Same weapons being used in Karachi violence

Same Weapons Being Used in Karachi Violence
Imran Ayub, Dawn, December 28, 2012 http://dawn.com/2012/12/28/forensic-examination-same-weapons-being-used-in-tit-for-tat-sectarian-killings/

KARACHI: As the city descends into fear amid a renewed wave of killings, the police authorities see one or more organised groups behind what was earlier being called ‘tit-for-tat sectarian attacks’ as forensic investigations into nearly 90 cases found that same weapons had been used in targeting people from different sects and political parties, it emerged on Thursday.

A top police official confirmed to Dawn that under forensic findings it seemed ‘crystal clear’ that the recent wave of killings had nothing to do with sectarian rivalry rather it was an attempt to ‘destabilise the city peace’ to achieve ‘certain targets’.

However, the real face of a ‘third force’ still remains a mystery for both the authorities and police investigators.

“There is definitely a third force,” Sindh IG Fayyaz Ahmed Leghari told Dawn. “It’s not yet ascertained that it’s external or internal as no major arrest has been made on these lines.”

He said: “But it has nothing to do with sectarian differences. If they were the cause, you would have been witnessing violence in every street of the country.”

Asked about reasons for his confidence about the ‘third force’ involved in the killings, he based his conclusion on findings of forensic investigations into a number of recent incidents that had earlier been described as sectarian killings.

“For instance, we have found that the weapon used in one targeted attack was also used in another,” said IG Leghari.

He explained that on Nov 29, a young couple, Iqbal Hussain and Dilshad Fatima who were employees of the Karachi Institute of Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine (KIRAN), was gunned down near Safoora Goth and the following day another man, Nazar Abbas, was killed on Shaheed-i-Millat Road whose 12-year-old daughter, Mehzar Zehra, was wounded in the attack.

The police investigators and the media then suspected sectarian motives for both attacks as all the victims belonged to the Shia sect, he said.

However, he added, the Dec 3 killing of a seminary teacher off Abul Hasan Ispahani Road and forensic analysis of spent bullet casings one after another incident told a different story.

“On Dec 3, Maulana Mufti Mohammad Ismail of Madressah Ahsan-ul-Uloom was shot dead, off Abul Hasan Ispahani Road. Interestingly, the forensic examination in all these cases suggested that the same weapon was used in all three shootings,” said IG Leghari, reiterating that it was for this reason that the police believed “it’s not the sectarian violence or shooting on an ideological basis”.

Violence returned to the city mainly in the second quarter of 2012 with frequent killings and targeted attacks apparently on sectarian grounds after a gap of some months when Karachi started limping back to normality after the Supreme Court of Pakistan had taken suo motu notice of series of killings.

Many people belonging to the Shia sect — with a significant number of them from same families — lost their lives to the menace. Similarly, a number of men belonging to the Sunni sect, including seminary students and teachers, were killed in incidents of firing in different parts of the city.

While no serious effort from government quarters was witnessed to track the attackers and expose their motive, the Sindh police forensic division has made some progress on these lines.

“We have digital images of over 7,000 empties [spent bullet casings],” said Additional IG forensic division Muneer Sheikh. He said: “After a forensic analysis so far in some 90 cases this year we have found weapons of different calibers used in the multiple killings. Modern technology is being used for the analysis of every spent bullet casing according to global standards of forensic investigations,” he added.

Is this a Sunni-Shia conflict in Pakistan?

Much has been written on this blog as to why the attacks on the Shias, Barelwi Sunnis, Sufi/Shia/Sunni shrines, imambargahs, muharram processions, and mosques must not be thought of as a "Sunni-Shia" conflict. For one, often the same sectarian groups are behind these attacks. Moreover, there are broader political interests attached to these militant activities (consider for instance the factors involved in 2009 Karachi Ashura bombing; see here and here). Some of these sectarian groups are also linked to the anti-Pakistan Taliban groups, which have also attacked the military and police bases in Pakistan. They are said to have been involved in attacks on political parties as well. While other Taliban groups -- the "good" Taliban -- are still protected by the rogue elements of the state's security agencies. These groups have also aligned themselves with other sectarian outfits.

Within the above context, consider these two pieces of evidence.

