AL QAEDA & TALIBAN TARGET HAZARAS
by B.Raman
The massacre of 53 members of the Hazara tribe in an
imambargah, a Shia place of worship, at Quetta, the capital of the
Balochistan province of Pakistan, on July 4, 2003, while they were
praying by three unidentified gunmen, has come close on the heels of the
massacre of 11 Hazaras undergoing police training last month in the same
city. This is an attempt by the Taliban and Al Qaeda dregs,
who have taken shelter in Pakistan's tribal belt, to drive out the
Hazaras, who are Shias, from this area lest they be used by the US
intelligence agencies to collect intelligence about the presence of Osama
bin Laden and these dregs in the tribal belt of the North-West
Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan.
2. All the three gunmen are reported to have perished
during their attack. Two of them allegedly blew themselves up after
killing the Shia Hazaras, while the third allegedly succumbed to the
injuries sustained by him in an exchange of fire with some members of the
security forces guarding the place.
3. The incident has led to violent disturbances in
Quetta forcing the local authorities to impose a curfew, which has not yet
been lifted at the time of my writing these comments. The provincial
administration has ordered an enquiry into the massacre by a retired
Major-General.
4. Since the controversial elections held in Pakistan in
October last, the NWFP is being ruled by a coalition of six pro-bin Laden
and pro-Taliban religious fundamentalist parties called the Muttahida
Majlis-e- Amal (MMA). It won an absolute majority of the seats in the NWFP
provincial assembly. In Balochistan, the MMA did well in some
Pashtun majority areas, but not so well in the other areas inhabited by
the Balochis, where the Balochi nationalist parties, demanding autonomy or
independence for Balochistan, and the pro-Pervez Musharraf Pakistan Muslim
League (Qaide Azam), which is now in power in Islamabad at the head of a
coalition, did better. As a result, an absolute majority eluded the MMA in
Balochistan. It had to form a coalition in association with the PML
(QA).
5.When the Taliban was in power in Kabul before October
2001, it had carried out large-scale massacres of the Hazaras in central
Afghanistan with the help of Al Qaeda and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ), the
militant wing of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). The Hazaras were
targeted as the Taliban suspected their collaboration with the Northern
Alliance and the Iranian intelligence. There were, however, no attacks on
their kinsmen in the NWFP and Balochistan at that time.
6. Now that the dregs of the Taliban and Al Qaeda are
using these two provinces, with the complicity of the fundamentalist
government in power in the NWFP and the coalition with fundamentalist
participation in Balochistan, as sanctuaries for their operations in
Afghanistan, the US intelligence has intensified its operations in these
two provinces. This has been particularly so since the capture in
March last of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, supposedly the chief of
operations of bin Laden, who had allegedly masterminded the terrorist
strikes of 9/11 in the US.
7. Khalid was arrested by the Pakistani authorities from
the house of a women's wing leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) in
Rawalpindi and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Immediately after this, George Tenet, Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), had flown to Islamabad to personally thank Musharraf
for the arrest and hand-over. The US authorities considered the arrest as
their biggest catch in Al Qaeda since 9/11. Their happiness with Musharraf
over this was reflected in the red carpet welcome accorded to him,
reportedly on the CIA's advice, at Camp David on June 24 and the
announcement of a US $ three billion aid package to Pakistan from 2005,
subject to certain conditions.
8. It was reported immediately after the arrest that
Khalid was operating from a hide-out in Karachi till September last year
along with Ramzi Binalshibh, another important lieutenant of bin
Laden. When the Pakistani authorities, prompted by the US
intelligence agencies, arrested Ramzi in the last week of September,
Khalid managed to escape to Quetta where he had been given sanctury by the
JEI. It is said that in the beginning of this year, the US intelligence
was tipped off by a member of the Hazara community in Quetta about
the presence of Khalid in their city.
9. At the prodding of US intelligence officials, the
Pakistani authorities mounted a search for him. He escaped to
Rawalpindi and obtained shelter in the house of the JEI women's wing
leader there, where he was ultimately arrested. After he was transferred
to the custody of the FBI, the US authorities, with the help of their
Pakistani counterparts, mounted a search for bin Laden and one of his sons
as well as for other dregs of Al Qaeda in the tribal belt of Pakistan,
particularly in Balochistan. Many of the dregs managed to elude
capture and crossed over into the adjoining Balochi areas of Iran, where
some of them were arrested by the Iranian authorities.
