shia, you treat the subject with utmost contempt and scorn. The mourners of Imam Hussain (a.s.), if high on anything, are high on pain and passion, high on the love and devotion to the Prophet Muhammad and his family (Ahl-e-Bayt). How can you refer to them in the most pejorative of ways?

Is it a coincidence that most of your arguments and criticism of Shias, impure Musilms, are also used by Saudi-Wahhabis and extremist Deobandis to stereotype, persecute and kill Shias? For example, your views on Zuljanah are not much different from what Lashkar-e-Jhangvi/Sipah-e-Sahaba people did to a Zuljanah on 4 February 2011 in Rawalpindi while chanting the Shia Kafir (Shias are infidels) slogans. These people, the foot-soldiers, conveniently translated your hate ideology into practice.

If the Shias are masochistic in their rituals, you were sadistic in your approach in dealing with them. You not only mocked their beliefs and ridiculed their rituals, but went further ahead calling them lunatics and declaring their gatherings as embarrassing. This is how you ask people for cultural change and reconciliation? Why should they listen to you anyway, when you are using the very arguments and language against them as is used by those killing them, i.e., LeJ terrorists? And if you have little understanding of and respect for Islamic history and heterogeneity, why do you assume to charge and right to offend whosoever you want to, especially, when you do not allow others the same right?

Mr. Ali, it is easy to follow, love, appreciate, and respect the glorious and cherished values of Western civilization. It is however different and difficult to respect, value, and more importantly, understand indigenous cultures, values, wisdoms, traditions and legacies. I too take pride in my Western education and espousal of liberal values much of which has come my way from the West for which I feel indebted to it, but it took me quite a while to respect my own people for what they are, and not stereotype them due to my prejudices, myopic so-called modern approach, lack of comprehension, and a distant and cold attitude towards them. This is possible, but only if confused and apologetic individuals like yourself, try being passionate rather than arrogant, understanding rather than contemptuous, and act like students of knowledge rather than ideologues.

I do not intend to present a postmodern apology for obscurantism, but it is certainly valid to ask of someone like you to remove their blinkers and try being proximate to the things they talk about. Your attitude towards  Shia Muslims was similar to that of the colonizers towards the colonized – the White man’s burden, or in your case ‘a cultured man’s burden’ (not so). You cannot look at everything on the face of the earth through your modern, western prism, and issue categorical edicts like Saudi-Wahhabi-Deobandi religious bigots. Your intent might have been different, but your approach was the same as theirs. They declare Shias apostate, you declared them uncultured obscurantists and lunatics. What sets you apart from the Taliban or Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorists who kill Shias?

Looking at postcolonial states from the lens of a very selective Western liberalism, or studying ‘host’ societies like Orientalists can always be self-defeating; it kills the very spirit of knowledge and ends up presenting a skewed picture of local people in a condescending manner. In that situation, do you still think you owe them any respect and recognition for your ‘efforts’? Why do you think you are the only person cultured and the rest are all base barbarians who need your shock therapy to realize their lowliness and climb up to your expectations? Why have you arrogated yourself the authority of determining what culture is and what it is not? You do not have this right. And more so, because you are under-educated in the discipline and have a simplistic cultural approach towards complex political issues. Without taking into consideration the actual reasons for the ongoing, systematic Shia massacres in Pakistan, you conveniently reduced the issue to a Sunni backlash due to offences by Shia rituals. How simplistic!

You are teacher Mr. Ali, you are an academic. Are you not supposed to approach issues in an educated manner? If you are not a student of a particular discipline, why do you put yourself at pains of writing on it at all? By asking the Shia to customize their religion according to the desires of the majority you are blaming the victim, instead of holding the culprit accountable.

I notice that after being questioned by Sunni, Shia, Ahmadi and non-Muslim readers on Twitter and elsewhere, and perhaps also in response to some advice from your university, you decided to retract some parts of your offensive article and offered an apology on your personal blog. Yet, you deemed it fit to present yourself as a victim of ban on free speech, and wrote yet another follow-up article which, though more refined than your initial candid stereotyping, is equally dishonest about Shia Muslims and their ongoing, systematic massacres in Pakistan.

Playing a victim (as you did) is easy, speaking up for real victims requires courage. Instead of telling the Shia that they are killed because they deserve it, you could have asked those who kill Shias to accept Shias as they are instead of killing them for what they are. Compromises and acceptability must come from the position of strength; the majority needs to embrace the minority, because the latter is always insecure, and in this case, for all the right reasons.

Your criticism of Shias, or Shia rituals as you put it, was uncalled for, unjustified and unfair. Your follow-up article on Foreign policy was a cry of despair and reaffirmed your aversion of Shias. It might have been either because of you religious inclinations, or your skewed and elitist worldview. Whatever the reason, the result is evident. You too need some introspection. Try to understand people by thinking like them for a moment, rather than sticking to your ossified modern stereotypes of all those who do not fit your definition of humanity and modernity.

Lahore, Pakistan

From a distance, the devastating attacks on Shia Muslims in three Afghan cities this week looked like the type of sectarian religious attacks which we got used to in Iraq. The faultline between Sunni and Shia is one of the greatest and most violent in the world, and now and again it divides countries. But in Afghanistan, nothing is ever this simple. For all its woes, it hasn’t seen a sectarian religious attack for ten years. And while the Taleban have had their history persecuting the Shia, it is highly unlikely they were responsible. The more likely ­explanation is less obvious — and even more sinister.