1. An Ahle Hadith Cleric Gunned Down; One Militant Caught

This militant was not Shia. Yet in the simplistic numerical aggregations of some journalistic accounts, the killed cleric, belonging to the Sunni Ahle Hadith school, would be categoried as a "Sunni" and the event as a "Sunni-Shia" conflict. Too often this is how the so-called "sectarian" violencde has been viewed. See in this previous post how the 2006 Nishtar Park bombing was blamed on the Shias by a foreign journalist.



http://tribune.com.pk/story/475750/deserted-by-friends-fleeing-suspect-caught-by-mob/

KARACHI (Dec 6, 2012): A target killer was caught red-handed by seminary students after his accomplices escaped but his motorcycle stalled as he tried to flee after killing a cleric in New Karachi.

The prayer leader-cum-seminary teacher of Jamia Masjid-o-Madressa Islamia, Qari Ahsanullah Rasheed, was shot dead on Wednesday evening while he was teaching Quran to the students, Bilal Colony police said.

Three armed men came to the mosque on a motorcycle, witnesses said. One of the three entered the mosque and shot the victim in the head, killing him on the spot. When he went outside, he saw his accomplices had already escaped. He tried to kick-start the motorcycle but as a mob approached him, he started running. He also fired at the crowd, injuring a man in the shoulder, SP Salman Hussain, the New Karachi division police chief, told The Express Tribune. The killer was then handed over to the police.

The accused was later identified as Kashif Shakoor alias Bilal, who lives in Quaidabad. During interrogation, the assassin said he was associated with a militant outfit. “He was directed by someone from Waziristan to kill the victim on suspicion of being a police informer,” said the SP citing the suspect.

The victim, Qari Rasheed, had been associated with the mosque for the past 15 years. The killer and his victim both were from the Ahle Hadith sect, said SP Hussain.

Unconfirmed reports suggested they were also associated with the Jamaatud Dawa but its spokesperson denied, saying the organisation had no links with the mosque, its administration or the men.

Earlier, a young man was shot dead at his car showroom on Shaheed-e-Millat Road, Ferozabad police said. Two armed men on a motorcycle shot Tanvir Hussain Bangash, 28, twice, killing him on the spot, said ASP Ghulam Murtaza Malik. The victim, father of one, lived in PECHS and belonged to the Shia sect.

Suspected militants arrested

A potential attack on an imambargah in Gulshan-e-Iqbal was averted as two suspects allegedly associated with the banned religious outfit, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), were arrested on Tuesday night, Azizabad police said.

Five men in a high-roof vehicle were asked to stop by police in Block-2, Federal B Area but they started firing. After an encounter, Hafiz Hanif and Qari Chiraghuddin were arrested while three of their accomplices escaped, the police said.

The police have identified the other suspects as Qari Ghulam Mohammad, Qari Ghulam Akbar and Riaz. The law enforcers are conducting raids in different neighbourhoods in search of the other alleged militants.

During interrogation, the men admitted they were associated with the LeJ as well as Harkatul Mujahideen and were planning to attack an imambargah in Gulshan-e-Iqbal through an explosives-laden vehicle, said DSP Saleem Akhtar Siddiqui. The suspects were trained in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

The suspects were also involved in collecting funds for their organisations through donations and selling skins of sacrificial animals.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6th, 2012.

2. A Sectarian Militant Killed in Quetta; belonged to the Levies Force

On September 30, 2012, two gunmen attacked a jewelry shop owned by a Shia Muslim, Abdul Khaliq, in Quetta’s Liaquat Bazar. Khaliq was injured in the attack. The shop's private security guard returned fire and killed one gunman, while the other escaped. The gunman was identified as Mujeeb-ur-Rehman, a sepoy in Balochistan Levies, a paramilitary force, who was posted in Balochistan's Sherani district. In another case, a gunned down attacker turned out to be a part of an anti-terrorism task force. It is rare that an attacker would be killed or captured. But these two cases are sufficient to consider that the anti-Shia outfits have deep penetration and connections. At times, those captured have also been able to "escape" from jail. For instance, two high profile militants, Usman Saifullah Kurd and Shafeeq Rind, had escaped from a tightly secured jail of Anti-Terrorist Force in the Quetta Cantonment area.