10. While the Iranian authorities have not so far
revealed the identity of those allegedly held by them, there has been
media speculation that the arrested included some top leaders of Al Qaeda,
including possibly a son of bin Laden and Ayman-al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian,
who was No. 2 to bin Laden. This media speculation has not so far been
confirmed.
11.The arrests of Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh
Mohammad, Waleed bin Attash, a suspect in the case relating to the attack
on the US naval ship USS Cole at Aden in October, 2000, in April in
Karachi, and two other dregs of Al Qaeda made the Al Qaeda leadership
suspect that the Shia members of the Hazara community in Balochistan and
of the Kashmiri community in Gilgit in the Northern Areas (NA) had been
collaborating with the US intelligence in its hunt for the dregs of Al
Qaeda and the Taliban.
12. While the Shia Hazaras had grounds for anger against
Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the reasons mentioned above, the Shia
Kashmiris had grounds for anger due to the role played by bin Laden and
his Sunni tribal supporters in helping the Pakistan army in ruthlessly
suppressing a Shia revolt in Gilgit in 1988, resulting in hundreds of
deaths of the local Shias.
13. On February 22, 2003,a group of three unidentified
terrorists opened fire on some Shias watching a World Cup cricket match,
outside an Imambargah,in Karachi. Nine persons were killed, eight of
them Shias, all Kashmiris belonging to Gilgit . Subsequently, there were
violent disturbances in Gilgit when the bodies of five of them were taken
there for burial. In an article titled "Terrorists Strike Again
in Karachi" (www.saag.org/papers7/paper617.html
), I had commented as follows on the incident:" The Shias of Pakistan
by and large kept away from the street protests against the US bombing of
Afghanistan because they had not forgiven the massacre of the Shias of
Afghanistan (the Hazaras) by Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They
have not joined the recent street demonstrations against the planned US
attack on Iraq either. The TEJ (the Tehrik-e-Jaffria, the main Shia
political organisation of Pakistan) and the Sipah Mohammad (the
TEJ's militant wing) have maintained a studied silence on Iraq and have
refrained from criticising the USA on its attitude towards the Saddam
Hussein Government. The Sunni extremist elements belonging to the LEJ (Lashkar-e-Jhangvi),
which was declared by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist
Organisation under a 1996 law last month, have started depicting the Shias
of Pakistan too as US surrogates and have been accusing them of helping
the US intelligence in their actions against the LEJ and other Pakistani
components of the IIF (bin Laden's International Islamic Front). It
has also been alleged that some members of the Shia community of
Gilgit, presently living in Karachi, have been actively involved in
assisting the US intelligence in the hunt for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, a
Pakistani supposedly of Iraqi origin, who is considered to be
the master-mind of 9/11. Two members of the LEJ were recently arrested by
the Karachi Police. The attack on the group of Kashmiri Shias from
Gilgit at Karachi on February 22 is probably in retaliation for what the
LEJ views as their collaboration with the US intelligence and their
support to the Shia leaders of southern Iraq who have been collaborating
with the US."
14. In the past, the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), a
Sunni extremist organisation demanding the declaration of Pakistan as a
Sunni state and of the Shias as non-Muslims, had carried out the massacres
of a large number of Shias, including the educated leaders of their
community, in the Pakistani Punjab, the NWFP and Karachi, but they had not
indulged in any violent activities in Balochistan. Public shock and
Iranian anger over the murder of a number of Shia doctors in Karachi
forced Musharraf to declare the LEJ and the Sipah Mohammad as terrorist
organisations and ban them on August 14, 2001. When this did not stop the
attack on the Shias and the reprisals by the Shias against the Sunnis, he
declared the SSP and the TEJ also as terrorist organisations and banned
them on January 15, 2002.
