A Bloodied Minority

The News on Sunday, Pakistan

November 30, 2003

The rising tide of sectarian violence in Pakistan is a critical question for the Musharraf regime to address urgently

By Fawzia Naqvi

We are sprayed with ammunition while burying our murdered dead, blown to pieces in places of worship. Bullets are pumped into us as we leave home, on our way to work, or when taking our children to school. This is General Musharraf's Pakistan, where innocent Pakistanis, particularly religious minorities, are targets for assassinations and mass murder.

A silent roll call of murdered loved ones, now numbers over 600 since Musharraf's coup in 1999. The worst act of terror struck in Quetta in the bombing of a Shi'a mosque on July 4th, killing sixty, mostly Hazaras, including 12 children. This followed the mass murder of 12 Hazara Shi'a police cadets, also in Quetta.

Hate struck Pakistan again, in October, with an attack on a bus carrying mostly Shi'a Suparco employees, killing seven. While Pakistani lives and resources are sacrificed for America's security, little is done by this government to make Pakistanis safer within Pakistan. How would the latest attacks be exonerated by those individuals accountable for the security of this country's citizens?

Sadly, Interior Minister, Faisal Saleh Hyat, has descended into the politico-religious cesspool stirred by General Musharraf. He lends his voice to the chorus of government luminaries parroting that oft used, interminable "foreign hand" conspiracy theory, deflecting any accountability for sectarian killings in Pakistan. The Minister alleges Indian involvement in Quetta and refuses to name Pakistan's malaise. Instead, he provides the creative spin on why Pakistanis keep dying in acts of sectarian terrorism.

Talk is loud but cheap. Disingenuous pretenses of action have come at a heavy price for this nation's citizens.

US-based Human Rights Watch calls the escalation in sectarian violence "alarming" during Musharraf's regime. Why this escalation? Because extremist groups have been permitted to go underground, mutate and resurface as well-armed death squads, killing Pakistanis at will with little fear of punishment. General Musharraf has yet to distinguish himself by proving that he has changed the state's policy.

We are doctors, lawyers, CEOs of companies and presidents of banks. We are rich, poor and middle class. We are poets, authors, artists and journalists. We are bureaucrats, clerics, soldiers and generals. We are Parliamentarians and Ministers of State. We are Pakistanis, inseparable and inextricable from the fabric of Pakistan. But we have been wantonly murdered by what General Musharraf dismisses as a "wild illiterate minority". An extremely potent minority, which he is unwilling to defang, because these extremists are proxy warriors and jihad-ready militias.

Ironically, the September 11th tragedy reversed Pakistan's slide into misfortune. But the worst consequence of state patronage of these extremists is the severe "blowback" onto innocent Pakistanis.

In these four years when the General's diktat has loomed larger than previous dictators in Pakistan, 712 died in sectarian killings, 600 were Shi'a. The Friday Times reports that over 500, mostly Shi'a doctors, have fled Pakistan over the last couple of years, after more than 50 of their colleagues were assassinated in Karachi. More continue to leave rather than risk being shot, signifying their lack of confidence in the state's will to safeguard them. Police in Karachi have responded to these killings by recommending that doctors apply for gun licenses.

While on a sojourn in Kabul in 2000, Musharraf announced his decision not to alter the egregious Blasphemy Laws endorsed under General Zia--another leading indicator of how powerful this militant minority is vis-a-vis its bargaining power with the state. The Blasphemy Laws continue to inspire state sanctioned religious hatred, giving license to kill in the name of religion.

Will this government protect Pakistani citizens? Some chilling data points have emerged to answer this question. In October the death toll of murdered Shi'as this year, rose to 100. The usual noises were made by Islamabad, but again little action was taken. Yet following Azam Tariq's assassination, we were subjected to the appalling competition between government officials to eulogise the Maulana. How do they explain Azam Tariq's many public hate speeches, including an appearance in a BBC documentary exhorting madressah students to kill Shi'as? Or the myriad murder cases pending against him? The Interior Minister is quoted by The Daily Times as saying, "The Maulana was an honest, upright and bold person, who had performed remarkable services for the religion." Indeed.

Scores have been arrested or eliminated, yet sectarian killings continue unabated. How? These games of let's blame a "foreign hand" by government aficionados must stop. Too many Pakistanis are dead and will continue to die because of this government's failure to give us peace and security.

Moreover, the accountability buck has to stop at General Musharraf since he has chosen to crown himself Pakistan's most powerful dictator, and with his chief security czar, Faisal Saleh Hyat who has chosen to serve in the General's reign of shame.