Abdul Khaliq, the shop owner in the above case, was a Qandhari Shia. In the last few years, the sectarian outfits have indiscriminately killed hundreds of Shias from Hazara, Qandhari, Punjabi, Saraeki, and other ethnic backgrounds in Balochistan. Over 100 Shias have been killed in 2012 alone.
 

Karachi Ashura Bombing Revisited

In parts of his new book, Instant City (2011), NPR’s Steve Inskeep investigates the Ashura bombing of December 28, 2009 against Karachi's urban, cosmopolitan context. I haven’t read the whole book yet except for the parts on the Ashura bombing. In these parts, Inskeep engages different theories and evidence about the perpetrators. Some of these theories and evidence were shared on this blog after the said bombing. Inskeep’s investigative narrative provides some additional insights and evidence, which if taken with a grain of salt, would be relevant for any evaluation of the (so-called) “sectarian” violence in Karachi.

Before I copy the relevant excerpts, it is important to note that Karachi’s politics – or Pakistan’s politics, for that matter – is not Inskeep’s specialized area, so it is not surprising that Inskeep makes some blatant errors in his narrative. One such error is his suggestion that the 2006 Nishtar Park bombing of the Sunni Tehreek gathering was carried out by Shia militants (p. 17). Inskeep seems to assume that if the blast is on a Sunni gathering, it must have come from the ‘opposite’ side – the Shias. Anyone familiar with the politics on the ground knows that that political gathering of this Barelvi Sunni group, Sunni Tehreek, on the 12th of the Islamic month of Rabiulawwal was targeted by the same criminal elements who had been targeting the Shias for many years. Many Sunni Tehreek leaders have also publicly pointed the finger at these criminal elements (See here, here, and here, in Urdu).

Looking closely at the text of Inskeep’s allegation, it appears that he felt compelled to insert some reference to Shia militants in order to create a journalistic ‘balance’ or ‘objectivity’ – ‘if you point out “Sunni” “extremists”, then you must also mention some “Shia” “extremists” to create that balance.' Inskeep imposes this 'balance' regardless of the asymmetry of Shia killing in Pakistan, and regardless of the fact that in the case of the Nishtar Park bombing, the same criminal elements may have been involved (the criminal elements who were killing both Sunnis and Shias).

Consider Inskeep’s text:

“One of the first stories I covered as a reporter in Karachi involved the Shia community: in 2002, men on motorcycles were following Shia professionals and community leaders – doctors, lawyers, engineers – and shooting them in the head. The killings had become normal. They happened all the time. Presumably the culprits were Sunni extremist groups who considered the Shias to be apostates.

The Shias had their own militants. In 2006 a gathering of Sunnis was bombed in Nishtar Park, around the corner from Abbas Kumeli’s home.

As accustomed as he was to sectarian violence, Kumeli sensed something different in December 2009...” (p. 17)

Note in the middle short para above how Inskeep connects the Nishtar Park bombing to the presumed Shia militancy: not by directly stating it, but by having the two sentences in the same paragraph. Some would consider this sleight of hand a lazy journalistic “balancing”; others would see this serious and unfounded charge as quite unethical.

In the above quoted text, Inskeep also mixes the description of violence with the explanation of it when he reduces the motivation of the “extremists” to be about doctrinal dispute ("Shias to be apostates"). This implied explanation (that focuses on sectarian-religious impulses) undermines the politics of such violence, such as the ethnic politics of Karachi; the interests and support of the country’s security agencies and their rogue elements; the security establishment’s “Good Taliban, BadTaliban” policy; and the involvement of foreign powers, their interests, and their spy elements in Pakistan (for instance, see here and here).

Another more subtle error could be seen in the way Inskeep describes the Muharram/Ashura procession. It sounds like the procession is exclusively a Shia gathering where the Sunnis are largely spectators. However, anyone familiar with the history and culture of these gatherings in South Asia would know that the reality is more complicated than this simplistic dichotomy. Muharram commemorations are attended by Muslims from various backgrounds and even by non-Muslims. The Ashura blast itself provides an indication of this complexity. As a previous post pointed out, 15 of the 50 killed were Sunnis; two were Bohra Shias; and one was Christian; and the rest were Twelver Shias. Some of these were participants and some were also part of volunteer services (as indicated in this partial list here). A senior reporter for the Geo News, Fahim Siddiqui, was also among those hit by the blast on that day. His son and niece who were with him died in the blast. In the simplistic, Sunni/Shia classifications, Fahim Siddiqui would be considered a Sunni, and yet he (along with his son and niece) attended the said procession on that day, and not as a spectator but as a participant. I think there is a more nuanced story to be told here about Muharram commemorations.

