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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Massacres of Shias in Iraq & Pakistan - The Background |
| 2004-03-05 |
| Ex-Indian intel chief who detects the presence of Pakistanis in the latest attacks in Iraq. Suprise! Still, it has interesting info, although i’m not sure how serious to take it, especially concerning Zarqawi. To understand the anti-Shia massacres at Karbala and Baghdad in Iraq and at Quetta in Pakistan’s Balochistan during the Muhurrum procession on March 2, 2004, one has to go back to the creation of Pakistan in 1947. When Pakistan was formed in 1947, the Shias were amongst the major land-owners of Pakistan’s Punjab, its granary, and many of the Sunnis, who migrated to Pakistan from India’s Punjab, were largely poor landless farm workers, who had to earn their livelihood in their country of adoption by working in the farms of the Shias. The perceived exploitation of the Sunnis by the Shia landlords started the process of the polarisation of the two sects of Islam in Pakistan. This sectarian polarisation largely due to economic reasons was given a religious twist by Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan’s military dictator of the 1980s. To counter the growing political assertiveness of the Shias and their political party, the Tehrik-e-Jaffria (TEJ) Pakistan, which generally supported Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), he encouraged and assisted Sunni extremist organisations such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). With his blessings, the SSP challenged the right of a woman to come to political power and projected the Shias and Nusrat Bhutto, the mother of Benazir, as the surrogates of Iran. The SSP also started calling for the declaration of the Shias as non-Muslims and for the proclamation of Pakistan as a Sunni State. The virulent anti-Shia ideology of the SSP was also exploited by the intelligence agencies of the USA and Iraq in their attempts to destabilise Iran and have the Shia clergy ruling Teheran overthrown. As a result of the support from the Saddam Hussain regime, the SSP, which was an anti-Pakistani Shia and not an anti-Iran movement, started targeting the Iranians living in and visiting Pakistan too in the 1990s. There were many attacks on Iranian civilians, diplomats and military officers coming to Pakistan for training. Conspiracy theorists have always been interested in the links between Iraq and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi on one hand, and between LeJ and Ramzi Yousef on the other. There is the usual murkiness involving the ISI, since LeJ’s leader, Riaz Basra was arrested and handed over to the ISI, and then somehow he died in a police encounter several months later. Many notorious Pakistani and Arab terrorists such as Ramzi Yousef, Maulana Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), Fazlur Rahman Khalil of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, started their career as terrorists as members of the SSP and participated in many of its anti-Shia massacres in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. When al-Zarqawi, along with some other Jordanians, many of them of Chechen ancestry, came to Pakistan in the 1980s to join the Arab mercenary force trained and armed by the CIA and the ISI and used against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, his passport gave his name as Fadel al-Khalayleh, which is believed to be his real name. On June 20, 1994 Ramzi Yousef and al-Zarqawi, at the instigation of the Iraqi intelligence, caused an explosion at Mashad in the Iranian territory adjoining Pakistan which killed a large number of Shias. Zarqawi, along with the late Riaz Basra, the leader of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), the militant wing of the SSP, helped the Taliban in the capture of Kabul in September, 1996. The LEJ subsequently helped the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the massacre of the Hazaras of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden never liked Saddam, whom he looked upon as an apostate because of his secular and socialist policies, and the proximity of the LEJ and al-Zarqawi to Saddam’s intelligence agency created differences between them and bin Laden. Despite this, the LEJ joined bin Laden’s International Islamic Front after it was formed in 1998 and has remained loyal to bin Laden. So, presumably, has Zarqawi. Iraqi support to the SSP and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is largely accepted, just as Iranian support for the Sipah-e-Mohammad is also assumed. Till 2002, the anti-Shia activities of the LEJ were confined to Punjab and Sindh. Balochistan remained largely free of anti-Shia incidents. The situation changed after the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad by the Pakistani authorities at Rawalpindi in March, 2003 and his handing over to the USA’s Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was