These attacks were intended to kill as many as possible. In Kabul a suicide bomber walking among the crowds detonated his bomb killing at least 54 people and wounding over 150. A similar walking bomber detonated himself in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, killing four and wounding 20, while a third bomb left on a bicycle in a bazaar in Kandahar missed the procession and instead wounded two policemen.

The timing also made a sectarian point. The attacks took place on the tenth day of the Muslim month of Muharram, the end of Ashura, the holiest ten days in the Shia calendar, when all Muslims, but particularly Shia, commemorate the death of Imam Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. The processions wind their way through city streets all day; young men beat themselves with chains as penance, while many thousands of others walk beside them. All easy targets. The bomb in Kabul went off as hundreds of young Shia were singing at the Abu Fazl shrine.

And there was political symmetry too. The bombs came just a day after the conclusion of an important conference in Bonn where the international community (led by the US and Nato countries) pledged to continue helping Afghanistan for the next decade. The bombings certainly demonstrated the fragile nature of Afghanistan at present, but the Taleban issued a statement to the BBC denying that they were responsible. So who did it, and why?

To understand this requires a little history. Afghan Shia account for no more than a tenth of the population and are largely made up of Hazaras — an ethnic group descended from Genghis Khan and the Mongols. They live in the poorest region, Hazarajat in the centre of the country and zealously guard the Bamiyan Buddhas — massive statues of Buddha — which the Taleban blew up when it was menacing the Shia in 2001. There are large Hazara populations in Kabul and Mazar. For centuries the Hazaras were treated like slaves by the Pashtun kings of Afghanistan, and they are known for their ability to work hard and their love for education — as well as being extremely moderate Shia.

Between 1992 and 2001 the Hazaras were victims of bloody ethnic massacres first by Tajiks and Uzbeks, who fought each other in the bloody civil war; and they suffered again at the hands of the Pashtun Taleban who set out to conquer the country in 1994 and carried with them an ideological hatred for Shia, regarding them as non-believers. But the worst massacres of Shia took place in 1998 when Afghan Taleban commanders were supplanted by Arab fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden. They deliberately sought out Hazaras to kill. The Shia-killers — as the Arabs of al-Qa’eda were called — were joined by Pakistani extremists who slew Shia in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But all that really is just history. When the Taleban resurgence against US forces began in 2003, there were no massacres of the Hazaras or Shia anywhere. The Taleban wanted to show that they were no longer controlled by Arab or foreign sectarian fanatics, and that their ‘jihad’ was to unite all Afghans of whatever faith against the Americans. It was important to them to signal that the Pashtun Taleban were not intrinsically anti-Shia or anti-Hazara. Just last month Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar warned his fighters not to target civilians and told them that if they did, they would face severe punishment.

Meanwhile, the Shia upped the stakes significantly. The powerful commanders of the Hazaras, backed by Iran, had privately warned the Taleban after 2004 not to touch the Shia. If they returned to the bad old days of the late 1990s, there could be retaliatory pogroms against Pashtuns now living in Iran as refugees. It helped that many Hazaras work at Nato camps, and are well-protected by Nato as a result.

For the past eight years — right up until last Tuesday — the threat of mutual destruction and the Taleban’s hands-off approach seemed to be working. Despite all the violence in Afghanistan, there was no prospect of internecine sectarian war. The only people with an interest in plunging Afghanistan into a sectarian bloodbath are al-Qa’eda and its attendant Pakistani extremists. They are desperate to scuttle the secret talks being held between the Americans and the Taleban, thinking they can profit from the resulting chaos.

Al-Qa’eda in Afghanistan is trying to repeat the formula it used in Iraq: sectarian war as a tool to divide the country, defeat the American occupation and undermine Iranian influence. By killing Shia and prompting a backlash against Sunnis, al-Qa’eda was willing to plunge a majority Shia Arab country — which had never known sectarian killings — into mayhem. It was chillingly successful in its aim.

It wants to do the same thing in Egypt. The Arab Spring has been a deep embarrassment for al-Qa’eda, which has been left behind by the public surge for democracy. So it is trying to make a comeback in Egypt by bombing the minority Christian Copts and their churches, attempting to create a backlash so that the Christians go after Sunni Muslims — and start a sectarian war into which it can insert itself, hoping this war will replace Egyptians’ struggle for democracy.

Pakistan has been suffering from sectarian war since Iran and the Arab Gulf states fought out a proxy Shia-Sunni war for influence in the early 1980s. But the killings escalated dramatically after al-Qa’eda entered the picture and recruited Pakistani Sunni extremist groups to its side. Shia constitute about a fifth of the Pakistani population, and even Iran has been unable to protect them.

In its history, Afghanistan has known all manner of ethnic conflicts, tribes, foreign invasions and poverty. But sectarian war was introduced there in the late 1990s by al-Qa’eda and some extreme Taleban elements. It rapidly subsided after 2001, when the perpetrators were deposed — demonstrating that sectarianism was not deep-rooted. But those who want to destroy any hope of reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taleban before western forces withdraw in 2014 seem now seem to believe that sectarian warfare, and the bloodbath it brings, is their last hope.