15. Despite these bans, the LEJ, which is a member of
bin Laden's IIF, actively participated, along with other Pakistani
components of the IIF such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (Al Alami--International),the
Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM)and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) in the
kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the US journalist, the suicide car
bomb explosion outside a Karachi hotel which killed some French engineers
working in a submarine assembly project, the hand grenade attack on a
group of foreigners worshipping in an Islamabad church resulting in the
death of the wife and daughter of a US diplomat, the car bomb explosion
outside the US consulate in Karachi in which some Pakistanis were killed
and in the attack on a group of European tourists moving by the Karakoram
Highway to Xinjiang in China.
16. These incidents brought pressure on Musharraf from
the West to act decisively against these organisations. He did act
vigorously against the LEJ, which is not involved in terrorist violence
against India in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) and the HUM (Al Alami), but
avoided action against the JEM and the LET, which are used by Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in its operations in Indian territory.
17. The action against the LEJ did lead to a drop in
anti-Shia violence in Pakistan in the second half of last year. But the
situation started hotting up again after the October elections. Musharraf
ordered the withdrawal of terrorism related cases against Maulana Azam
Tariq, the leader of the SSP, which has since changed its name to avoid
action under the Anti-Terrorism Act, to enable him to contest the
elections to the National Assembly, which he won. Since his
election, he has been travelling frequently all over Pakistan to revive
the activities of his followers.
18. While Musharraf has been taking strong action
against the members of Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party
Parliamentarians (PPPP) and Nawaz Sharif's PML (N) even for firing with
air guns on festive occasions such as marriages, he has not taken any
action against the Maulana and his followers, who have been moving around
with AK-47s and other deadly weapons in violation of the laws banning the
carrying of weapons by civilians.
19. Balochistan has been on the boil since October last
year. In addition to the anti-Hazara anger referred to above, another
reason for the disturbed situation in the province, unrelated to the
presence of the Al Qaeda and the Taliban dregs, is the growing anger of
the Balochi nationalist elements over the payment of inadequate royalty by
the Islamabad Government to the Balochi tribes for the oil and gas
found in their territory and over the re-settlement of a number of Punjabi
ex-servicemen in the Mekran coast to work in the Chinese-aided project for
the construction of the Gwadar port and a high way along the coast
connecting the area to Karachi.
20. The Gwadar port has great strategic importance for
Pakistan. It would reduce the present dependence of the Pakistan
economy and Navy on the Karachi port, which is within striking range of
the Indian Navy. Following the mobilisation of Indian troops and their
deployment on the India-Pakistan border in the wake of the attack by the
LET and the JEM on the Indian Parliament in December,2001, Beijing had
agreed to a request from Musharraf to expedite the construction of the
Gwadar port in order to complete it in four years instead of five as
originally planned.
21. To enable this expedited construction and to prevent
any sabotage of the project by Balochi nationalist elements, he has given
preference to the employment of Punjabis imported from other parts of the
country. The resulting anger in the Balochi community has taken an
anti-Islamabad turn. While there has been a number of attacks by
unidentified elements on the gas pipelines supplying gas from Balochistan
to Punjabi industries, there has so far been no acts of violence directed
against the Gwadar project.
22. The Corps Commanders of the Pakistan Army as well as
the Cabinet of Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali had held a number
of meetings earlier this year to consider the worrisome situation in
Balochistan. One
of the options considered was to dismiss the provincial government and
impose army rule in the province. Jamali, a Balochi himself, is viewed by
the Balochis as an army stooge and, as such, does not command much respect
and authority from fellow-Balochis. Musharraf appointed Lt Gen Abdul Qadir,
who retired as the Corps Commander recently, as the Governor of
Balochistan, to keep a strict watch over the activities of the provincial
Cabinet headed by Chief Minister Jam Mir Muhammad Yousuf and to ensure the
restoration of law and order. He has not so far been effective. One should
not be surprised if Musharraf resorts to the military rule option.
23. To keep the non-Punjabi areas of Pakistan under
effective control, a stock response of the Pakistan Army has always been
to re-settle Punjabis, particularly ex-servicemen, in non-Punjabi areas.
Zia-ul-Haq had a large number of Punjabis re-settled in Sindh, in the
Northern Areas and in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). Musharraf has
embarked on a similar policy of re-settling a large number of Punjabis in
Balochistan. This policy is expected to be expedited in the wake of the
disturbed situation there.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai, and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF),
Chennai Chapter. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