reported that KSM had fled from Karachi to Quetta in September 2002, after the arrest of Ramzi Binalshibh and from there shifted to Rawalpindi fearing betrayal by the Hazaras of Balochistan, who were suspected of helping the US agencies in their hunt for bin Laden because of their anger over the massacre of the Hazaras of Afghanistan before 9/11. It is this suspicion, which was behind two anti-Shia incidents in Quetta last year. In the first, Hazara policemen under training and in the second in the first week of July, 53 Shia worshippers were killed. The massacre of the Shias in Quetta on March 2 was in reprisal partly for their suspected collaboration with the Americans in their hunt for bin Laden and partly for the murder of Maulana Azam Tariq, the leader of the SSP, last year, allegedly by Shia extremists. That would explain why Baluchistan has seen such major sectarian attacks all of a sudden.. Even before the invasion, terrorist elements of the IIF started moving to Iraq via Saudi Arabia and Iran for starting a jihad against the Americans. The first group to go was from the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM). They went to Saudi Arabia as Haj pilgrims and from there crossed over to Iraq. Subsequently, Arab-speaking volunteers of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) and the LEJ also started going to Iraq in small numbers. Many of the Arabs of Chechen ancestry, originally belonging to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, who were in the South Waziristan area of the FATA, also joined them. Of those who have gone to Iraq from Pakistan, only the members of the LEJ had indulged in anti-Shia massacres in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the past and could be expected to indulge in similar massacres in Iraq without any hesitation. The Iraqi resistance fighters are unlikely to indulge in the kind of massacres carried out at Karbala and Baghdad on March 2. The needle of suspicion, therefore, strongly points to the LEJ. Their action in targeting the Shias of Iraq arises partly from their deeply-ingrained anti-Shia reflexes and partly is a reprisal for the perceived collaboration of the Shia leaders of Iraq with the American troops. If al-Zarqawi wanted to promote a civil war in Iraq by instigating Shia-Sunni clashes, as alleged by US officials, the LEJ, with which he has had a history of association in the past and which would not hesitate to massacre Shias anywhere in the world, would be the ideal tool in his eyes. This theory approaches the anti-Shia attacks from a completely different direction than most, but it doesn’t explain the reports of Farsi speakers being arrested. Although we don’t know if they were actually involved in the attacks or not. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #4 Paul - good point. Well, I read this after a long sleepless night and it seemed as if he was trying awfully hard to connect Zarqawi to Pakistan, when, let's face it, Zarqawi is willing to kill for any state that will sponsor his masterpiece murders. It seemed the Indian ex Intel chief was attempting to let Iran off the hook for their complicity with Zarqawi in killing the Shia and instead point to Pakistan for the sponsorship. After rereading it, I may have missed his point, which is just simply why Zarqawi would target the Shia. One question still begs an answer, though. This explains why Zarqawi would target them. Why would the Iranians sign off on it. |
| Posted by: B 2004-3-5 9:55:18 AM |
| #3 A very informative, illuminating article. |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-3-5 8:50:52 AM |
| #2 But the author supports the Americans in Iraq (although opposed the war initially), and has previously warned his countrymen against any schadenfreude at any difficulties facing America, because they lose it would give an enormous boost to terrorists everywhere. |
| Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-3-5 6:20:39 AM |
| #1 ok...but just from a "feel" standpoint...this is one of those pieces that gives lots of true facts...so, we all go, yes, yes, I concur....but then, at the very end, (and always at the very end) one sentence draws a sweeping conclusion (with a hand wave flourish) that isn't completely supported by the facts ...but it could be true. "I The Iraqi resistance fighters are unlikely to indulge in the kind of massacres carried out at Karbala and Baghdad on March 2." (TRUE) "The needle of suspicion, THEREFORE [insert sweeping handwave flourish] strongly points to the LEJ If I were just to guess -from a strictly feel standpoint, mind you - I would say that the Iranians are responsible with Zarqawi assistance for this event..explaining the Farsi. They made a mistake and they are feeling the heat! The sweeping suggestion at the end of this obvious propaganda piece is to deflect the blame to the Pakistani's plus an irresistible, compulsory dig at those who collaborate with US troops. I rate it a 9.5 |
| Posted by: B 2004-3-5 4:53:38 AM |