Source: The Spectator

Several politicians and citizens in general are enraged over the violation of their sovereignty. While this outburst of grief is understandable and very much justified, one wonders why other acts of violence against ethnic and sectarian minorities in Pakistan have not stirred the same outpour of grief and anger that we witness today. Could it be true that we are enraged only when others stand accused of violence against us, but when its Muslim-on-Muslim violence, we are much complacent.

The purpose here is not to undermine the ultimate sacrifice offered by Pakistani soldiers, who continue to lay their lives in hundreds while defending Pakistan against the militant fundamentalists. The motive here is to point out the lack of or, at best, muted response to the senseless violence committed against Ahmadis, Balochis, Christians, Shias and other minorities in Pakistan.

It was only in September 2011 when 29 Shias from Quetta’s Hazara community were killed in a premeditated attack. They were travelling to Iran in a bus that was intercepted near Mustang by armed militants who killed 29 while gravely injured several others. Compared to the anger and grief over the death of 24 soldiers, the reaction to Hazara murders has been mute at best. The list of political and community leaders from Punjab and Sindh who visited Quetta to condole with the Hazaras is very short and did not include any mainstream politician. Not even 50 students from a Punjab-based University marched in solidarity with the Shias of Quetta even when Shia academics were being killed by the unknown assailants (Professor Danish Alam was murdered earlier today). However, thousands marched in Lahore today for the slain soldiers while being led by their professors.

The State’s indifference to the plight of Hazaras drove Syed Nasir Ali Shah, a legislator belonging to the ruling Peoples Party, to stage a month-long sit-in in front of the Parliament. It took Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani a month to react to the protest staged by a member of his own party. On the other hand, the Gilani government reacted with a sharp rebuke to Nato within hours of the attack on troops in Mohmand region.

Hundreds of Shia Hazaras have fallen victim to the terrorist violence perpetrated by the extremist elements belonging to hardline sects of Islam. While many have been killed in dark alleys (who jo tareek raahon main maray gaey), the Hazara community is striving to ensure that the victims of sectarian violence are not forgotten. The community has prepared a list of 435 victims who have been killed since 1999 in sectarian violence. The bulk of killings took place in the past few years. More than 90 Shias from Hazara community have been killed since July 2011 alone.

The list of victims deserves a considerate read and reflection. Hazara community’s sacrifices are indeed supreme. The list includes children as young as five, as well as the elderly. The very unfortunate victims include father and son pairs who met violent death on the same day. A mother and daughter pair met the same fate. Hundreds of dead are young students.

The targeted attacks including bomb blasts have caused havoc in the Hazara community. What to say of a city where places of worship are the most hazardous sites. The July 2003 attack at the old Imam Bargah in Quetta killed 51, including 5-year old Ali Akbar. A year later in March, an attack on the 10th of Muharram killed 36 members of the Hazara community. In September 2010, when Shias marched in Quetta in solidarity with the displaced Arabs, they were rewarded with an attack that left 62 Shia Hazaras dead.

The Hazara community is not safe even in the cemeteries. In May 2011, militants attacked visitors at the Bahisht-e-Zahra cemetery in Hazara Town and killed seven Shias. Even hospitals fail to offer refuge to the community. An attack in April 2010 in Quetta’s Civil Hospital left six Shia Hazaras dead. Earlieri n July 2008, when the community sought legal redress, their lawyer, Ghulam Mustafa Qureshi, was assassinated. Several Hazara police officers, including 13 young cadets, have also become victims of targeted sectarian killings.

If Pakistan’s civil and military leaders are serious about addressing the grievances of the Hazara community, they could take the first step by visiting the two cemeteries in Quetta, Bahisht-e-Zahra in Hazara Town and Bahisht-e-Zainab on Alamdar Road, where the Hazaras have buried over 350 victims of sectarian violence. These cemeteries are a testament to the courage and resilience of a community whose right to live in peace has been violated in the presence of a democratically elected government.

Many in Pakistan believe that the Nato’s attack in Mohmand is an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty. If sovereignty implies “having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area” then Pakistan has lost sovereignty in most of Balochistan, including Quetta. Hundreds of Shia victims are proof that the State has lost control of Quetta.

The State restores law and order in Quetta. It has to reestablish its writ neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood, street-by-street. It can start with Saryab Road where more than 50 members of Hazara community have been killed in several attacks over the past few years.

Meanwhile Pakistanis have to learn to embrace all victims of violence as equals. While we grieve for our fallen soldiers, we should do the same for the civilian victims of sectarian violence. If our anger and grief is determined not by the innocence of the victims but by their ethnicity and sectarian affiliations, we will continue to drift towards even a more violent future.

Murtaza Haider, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean of research and graduate programs at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto. He can be reached by email at murtaza.haider@ryerson.ca

Source: DAWN

Related posts: Petition: Silence of Human Rights Organizations on Shia Genocide in Pakistan

Some common fallacies often shared by Taliban apologists and (fake) liberals

Unloading the entire blame of sectarian terrorism on Saudi Arabia and Iran is unfair – by Adnan Farooq

LUBP archive on Shia genocide in Pakistan

In the last 36 hours, 8 people were killed in a bomb blast in Karachi including a single mother and her child, 5 Pashtuns were killed in a bomb blast in a CD market in Peshawar, and just hours ago,  30 Shia Muslims (most of them Hazara Shias) were executed in Mastung, Balochistan. In all the three cases, it were the Taliban and their local partners, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ, also known as Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, SSP) that proudly took credit for these horrific deeds.