Excerpts from the book, Instant City (2011), starting form page 17:

Shortly before the procession, Pakistan’s interior minister visited Karachi. “He met with me in this room where we are sitting,” Kumeli said. The interior minister brought along the governor of Sindh, the province of which Karachi is the capital; each man represented a leading political party – one came from the mayor’s party, known as the MQM, and the other from the rival People’s Party. Both parties had joined an uneasy coalition that was attempting to share power in the province as well as the national government. And today these two officials were delivering a carefully calibrated message to Shia leaders around the city. “They were saying that they had made foolproof security arrangements, and also expressing the satisfaction they were hopeful that no such thing would take place.

“But they were expressing their fears as well.”

The visitors didn’t say exactly why they were afraid, but the list of plausible suspects was well known, starting with Sunni extremist groups that targeted the Shias. Then there were Taliban insurgents, who were bombing Pakistani cities that year in response to an army offensive against their mountain sanctuaries. Karachi politicians who showed up for the parade could become targets for enemies or rivals. And as Kumeli mulled the possibility of attack, he learned of the explosions at two smaller Shia processions on the two days before the climactic march. The blasts increased the tension, even though police blamed one of the explosions on gas from an open sewer line.

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One the day of the Ashura procession in 2009, many Karachi residents of other sects and faiths volunteered their time to ensure the safety and comfort of the Shias as they marched. And chief among them were scores of young men who turned up now and again in the city’s security videos, often wearing distinctive khaki uniforms. They were Pakistan Boy Scouts, including Sunni Muslims, Hindus, even Christians…

[A] metal box stood next to a light pole. It was a box of considerable size, more than six feet high on metal legs, with a sloping metal roof. If anyone should come across a damaged Koran, or discarded paper with a Koranic inscription, people were supposed to drop it though a slot in the box so that no one would throw the holy words in the garbage or trample them underfoot. The book stood near the banyan tree, and it was inside that box of wayward scripture that someone had planted a bomb. (p.24)

[My notes: Since Koran (Quran) is considered sacred by all Islamic schools of thought, and perhaps equally by the religious “extremists,” the choice of the place to hide the bomb should complicate any analysis of the motivations and background of the perpetrators.]

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The city surveillance video includes no sound.

The camera looks silently down on Jinnah Road from the old city hall. The banyan tree is visible in its little triangular park, across the street and maybe a hundred yards away.

The video recording shows the mourners coming into sight, walking toward the camera. The lead ranks, including the Shia scouts, have just passed the tree, which is visible behind them. They calmly pass in front of the blue-and-white sign of the Subhanallah Bakery.

Then the explosion rips into the body of the crowd. Within two seconds, thick gray smoke has risen as high as a five-story building…

Survivors affirmed later that there were two explosions. The first was sharp and small, like a firecracker, coming from near a water barrel. It may have been designed to startle people, fix them in place. Then the main explosion knocked Najeeb Ilyas to the ground…

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We have only begun to recount the multiple events of December 28, but the Ashura bombing alone demands some explanation. Authorities made their first efforts to assign some meaning to the blast well before the day reached its disastrous conclusion. Early media reports quoted government officials who blamed a “suicide bomber.” Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik said the bomber had links to two militant groups, including Pakistan’s version of the Taliban. The Taliban soon claimed responsibility, also describing it as a suicide attack. Evidence, however, began pointing in another direction. Federal investigators studied steel nuts that were strewn on the road, the same ones Faisal Edhi had noticed, and the nuts made them doubt that a suicide bomber was responsible. Hundreds of nuts were too heavy to carry as shrapnel. When choosing a final wardrobe, investigators believed, the discriminating suicide bomber would prefer lightweight ball bearings… (p. 27)

Even more proof came in the form of torn metal fragments. They originated from the box of Koranic scripture. Video images from before the blast showed an Edhi ambulance parked beside the box. Images taken afterward showed the ambulance crumpled like an aluminum can, but still parked in place. The box was gone, blown apart, with pieces flung outward in all directions. The explosion could only have come from inside it, likely detonated by remote control.

