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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| How Pakistan became sectarian |
| 2004-03-27 |
| After the ashura blasts in Iraq (killing 271) and Pakistan (killing 47) on 2 March 2004, Muslims all over the world decided to blame it on an unnamed ‘external’ enemy. Grand Ayatollah of Iraq Sistani blamed the killings on the Americans and most Iraqi Shias beating themselves on the head in anger were not sure how to interpret a phenomenon that has been linked to Islam in history. In Pakistan, PTV did a survey among middle citizens comprising college and university lecturers and other professionals, on the night of March 3, and revealed most of them as Pakistanis in denial about sectarianism and blaming the ‘external’ enemy for the killings – the West in general and America in particular. The most repeated formulation was that ‘Muslims can’t do it to Muslims’ since a Muslim killing a Muslim is at once removed from the pale of Islam. Yet there is a religious party in Pakistan that declares sectarianism as its creed quite openly. Other religious parties are sectarian in a less overt way. Reactive killing as desperate response: The ashura killings in Quetta are an extension of the Hazara killings of last year. The Hazaras were struck twice and they lost around 50 people. Pakistan blamed India but the Shias were pointing clearly to the three well known sectarian militias and some quite respectable clerical leaders of Pakistan. When nothing was done and more Shias were killed at the Pakistan space agency Suparco in Karachi, someone hit back in a desperate gesture and shot dead MNA Maulana Azam Tariq, leader of the anti-Shia religious party, in Islamabad. There have been many occasions in the past when the killings spiked because the state simply did not respond. The year 1988 was one such year. The Kurram Agency Shias were massacred, the Shia in Gilgit were massacred, and the Shia leader Ariful Hussaini was shot dead in Peshawar. Within the week, General Zia died mysteriously in a plane crash. Pakistan was always mildly sectarian. It became more so after General Zia’s Islamisation and imposition of articles of Islam on which there is a Shia-Sunni difference of opinion. Jihad magnified the schism manifold, facilitated by money that came from Saudi Arabia and Iran. It should be noted that this money did not start the killings; it simply helped the two sides do the killings more efficiently. One should however look at the sociological side of the problem more closely and examine the crystallising role of the state in the exacerbation of the sectarian problem. It all began in Jhang: The Jhang district in southern Punjab has a total population of 2.8 million out of which 25 percent are Shia. (This is also the ‘guesstimate’ about the total Shia population in Pakistan.) Half the population of Jhang are refugees from East Punjab who filled the vacuum created by the transfer of the non-Muslim majority of the district to India in 1947. The Shia are divided among the refugees and the locals. So are the Barelvis, the locals among them integrated into Shia rituals and therefore at peace with them. Most clerics in Jhang sought their careers in baiting the Ahmedi community of Rabwah which fell in Jhang district, but the Deobandis among them also began to take on the ‘low-church’ Barelvis and the Shia too, starting 1950. The Shia power is represented by the strong Shah Jewna feudal landlords who are also divided into two hostile factions. Sunni feudals contesting assembly seats against the Shia feudals have played their role in strengthening the sectarian clerics. The refugee Arain youth has arisen in the district as the most virulent sectarian and jihadi element over the years. The most remarkable figure to arise in this environment was Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi (1952-1990) who founded SSP in 1985, not a little assisted by the intelligence agencies spearheading General Zia’s plan ‘to teach the Shias of Jhang a lesson’. Rise of Haq Nawaz Jhangvi: Iraq and Saudi Arabia funded SSP while the Shia were reactively funded by Iran. The politics of this funding culminated in 1989 when the Saudis ousted the Iranian jihadis from the Afghan interim government with the help of the ISI. Jhangvi, a khoja graduate of a Deobandi seminary in the city, was vice-president of the JUI in Punjab till he became too big for the party. He acquired power by first attacking the Ahmedis, then the Barelvis. His hold on the administration increased over time till everyone with political ambition had to fund him. His denunciation of the Shia called for the apostatisation of the Shia on the order of the Ahmedis next door; it was followed by a similar denunciation of Imam Khomeini. Funding for him came from the marketplace, from businessmen and drug-dealers looking for protection. Jhangvi had put together a strong organisation of criminalised youth mostly from the muhajir Arain community from East Punjab. He was eventually to die in the violence he had done much to instigate. Sheikh Yusuf who funded the SSP was known to have used its thugs to hurt and kill his own business rivals, somewhat like the use made of Sunni Tehreek in Karachi by a Memon businessman. In 1992, the new deputy chief of SSP Maulana Azam Tariq tried to tame the thugs under Riaz Basra who had killed an Iranian diplomat in Lahore to avenge Jhangvi’s murder. Zahab tends to think that Azam Tariq had later nothing to do with Riaz Basra’s Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, but she is wrong there. He tried his best to prevent a Lashkar thug from being hanged in the Iranian diplomat case. Riaz Basra, killed in a ‘police encounter’, was buried by him in a Sipah Sahaba flag. In the words of Zahab, Jhang succumbed to a very complex patchwork of conflict: ‘Feudals versus the emergent middle class, Shias versus Sunnis, local Shias versus muhajir Shias, local Sunnis versus muhajir Sunnis, Shia local and muhajir Syeds versus lower class muhajir Sunnis, local Sunni Sheikh baraderi versus Arain Sunni muhajir baraderi, plus competition for dominance within the Sheikh baraderi. The local- muhajir conflict can also be analysed in terms of a conflict between two dominant castes, Sheikh versus Arain’. Jhang’s main contribution was SSP which served as the mother of all the Deobandi militias fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir. In Jhang, at least the rise of the SSP is located in a complex sociological matrix, but outside of Jhang, from Quetta to Kurram Agency and Kohat, to the Northern Areas, it is located firmly within the ideological paradigm of Pakistan and its logical progression towards a hardline Sunni state. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #4 Kurram Agency Shias You're right it does sounds like the Apache Wars. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-03-27 5:22:23 PM |
| #3 The year 1988 was one such year. The Kurram Agency Shias were massacred, the Shia in Gilgit were massacred, and the Shia leader Ariful Hussaini was shot dead in Peshawar. Within the week, General Zia died mysteriously in a plane crash. An interesting suggestion. |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-03-27 11:02:11 AM |
| #2 Ummm... No. When all us infidels have been slaughtered, they're going to kill each other. Not that it'll matter to us. |
| Posted by: Fred 2004-03-27 11:00:09 AM |
| #1 can't we all just get along? |
| Posted by: B 2004-03-27 7:48:17 AM |