More than the grief of this continual bloodshed by these monsters is the intellectual dishonesty of misrepresenting these incidents and shifting and diverting the focus away from those responsible. In the case of the Shias, social networks are already evidence of the typical obfuscatory rubbish that is used to casually describe away these mass murders; the  real outrage for Pakistan’s ”civil society”  is reserved for Americans like Aafia!

The outrage  of our urban elites is limited to  the drone attacks that kill Baitullah Mehsud and Al Qaeda’s multinational mercenaries and, tragically, Pashtun civilian hostages who are used as human shields by the Taliban and Al Qaeda.  It rarely extends to the daily persecution, massacres and oppression of Pakistan’s Shia Muslims in this specific case.

The same Lashkar-e-Jhangvi  that has killed 30 Shia Muslims today are also the ones who are also killing Ahmadi muslims and Barelvi Muslims as well as those Deobandi Muslims who oppose the misuse of their beliefs to bolster the Jihad Enterprise of Pakistan’s military establishment. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is part of the Jihad factory of the ISI that has also developed similar units like Sipah-e-Sahaba, Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and the main militant outfit with its network of commanders, the Taliban.  Allied with the Al Qaeda,  they all share the same bigoted, misogynist and supremacist views and are an essential part of the foreign and domestic policy of the Deep State (i.e., Pakistan army) for the attainment of “Strategic Depth” in Afghanistan.

Journalists and commentators are already dismissing this incident as “sectarian violence”.  Whether they are being ignorant, indifferently or wilfully obtuse is left to the observer.  The media has played a horrible role in misinforming the public and increasing bigotry has done the rest.  Today, few if any are pointing out the obvious contradictions when such massacres are falsely being described as “routine sectarian violence” between Sunnis and Shias.

Case in point. Prominet Barelvi Sunni Muslim scholar, Maulana Sarfaraz Naeemi was killed in a suicide blast in Lahore after he publically opposed the Taliban and thier tactics of suicide bombing.  Maulana Hasan Jan, a Deobandi Sunni Muslim was killed for, you guessed it, opposing the Taliban.  Dr. Muhammad Farooq (a friend of Allama Javed Ghamidi) was killed in Swat by the same beasts. These are not isolated cases and are part of the scores of attacks that have killed Sunnis at Sufi shrines since the attacks on Bari Imam (2005) and Jhal Magsi (2005), where scores of Sunni devotees were killed along with Shias by the Sipah-e-Sahaba.  This same nexus of Jihadi groups and Taliban has also killed, persecuted and oppressed the Ahmadi Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christains of Pakistan.

However, terming it as “sectarian violence” is a dishonest tactic of shifting the blame away from the real culprits:

Those who created these militias (army-ISI) , those who protect them (the Supreme Court) and  those politicians, like Imran Khan and Munawar Hasan, who continue to apologize for them with blatant lies to shift the focus away the Jihad Enterprise.

Imran Khan mantains with a straight face that there was no extremism in Pakistan and no suicide attacks either before 9/11  and none of the pliant interviewers (including Elliot Spitzer of CNN)  bothers to contradict this with the facts  that such attacks took place as early as 1995; a full 6 years before 9/11! Imran Khan is symbolic of the moral decripitude and mendacity of educated Pakistanis whose ignorance, bigotry and identity crisis has made them accept the most outlandish rubbish that protects the dark ambitions of Pakistan’s military establishment.  For these soulless elites, the massacres of Shia Muslims can be explained away with half-truths and outright lies.

The inculcation of Jihadi laboratories in Southern Punjab by the military dictator General Zia ul Haq to create the Sipah-e-Sahaba/Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (they are the same) is dishonestly explained away as a anti-feudal uprising against Shia landlords in that area. Well today, the landlords of Jhang are still alive but not the thousands of Shia Muslims who have been killed by the “anti-feudal” Sipah-e-Sahaba all over Pakistan (who have also spared the feudals from other sects).  The category of those Shias killed by the Sipah  includes Pakistanis from all ethnic groups and professions except feudals while the Sipah-e-Sahaba and similar Jihadi groups are awash with funding from the rich urban trader classes of Pakistan as well as their sponsors from Saudi Arabia, UAE and other Arab countries.

The massacre of Shia Muslims in Pakistan is also often misrepresented and justified (yes, justified) as part of an ongoing sectarian battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia.  Completely missing from this dishonest narrative is the role of the Pakistan State and the fact that since Shia Muslims opposed the forced Islamization policies of military dictator Zia ul Haq,  they were made the targets of the State.

The Pashtun Shia Muslims of Parachinar and the Gilgiti Shia muslims opposed the the use of their territory for the purpose of “Strategic Depth” in Afghanistan and Kashmir and  they have been massacred regularly since the 1980′s.

In 1980, hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims launched a peaceful sit-in protest in the capital city of Islamabad to oppose the  enforcement of the “Saudi Islamic” Zakat and Ushar Ordinance and since then, they have paid the price.

If the continuing massacres of Shia Muslims in Pakistan is justified via these dishonest narratives (how can killing of anyone be justified boggles the mind), then why are the Sunni Muslims (Barelvi, Deobandi, Ahmadi) and religious minorities (Hindu, Christain, Sikhs) being killed by the same perpetrators who are also killing Shia Muslims? The answer is in the question.