A dead boy who had been mistakenly described as a suicide bomber was identified as a Boy Scout.

Police eventually dismissed the Taliban as suspects, instead linking the attack to a little-known Pakistani militant group with ties to al Qaeda [the police and news sources named this group as Jundallah. This group is known to have links with Washington]. We will see as our story unfolds that this militant group was originally organized to punish Pakistan’s government for cooperating with the United States in hunting down militants. So if the police were correct, we can read the attack as one bloody episode in al Qaeda’s long war with the West.

But on another level, the Ashura bombing had little to do with the West. No Americans were targeted. The bombers did not even directly strike America’s allies in the Pakistani government, instead wiping out common citizens on the street. People in the United States barely noticed the attack, which received only brief coverage in the midst of the American holiday season…. The Ashura bombing was instead an atrocity staged for a local audience, in which attackers and victims alike were Muslims. We may better understand it as part of a long battle within Islam [Is Inskeep calling it a “sectarian” battle between the “Shias” and “Sunnis”?], as well as a struggle for power in Pakistan. The details of the attack – the targeting of a vulnerable minority, the state’s failure to provide effective security, and explosives placed with awful symbolism in a box of damaged Korans – reflected disturbing trends through much of the modern Muslim world. [Inskeep needs to read the history of Taliban and al Qaeda and their creators once again; for instance, see here] They also reflected Pakistan’s own peculiar problems….

Karachi also faces a diversity of conflicts, which came into play after the Ashura bombing. [Why only after the bombing? Why separate the two incidents - bombing and fires? Is it possible that the pre-pared arsonists did not know about the bombing? If they did, were they and their interests then not involved from the beginning?] A second event extended the day’s destruction, and revealed more of the competing pressures that shape the instant city. Rival politicians, businessman, soldiers, and thugs jostle for power and land. Religion, while often invoked, is just one of several social divides; people are at least as likely to be split by their class, the location of their ancestral village, or the language they speak at home. Few people trust the government to mediate their differences. All these conflicts combine and intensify one another, like pouring chemicals on a building that’s already on fire, creating unpredictable conflagrations that define life and death in Karachi. (p. 29)

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The fires spread along the route we have just traced, beginning at the banyan tree.

Minutes after the Ashura blast, people began breaking into the closed stores in the Lighhouse Bazaar. They pried open the corrugated metal gate to a store selling bolts of cloth and shiny men’s suits. The shop reached far back into the building; the men set it all on fire. Other shops were torched the same way. Some people crossed the street from the bazaar to the old city hall. They smashed the windows of the city fumigation trucks parked by the building and torched them one after another. Soon the flames reached a portion of the building itself. Fire trucks began arriving within minutes, but the crews were quickly driven away by the enraged survivors…

[Compare the above text in which Inskeep describes the scene at the Lighthouse area in terms of an “enraged” crowd that had lost control or gone mad, to how he describes (just four paragraphs later) the scene at the Bolton Market and its coordinated and pre-planned logic. Bolton Market was just a mile away from the Lighthouse area.]

“There was fire all around,” remembered Faisal Edhi of the ambulance service. “I was there about one and a half hours. We were asking the fire brigade to fight against the fire, but they were not present there, they were afraid to come.” They only came later, and “the markets were burned by that time.”

The thousands of police and paramilitary troops along the route made little effort to control the situation, choosing instead to make a tactical retreat.

In the video room at the Civic Centre, Bobby Memon and the police officials saw the chaos unfolding and made no effective response. In Memon’s view, it was a simple lack of coordination. “We always talk about that in a city like Karachi, there should be a central command system; they should have a camera working; and that should be linked to the barricade – should be linked to the ambulances – linked to the hospitals. And that’s only where you can respond to a crisis situation,” he said. Any police officer watching those scenes “was just in there watching. If something happened, what were they going to do?”

