Since 2007, increasing violence in Pakistain -- with forces of Evil targeting politicians, the military and police, holy mans, tribal leaders, Shias, and schools -- has found an urban epicentre in Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
. In its latest security report, the Pakistain Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) reported a 53pc increase in sectarian violence for 2013. More than 85pc of such attacks and 68pc of the people killed were concentrated in Karachi, Quetta, Gilgit and
Kurram Agency...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora...
Last year, 212 were killed in 132 sectarian-related attacks mostly in Karachi. However,
there's more than one way to skin a cat...
a cycle of tit-for-tat sectarian killings on Karachi's streets since 2011 has sparked ethno-political violence with various sectarian outfits contributing to the growing body count.
The banned sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
(LJ), sharing operational and ideological ties with Al Qaeda and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP), demonstrates how militancy elsewhere in the country affects the city through a lethal nexus.
In the case of the LJ-TTP link, Chaudhry Aslam Khan, the head of the Sindh police's CID anti-extremism cell, who was recently assassinated in Karachi, confirmed in an interview shortly before his killing that both conduct joint terrorist activities in the city. The leader of LJ's Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
wing, Usman Saifullah Kurd, is also connected with Karachi's sectarian hard boys, he had said.
Aslam had said in a January 7 interview that "after the crackdown against LJ in Karachi and Punjab, their cadres had found sanctuaries in the tribal areas." He said that in a raid last November, the police had killed LJ's Karachi chief Gul Hasan, involved in suicide kabooms on the Haideri mosque and Imambargah
...since the country's so religiously correct™, Shia Moslems in Pakistain can't call their houses of worship 'mosques,' which are reserved for Sunnis. It's not clear if imambargahs are used for explosives storage like mosques are...
Ali Raza (2004) and an attack on the Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court, Justice Maqbool Baqar in August 2013.
Ideological and pie fights between the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat
...which is the false nose and plastic mustache of the murderous
bannedextremist group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain, whatcha might call the
political wingof Lashkar-e-Jhangvi...
/Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain
...a Sunni Deobandi organization, a formerly registered Pak political party, established in the early 1980s in Jhang by Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi. Its stated goal is to oppose Shia influence in Pakistain. They're not too big on Brelvis, either. Or Christians. Or anybody else who's not them. The organization was
bannedin 2002 as a terrorist organization, but somehow it keeps ticking along, piling up the corpse counts...
, following the Sunni Deobandi school and the Barelvi Sunnis, represented mainly by the Sunni Tehrik
...formed in Karachi in 1992 under by Muhammad Saleem Qadri. It quickly fell to trading fisticuffs and assassinations with the MQM and the Sipah-e-Sahaba, with at least a half dozen of its major leaders rubbed out. Sunni Tehreek arose to become the primary opposition to the Deobandi Binori Mosque, headed by Nizamuddin Shamzai, who was eventually bumped off by person or persons unknown. ST's current leadership has heavily criticized the Deobandi Jihadi leaders, accusing them of being sponsored by Indian Intelligence agencies as well as involvement in terrorist activities...
, adds to this volatile cauldron. It is incorrect to differentiate between terrorist groups and sectarian outfits because they share similar agendas and religious ideologies, says political analyst Dr Ayesha Siddiqa.
Nobody knows what exactly drives sectarian violence, whether it is the consequence of state policies of Islamisation of laws and education, parallel legal and judicial systems, politicisation of the police force, failure of the state and the military, and the marginalisation of secular forces.
French researcher Marium Abou Zahab believes that links with the Middle East could be part of the explanation (proxy war between Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
and Iran) but views sectarian violence as an indigenous phenomenon. With sporadic administrative and legal efforts to dismantle well-entrenched groups, leaders of supposedly banned groups such as the SSP operate with virtual immunity, using new avenues (social media) to propagate their hard boy ideas and enter electoral politics aligned to mainstream political parties.
Aurangzeb Farooqi, the Karachi head of the ASWJ, terms Shias 'infidels', attributing an increase in sectarianism to similar trends observed in the wider Mohammedan world. Condemning violence, he denies links with the LJ, calling for dialogue with 'rival groups.' He blames the police for failing to protect Sunnis as hundreds have been killed in reprisal attacks.
For their part, Shia political party Majlis-e-Wahdatul Mohammedaneen (MWM) claims they do not indulge in violent killing. They might have organised the largely peaceful demonstrations in Karachi and other towns to protest against the Quetta bombings last year, but the police suspect that some have adopted a violent retaliatory path, with a Karachi-based Shia militia responsible for attacks on Deobandi holy mans.
MWM spokesperson Ali Ahmar accuses LJ of fuelling sectarian violence, claiming that 500 Shias, including professors, students, lawyers and doctors, were targeted in 2013 with perpetrators tossed in the calaboose
Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up!
only in four to five cases. If young Shias are aligning themselves with MWM, then interviews with moderate Deobandi holy mans suggest that the killing of students and teachers is pushing men with no sectarian links towards Deobandi groups.
The cost of militancy includes damage to the economy, national security, citizen morale and political stability. Shrinking space for an alternative liberal discourse is evident as political patronage for the religious right goes unchecked with banned bully boy organizations and madressahs raising their public profile, providing endless recruits and sectarian-oriented curricula and publications to further fuel intolerance and bigotry.
As Karachi's sectarian forces of Evil conduct 'business' on home turf with their political utility intact, the consequences are uncertain but definitely deadly as Pakistain's security establishment nurtures some Taliban groups in the border regions as proxies for the post-2014 period.