However,  an increasing number of Pakistan’s urban educated elite prefer to remain ostriches and dismiss the killings of Shia Muslims as punishment for being Iranian fifth-columnists – for them, the Hazaras Shias undergoing genocide at the hands of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi are not worthy of sympathy.

On Twitter and Facebook, Ahmadi Muslim activists are prominent among those who are blunty condemning the Mastung massacre along with many other Sunni Muslims. This massacre is not about sectarianism; it is about the continued support to Jihadi monsters who are not sparing anyone.  The time for denial has long gone.

Video Report Express News

On his release, he was received outside Kot Lakhpat prison by leaders of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, banned in 2001 as a terrorist organization but now—after being renamed harmlessly to Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat—resting in a legal grey area because of an appeal lying with the higher judiciary. The Sahaba leader heading the welcome party was Maulana Muhammad Ahmad Ludhianvi—recalling an anti-Shia 1980s polemicist who was assassinated in Karachi—who came in handy when the current Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, called on Ishaq to talk to the terrorists who had attacked Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009. The Army chief’s personal plane had carried Ishaq to Rawalpindi, while another plane belonging to the ISI chief, Gen. Shuja Pasha, carried Ludhianvi.

Sipah-e-Sahaba’s welcome party was hardly a dozen strong, but by the time it reached the border of South Punjab, the numbers began to swell. If in Okara it was a few hundred, and a thousand in Khanewal, it was nearly 5,000 in Bahawalpur—the city of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s sister terrorist organization, Jaish-e-Muhammad. When Ishaq arrived in his village of Tarinda Sawai Khan in Rahim Yar Khan, the crowd out to greet him was actually 15,000-strong, as claimed by a Sahaba publication.

Their newspaper, Daily Ummat Karachi, in its July 16 edition said Ishaq had been freed without any “secret deal” and that he had rededicated himself to war against the proliferation of “insulters” of the Companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) on the Internet as he now fought under the flag of Sipah-e-Sahaba after disbanding Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. How far Jhangvi will be disbanded after appearing on the flag of Al Qaeda’s 313 Brigade (which includes Jandullah and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) is yet to be seen. One reason Ishaq has joined Sahaba is that the banning order against it is on hold and this takes him away from the mischief of the antiterrorism law.

According to the publication, Ishaq was wanted in 43 cases, involving 70 murders, out of which he had been acquitted in 37 and awarded bail in eight. The last case, involving planning—from prison—the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in 2009 has concluded in another bail at the Supreme Court after which he has been released. Earlier resistance to release by the Punjab government had required Lahore to pay for the monthly sustenance of Ishaq’s family. This time Lahore let him go. Daily Ummat says that, because Punjab was not releasing Ishaq, Sipah-e-Sahaba decided to reach an agreement with Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on electoral support in Bhakkar from where the latter was elected unopposed with the help of Ishaq’s brother.

Arriving back in South Punjab, Ishaq has consolidated the power of the hard-line sectarian organizations emanating from the state policy of jihad. He is ranked at par with the chief of Jaish-e-Muhammad, Maulana Masud Azhar, famous for his companionship with Osama bin Laden and his linkage with Omar Sheikh, who contributed to the killing of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002. Sheikh, too, has been charged with planning terrorist acts—including against then President Pervez Musharraf—from his prison cell in Sindh. Azhar and Sheikh were both sprung from an Indian jail in 1999 and released in Kandahar, after the hijacking of an Indian airliner in Nepal, as a result of a deal facilitated by a Pakistan-dominated Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Ishaq headed a union of shopkeepers in Rahim Yar Khan when he fell under the thrall of Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, the founder of the Shia-apostatizing Sipah-e-Sahaba in 1982 after his contacts with Arab princes enjoying extraterritorial hunting rights in Rahim Yar Khan made him strong. Against the background of an Arab-Iranian confrontation in the region, Sahaba flourished financially, too. The other devotees of Maulana Jhangvi were Jaish-e-Muhammad’s Azhar and Riaz Basra, who was killed in a “police encounter” in 2002 because “no judge could sentence him.” Basra and Ishaq founded Laskhar-e-Jhangvi.

After Ishaq was arrested in 1997 in the wake of the killing of five Iranian Air Force trainees in Rawalpindi, Basra threatened the government with dire consequences unless he was released. Meanwhile, another Lashkar-e-Jhangvi commander, Akram Lahori, went on killing Shias in Karachi, which according to Ishaq was much easier because the Jhangvi cadre there was better trained than in the Punjab. (Training was received in Al Qaeda camps in Surobi, Afghanistan.) Facing trial in Multan, Lahori, responsible for the killing of such well-known Karachi figures as businessman Shaukat Mirza and prominent Shia doctors, was indicted in 2010 after living comfortably in jail for seven years. Witnesses against him in Multan continue to die or disappear. Witnesses against Ishaq also have a hard time surviving, as in the case brought against him by a Shia citizen, Fida Husain Ghalvi, charging that Ishaq had killed 10 of his family.

The Punjab government has made a deal with Sipah-e-Sahaba after seeing its growing clout in South Punjab. One well-known episode was recorded by jihadist newspaper Islam: “Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah visited Jhang and paid his respects at the tomb of the founder of the greatest banned sectarian-terrorist Deobandi organization, Sipah-e-Sahaba, Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi. He led a delegation of the [Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)] which also included parliamentary secretary Iftikhar Baloch and party M.P.A. from Jhang, Sheikh Yaqub. He also visited the tombs of other Sipah-e-Sahaba martyr-leaders like Maulana Isarul Qasimi and Allama Azam Tariq.”