Other accounts suggested that the chain of command worked only too well – and that it restrained the police from acting. A Pakistani newspaper, the News International, reported that police requested permission to shoot the arsonists and were refused. Officials feared that if they responded to the violence with force, the situation would escalate and the whole city would explode.

During that first hour after the blast, two dozen or more men appeared on Jinnah Road. Many were about a mile ahead of where the parade had stopped – on the far side of the old city hall. Here they stood between long grand buildings of yellow stone – Gizri stone, it was called, after the location of the quarry that produced it. This was the wholesale district, known as Bolton Market.

The men broke into National Arms, a store that had sold weapons on this spot since 1948, and made off with Chinese- and Turkish-made handguns. They broke into a second gun store. Some men had torches. Soon entire buildings were in flames.

Television crews broadcast much of this live, which was how the shopkeeper learned of the destruction of his property… (p. 31)

Once the fire crews felt secure enough to operate, they moved from one burning building to another, yet the fires did not die. Mustafa Kamal, the younger mayor of Karachi, moved among the firefighters, offering exhortations and encouragement. It was much too late. The fires burned all night and for several days afterward. Hundreds of shops were destroyed. More than a dozen people were killed in the chaos on the streets.

“Who do you think did all the burning?” I asked Rashid, the plastic seller.

“I just don’t understand,” he replied. He reminded me that the fires in the Bolton Market only seemed to have spread to one side of Jinnah Road. “You will see that all the shops on the right side are affected. Not a single shop on the left side was burnt. Not a single shutter was broken.” That was one of many observations that shopkeepers made to each other as they speculated that certain buildings or blocks might have been deliberately targeted.

A question began forming in their minds – a question without any firm foundation [??], but one shopkeeper after another was asking it.

Was someone trying to clear off certain properties for later use?

Their question was spreading like the fires. (p. 32)

Flames and smoke still rose over Bolton Market, visible for miles through Karachi’s haze, as police began to investigate. Agents from Pakistan’s equivalent of the FBI arrived up the street at the Lighthouse Centre; we have already glimpsed them, peering at steel nuts and dead bodies. They were joined by the special investigations unit of the Karachi police, which handles terrorism cases.

The antiterrorism specialists who focused on the bombing case did not examine the fires at all, classifying them as, essentially, unrelated crimes. “There were two different things,” said Raja Umer Khattab, a senior superintendent of police, when we talked about the case. “One is the blast, and the second is after the blast.” He told me that separate investigators were assigned to the fires, and their examination produced only the arrests of a few Shia Muslims, in line with the policy theory of the case: the fires were set by people in the procession who were enraged by the bombing.

This explanation appeared to satisfy almost nobody outside the police force. Abbas Kumeli, the Shia Muslim leader, argued that the theory made no sense. Granted, the Shia marchers were standing there at the Lighthouse Centre, where some of the fires took place, but the marchers were nowhere near the Bolton Market. Why had the worst fires been set there? Why would angry Shia marchers walk past a mile of buildings and leave them all untouched, then start lighting fires again?

In the absence of a convincing official explanation, people were already supplying their own. (p.33)

In search of more information, I visited the local office of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan… In the commission’s offices… [t]he man I had come to see led the way to a conference table in the breeze near an open window. His name was Abdul Hai. In the days after the fires, he was part of a Human Rights Commission team that conducted its own interviews with shopkeepers and others. Their report released on January 9, 2010, included this provocative paragraph:

“After interviewing and listening [to] the sufferers points of view, the team was of the opinion that the burning and looting was preplanned and was done by 25 to 30 persons who were fully trained and were possessing steel cutters, tools, fire arms and chemicals. It is very important to note that [the] procession of mourners after the bomb blast passed away and there was none of them at burning and looting sites.”

An operation that was preplanned? It was a strong statement in an otherwise carefully worded report. A covering note minimized its key finding: “This report is a mere compilation of the views of people affected directly by the attack.” Not, in other words, any sort of official conclusion.

Abdul Hai made a copy of his report on the Ashura bombing and gave me a chance to look it over. He emphasized again that the report simply passed on the claims of shopkeepers. “I have no opinion,” he said, gradually becoming more vague and evasive, or so it seemed to me.

I pressed him politely. He was a professional; he knew Karachi, he had talked with victims, some of whom may have witnessed the fires; he had even issued this report. What did he think might have happened? Who was responsible for burning several blocks of the city?

