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| Afghanistan |
| Fearing IS, Afghan Shias seek help from Taliban |
| 2015-03-23 |
| [DAWN] Even by Afghanistan's standards of often-shifting alliances, a recent meeting between ethnic Hazara elders and local commanders of the Taliban Lions of Islam who have persecuted them for years was extraordinary. The Hazaras - a largely Shia minority killed in the thousands during the Taliban's hard-line Sunni Islamist rule of the 1990s - came to their old enemies seeking protection against what they deemed an even greater threat: masked men operating in the area calling themselves "Daesh", a term for the self-style Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... in the region. In a sign of changing times, the Taliban capos agreed to help, said Abdul Khaliq Yaqubi, one of the elders at the meeting held in the eastern province of Ghazni. Read: Fear stalks Afghan minorities after rare attacks The unusual pact is a window into deepening anxiety in Afghanistan over reports of Islamic State (IS) holy warriors gaining a foothold in a country already weary of more than a decade of war with the Taliban. Back-to-back kidnappings within a month of two groups of Hazara travellers - by men widely rumoured, though far from proven, to claim fealty to IS - have many spooked. The current threat IS poses in Afghanistan, observers say, is less about real military might than the opportunity for disparate bad boy groups, including defectors from an increasingly fractured Taliban, to band together under this global "brand" that controls swathes of Iraq and Syria. The fear is especially keen among religious minorities like the Hazaras, who worry the influence of the fiercely anti-Shia IS could introduce a new dimension of sectarian strife to the war. "Whether Daesh exists or not, the psychological impact of it is very dangerous in Ghazni, which is home to all ethnicities," Ghazni's deputy governor Mohammad Ali Ahmadi told Rooters. "This could easily stir up tensions." |
| Posted by:Fred |