Threatened communities have reacted predictably. Shia outfit Imamia Students Organization issued the following statement: “The planned release of terror kingpin Malik Ishaq who is also the co-founder of banned organization Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, with the blessing of Punjab government’s weak prosecution and the court’s blind decision is likely to fuel the ruthless killings of Shias across the country.” Sri Lanka, which hoped to get justice for the attack on its cricket team, and Iran, whose cultural consul Muhammad Ali Rahimi was allegedly killed by Ishaq in Multan in 1997, will also be offended. His release was badly timed. President Asif Ali Zardari’s paid a goodwill visit to Iran the same week.

When the Iranian consul in Lahore Sadeq Ganji was assassinated in 1990, the strong presence of Sipah-e-Sahaba in politics prevented the due process of law to unfold. At the Lahore High Court, where the killers faced trial, many judges retired or were elevated before the court was able to pass the obvious death sentence. Sahaba wanted to pay diyat or blood money for the killer it wanted spared, and even approached Iran in this respect. The power of apostatizing sectarian elements has redoubled in 2011 and “legal” political parties have to align with them to survive in certain regions. All it takes is a renaming of the banned organization.

Khaled Ahmed is a director at the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA) in Lahore.

Source: NewsWeek

Why is military the problem in Pakistan? What is wrong with its continued interference in our politics and civil society? Consider this.

The military’s influence on the social and cultural landscape of Pakistan is of homogenisation. Its imperatives dictated it to mould a society that is homogenised in its ideological leanings. Since Pakistan is everything but a homogenous society (ethnically, linguistically, culturally), Islam became a useful tool of homogenisation in the hands of both the civilian political elite and the military leadership. But it has been a more destructive tool in the hands of the latter than the former. Here is why: civilians never really used Islam to expand the control of the state in Pakistan. For them the use of Islam in Pakistani politics has been largely for purposes of pandering to the masses, securing votes during elections and establishing their credentials before a constituency that is largely conservative and religious. The military, on the other hand, institutionalised religion within the state to expand its writ and control over Pakistan. General Zia’s regime is a prime example of this. A homogenised polity is easier to control by dictatorial forces. Once they have the monopoly over setting both the agenda and the discourse, it becomes (relatively) easier to shape public opinions. The military’s use of Islam has served the same purpose for its leadership. So, under Zia’s regime when the military ‘Islamised’ the state through public education, brought shrines under state control, influenced the bureaucracy, and so on, it essentially ensured that its influence on homogenising the state takes on a permanent role in state structures. It is this permanence that allows the military’s continued influence in the state even when not directly ruling the country.

The military’s world view has been unable to look beyond its own narrow interests. It is not even willing to consider that its own actions can be, and are, harmful to the state that it intends to protect. One way of studying the current civil-military relationships within the existing state structure can be that the imperatives of the military desiring a geographically unified state outguns the imperative of the state for a military. The interest of the military institution to keep the geographical entity called Pakistan intact essentially stems from economic concerns. A large country allows a bigger economy even if its economic performance remains mediocre. If nothing else, it ensures a sustained flow of rents from the economy to the military, and the military needs these rents to maintain two important aspects of its internal structure. First, it needs the rents to maintain an internal system of patronage. Second, it needs them to sustain and expand its vast business empire. As one of the larger (if not the largest) business empires in the country its influence on the economy and Pakistan’s general polity cannot be assumed away. Since the military’s economic empire is not subject to any (real) civil accountability, it gives it significant financial autonomy that may not be available to any other business group in the country (at least in theory). The financial autonomy can be expanded because of the military’s political power. In the name of providing national security the military finds it justifiable to expand its control and ownership of the country’s resources (natural or other). It follows then that independence from any meaningful civil accountability allows the military’s financial autonomy and political clout to feed off each other. Both depend on each other while perpetuating themselves further.

Is it possible to reform this praetorian military? Well, it is tough, to say the least! The problem with the military mindset is that it continues to follow the same colonial binaries that it was instituted with under the British Raj. In some ways it follows the same occupant/conqueror mindset that was followed before 1947 and the British concept of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is still followed — only now it has been replaced with the ‘civilian and non-civilian’ binary. This attitude is reflective of the gulf that exists between the military and the rest of our society. This gap also makes it immune to any critical thinking or self-reflection. Its efforts to homogenise society have turned Pakistan into a society that looks at diversity with suspicion. Any discourse that attempts to escape the Muslim/non-Muslim binary has to move a mountain to establish itself as valid and credible. Hence, each time the military is in charge of the affairs of the state (or some troubled area) it leaves behind a trail of unresolved conflicts that essentially stem out of the local plurality unwilling to accept the homogenous identity imposed on it from the above. The military’s economic might leads it into a bigger quagmire. Let us just assume (only for the sake of making the argument) that our military might be willing to give up its economic and financial empire. The military leadership (both past and present) has amassed immense wealth through its business empire that even if they give up such interests the lower cadre that relies completely on the patronage (mostly in the form of plots and subsidised living) of the higher cadre will feel betrayed. This change can make the lower cadre susceptible to all kinds of ideas and acts. The business empire that feeds the system of internal patronage has important (side)effects; it acts as a disciplining tool. Hence, the quagmire — damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

The real challenge that can force a change in the civil-military relationship is political power of the civilians. The more power civilians get, the larger is the space where a reorganisation of military structure can be thought of. Without that we shall continue to rot in a state where we condemn politicians each day and accept the military’s hegemony unquestioningly.

