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The role of Pakistan's Shias in the War on Terror
From the South Asia Analysis Group. EFLThe Taliban rule in Afghanistan from 1994 to October 2001, particularly after it captured Kabul in September, 1996, saw the large-scale massacre of the Shias belonging to the Hazara tribe, carried out by Al Qaeda and Pakistan's Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and its militant wing, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ). Angered over this, the Shia community refrained from participating in large numbers in the anti-US demonstrations which were organised in different parts of Pakistan by the Sunni religious organisations in protest against the US military strikes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan post-9/11. Since the beginning of 2003, there have been indications that sections of the Shias have been doing their own hunt for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his No. 2. It was reported that the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM), who had allegedly orchestrated the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US, at Rawalpindi in March 2003, was made possible by intelligence provided by some Shias in Quetta, Balochistan, where he was living before fleeing to Rawalpindi. The SSP and the LEJ retaliated by massacring a large number of Shias of the Hazara community in the Quetta area in July, 2003. The Shias retaliated by helping the Pakistani authorities in the arrest of Massob Arooshi, described as the nephew of KSM, on June 13, 2004, following an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Corps Commander of Karachi on June 10, 2004. According to the "Daily Times", the presitgious daily of Lahore, a Shia cleric from Gilgit working in Karachi tipped off the police about the presence of Arooshi in the house of Abbas Khan. The paper said that it was another Shia cleric, who had tipped off the Police in March last year about the presence of KSM in Rawalpindi. The SSP and the LEJ retaliated against the Shias through a suicide bombing at a Shia place of worship in Sialkot in Punjab on October 1, 2004, resulting in the death of 30 Shias. The Shias retaliated on October 7, 2004, by attacking with a car bomb a religious function organised at Multan in Punjab by the Sunni members of the SSP and the LEJ to observe the first death anniversary of Azam Tariq, the head of the SSP, who was assassinated last year allegedly by a Shia gunman in Islamabad. Forty Sunnis were killed. Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-10-19 |
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