The writer is studying towards his doctorate in Economics at the New School for Social Research in New York City. He can be reached at fahdali@gmail.com

Source: Daily Times

LeJ’s Malik received monthly stipend from Punjab govt

Jab Pakistan per firqawariyat ka saaya tha -by Ali Suleman

Malik Ishaq being received in his hometown - Thanks to PML-N & Punjab Government.

Malik Ishaq, the chief of the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), who has been set free on bail after 14 years in prison, wielded clout even in jail and was specially flown to Rawalpindi by army in October 2009.

to negotiate with the ‘fidayeen’ attackers who had stormed its headquarters.
Ishaq, the founding member of LeJ, was flown from a Lahore jail to the garrison town of Rawalpindi on October 10, 2009 by the military authorities in a chartered flight to buy time with attackers.

The terrorist leader, who himself admitted to a Urdu daily in October 1997 that he had been “instrumental in the killing of 102 people”, was engaged by military after the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan ‘fidayeen’ attackers, who were strapped with suicide jackets, took 42 people hostage, including many security personnel, The News reported on Saturday.

The attackers had put forth a list of demands and threatened to kill hostages. However, as a time-buying tactic, the negotiators decided to rope in some key leaders of several ‘jehadi’ and sectarian groups to hold talks with terrorists.

“Special planes were subsequently flown to Lahore, Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan to bring to Rawalpindi Malik Ishaq, a key leader of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, the chief of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, Maulana Fazalur Rehman Khalil, the ameer of Harkatul Mujahideen and Mufti Abdul Rauf, the younger brother of Maulana Masood Azhar who is also the acting ameer of Jaish-e-Mohammad,” the report said.

Interestingly, all the four jehadi leaders who were engaged by the military authorities to hold talks with the GHQ hostage takers had earlier been roped in by the Musharraf regime in July 2007 to negotiate with the fanatic clerics of the infamous Lal Mosque in the heart of Islamabad.

Ishaq was released yesterday from jail, greeted by hundreds of followers who showered rose petals on him, after he was given bail by the Supreme Court in the last case against him alleging his involvement in the Sri Lankan cricket team attack, “due to lack of evidence and (the) weak case of the prosecution”.

Ishaq was arrested in 1997 for involvement in sectarian murders – almost all of his victims were members of the minority Shia community.

He was charged with murder of 70 people in 44 different cases but escaped conviction in each case due to “lack of evidence”.

He was also accused of masterminding, from behind bars, the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, which wounded seven players and an assistant coach, and killed eight Pakistanis.

The attacks saw Pakistan stripped of its right to co-host this year’s cricket World Cup and the country has since hosted no top foreign teams.

In March, police said they had arrested six alleged plotters over the Sri Lankan attacks from Pakistan’s main Taliban faction, with which LJ has ties.

Ishaq has already served seven and a half years for attempted murder.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is regarded as Pakistan’s most extreme Sunni terror group, accused of killing hundreds of Shiite Muslims after its emergence in the early 1990s. It was banned by then president Pervez Musharraf in 1999.

The group played a key role in the 2002 kidnap and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl from Karachi and in twin failed assassination bids on key US ally Musharraf in December 2003.

Bomb and suicide attacks across the country have killed around 4,500 people since 2007 and Pakistan says it has lost thousands of troops in fighting.

Launched in 1996 as a Sunni sectarian group, LeJ today has deep links with al-Qaeda and Taliban and is considered the most violent terrorist group operating in Pakistan with the help of its lethal suicide squad, the daily said.

As with most Sunni sectarian and militant groups, almost the entire LeJ leadership is made of people who have fought in Afghanistan and most of its cadre strength has been drawn from the numerous Sunni madrassas in Pakistan.

Source: Hindustan Times

Malik Ishaq wielded clout in jail; helped Pak army

Thank you, ISI-backed Supreme Court, for releasing Malik Ishaq

The money was given to support Ishaq’s family, says Rana Sanaullah. PHOTO: NNI

By Asad Kharal

Malik Ishaq enjoyed Punjab government’s financial assistance ever since the Sharif’s came to power in 2008, officials on condition of anonymity told The Express Tribune.
The accused terror kingpin belonging to banned Sunni outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), nominated in 44 cases in which 70 people were killed, allegedly received a monthly stipend, during imprisonment, from the Punjab government.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah confirmed the disbursement but clarified that it was given to Ishaq’s family, not him, as per orders of the court. However, upon further investigation, it was revealed that nor was there any such disbursements during former president Musharraf’s tenure, nor was there any court order pertaining to the matter.

Meanwhile, one of the key witnesses in Ishaq’s court case, Fida Hussain Ghalvi, is receiving police protection to avoid any untoward incidents, highlighting concerns arising from Intelligence and Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) after the release of Malik Ishaq.

Ghalvi while talking to The Express Tribune confirmed that on the direction of Multan City Police Officer Amir Zulifqar, Multan and Vehari police have provided two policemen to him for security protection. Furthemore, Ghalvi has also relocated from his native town out of fear for his own life. He had been currently residing in two different locations, moving back and forth for security purposes.

However, leaving Ghalvi out, two other key witnesses and one complainant have not been provided any security as of yet and fear for their lives. The men identified as Khadim, Sikandar and Abdul Ghafour (complainant) are the only people to have survived the court cases which have taken 20 lives, including eight people who were murdered purely for being associated with the case.

“I can be attacked at any time and I do not know if I will be alive tomorrow or not, as you know almost everyone who was a witness or a relative has been slain,’ said Sikandar, who now operating a cloth store in Dokota on Multan Road.

“When Ishaq was in jail eight people were killed mercilessly by the same group,” said Khadim Hussain, who is now a farmer in Dokota.

The complainant (Abdul Ghafour) of the first case against Ishaq in which 12 people were massacred during a majlis, said he has been awaiting justice for 14 years but has completely lost hope since the release of Ishaq.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 16th, 2011.

This Friday alone, security forces backed by gunship helicopters and artillery guns killed 11 militants, taking the enemy fighters’ death toll of the almost weeklong offensive to over 60. There is no independent confirmation of the death toll because journalists and aid workers don’t have free access to the area.

A complex set of geopolitical issues has influenced events in Kurram valley, not least that it is central to the interests of the Taliban, offering easy access to Afghanistan. Kurram has a Shia majority and the area has been plagued by sectarianism for decades. Since 2007, things have been exceptionally grim, especially when the main road linking Parachinar on the Pakistan-Afghan border to Peshawar was closed due to militant activity, resulting in acute shortages of essential items in Parachinar. The sectarian problem also exploded in Kurram Agency that year and hundreds were killed.

The sectarian conflict has intensified with influx into Kurram of Taliban and other Sunni militants after the US invasion of Afghanistan. The 2008 military operation in Orakzai Agency didn’t help matters, forcing the militants to flee their positions for nearby Khyber and Kurram regions.

In 2008, the so-called Murree Peace Accord was signed between the rival Turi and Mangal tribes in the presence of members of parliament from the agency. However, this accord was never implemented.

Just in March this year, the Taliban attacked three vehicles heading from Peshawar to Parachinar and kidnapped 22 Shias, and the road was closed again. Hakeemullah Mehsud, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan commander in Kurram and Orakzai since 2007, wanted the prisoners to be handed over to him so he could receive ransom for their release, which Kurram-based commander Fazal Saeed Haqqani’s deputy refused, killing eight of the hostages instead. Hakeemullah removed Haqqani from the command and in retaliation Haqqani formed the Tehreek-i-Taliban Islami Pakistan and severed all contacts with the TTP.

Since then, things have gone from bad to worse, and the army has now stepped in to, it says, “clear the area of terrorists involved in acts of terrorism, including kidnapping and killing of local people, suicide attacks and blocking the road that connects Lower Kurram with Upper Kurram.”

While there are several benchmarks for the success of an operation in Kurram, the bare minimum that security forces must achieve is to permanently end the violence that has plagued the lives of the agency’s people, especially in lower and upper Kurram where both Shias and Sunnis have been displaced by sectarian attacks. Militant activity along the Thall-Parachinar road that has isolated the population from the settled areas must also be decisively stopped. The success of the operation will also depend on how well the government, and the international community, is able to handle the almost 12,000 families expected to be displaced over the course of the operation. The operation in central Kurram is likely to neutralise resistance pockets of Taliban still operating in the Mamoozai area of Orakzai Agency.

The latest operation is also a prerequisite for any operation, if one is ever conducted, in North Waziristan, since without securing central Kurram, foreign militants and the TTP in NWA would have shifted to Kurram and Orakzai.

Source: The News

Kurram offensive displaces 85,000: officials

PESHAWAR: The authorities have registered at least 85,000 people who fled a military operation to flush out militants from Kurram, officials said on Tuesday.

Thousands of families escaped the region in a mass exodus after the offensive was launched last Monday. “We have registered until today at least 9,023 families — around 85,000 people,” senior government official Sahibzada Anis told AFP.

“The number of persons in each family may differ, as some families have five to six members while members in some families exceed even 15.”

He added that around 3,000 families have taken shelter in the camps set up in Kurram’s Sadda town and in Tal town of northwestern Hangu district.

“The remaining ones are either living with their relatives or have hired houses in nearby cities and small towns”, he said.

“They are our guests and we will provide food and relief goods to the uprooted families.” Pakistan’s tribal region disaster management authority said it had urgently requested tents, food, washing facilities and non-food items from aid agencies.

ISPR Director General Major General Athar Abbas said last week that the operation would clear the area “of terrorists involved in all kinds of terrorist activities, including kidnapping and killing of locals, and suicide attacks”.

He also said it would endeavour to reopen the road between the upper Kurram and the lower part. Raids have been conducted on and off in the district ever since the Army launched a previous operation in 2009. More than 24 hours after announcing the latest offensive, commanders have yet to provide any casualty reports.

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan called upon the government to take urgent steps to assist the citizens forced to flee their homes because of military operations in the tribal areas, including Kurram.

“The Commission notes with concern the fresh waves of internal displacement reported from Kurram,” the body said in a statement, expressing concern over lack of food and other items available for the displaced people. It added that when military operations become indispensable they must be conducted in such a manner that the citizens’ problems are minimised.

Source: The News