Some kind of mafia, he said.

And who might that be?

“Ah,” he said, in a tone that suggested: Now there’s the hard part. “Everybody knows, but nobody will tell you,” he said. “These mafias are all under the shelter of the police.”

As I moved across the city asking questions, it sometimes seemed that Abdul Hai had it right: everybody knew, but nobody would tell. Usually, however, it seemed to be the other way around. People across the city opened their lives and their hearts to me. Many were eager to tell me what happened that day.

I just wasn’t sure if anybody knew…

After the Ashura fires, everybody seemed to have a conspiracy theory. One came from Faisal Edhi. “I think it was a conspiracy to cause a clash between Shias and Sunnis,” he told me. He believed that the burned shops belonged to Sunni Muslims, who were deliberately attacked in tandem with the bombing of the Shia procession. Maybe so, though I later met a Shia shop owner who had also lost everything.

Other theories implicated the city’s two leading political parties. The major parties had armed wings as well as links to various criminals. One notion pointed to the city’s ruling party, Mayor Kamal’s [Altaf Hussain's] party, the MQM. Some hypotheses said the MQM destroyed the shops of political opponents, or tried to repossess the land for the city’s use [“city’s use”??]. No proof emerged.

Another theory blamed arsonists under the protection of the MQM’s political rivals, the Bhutto family’s Pakistan People’s Party, or PPP. That wasn’t proven either, although the police and Rangers, who failed so miserably to stop the fires, were under the authority of PPP government ministers.

When I met with Raja Umer, the police investigator, I asked about the claims of storekeepers and other witnesses, who believed that chemicals had been poured on the fires to accelerate the burning. People traded stories of arsonists wearing gloves and holding weapons. “No, no, this is wrong,” said Raja Umer. “Totally wrong. People said those who were burning the shops were wearing gloves they kept with them so they would not leave fingerprints. But after investigation it was decided that there was a medical store that was broken into.”

“They were wearing surgical gloves?”

“Yes,” he said. And the fires burned so fiercely not because of chemical accelerants, but simply because the buildings and their contents were so flammable. “It was a chemical market, a plastic market, clothes market, so it can burn easily. There is no evidence we can get about chemicals used for burning.”

Raja Umer’s assurances did not prevent members of Karachi’s elites from casting their own suspicions. One of the more chilling theories came from Yasmeen Lari, a woman who was well connected to Karachi’s political establishment and among the city’s most distinguished architects – she was known as “the first woman architect in Pakistan.” She led Pakistan’s Heritage Foundation, dedicated to preserving historic buildings and other artifacts; when thousands of old documents were found in that giant pile in the city hall clock tower, it was Yasmeen Lari’s foundation that organized an effort to begin preserving and archiving them. She also went into action after the fires. She rushed to the ruined markets, many of which were in buildings dating back to colonial times. City officials were inclined to tear down what little of buildings remained, but she sought to save historic facades. And this work led to her theory: she, like the shopkeepers, believed that somebody wanted the land beneath the stores.

“I’ve come to this conclusion,” she told me, “because M. A. Jinnah Road is now prime commercial land. These buildings are three or four stories high. They were burned down to try to see if, you know, a multistory tower could be put up in their place. Because as soon as we got to the site, within a few days, although we were offering that we would try to raise money for them to restore buildings, these owners kept on saying to me, ‘Don’t worry, we have no problem of money, we have people who are sitting there saying they will build it for us.’ So the question is how come?” Many of the buildings were full of shopkeepers whose families rented space at exceedingly low rates, having held on to their shops for generations. It would not be unprecedented for real estate owners to seize a chance to burn out tenants. “There is a huge mafia in this city,” Yasmeen Lari said, “which really wants to get this prime piece of land to build these multistory towers. I have no doubt in my mind there was great conspiracy.”

I heard an even darker version of this theory from Arif Hasan, a Karachi urban planner and architect who was writing a five-volume history of his city. Hasan was a broad-faced and solid man, whose stern expression somehow carried with it a hint of mirth. Sitting behind the white table in his home office, Hasan spoke in his quiet and precise voice. “Land mafias” had been growing in power for many years, he said, seizing real estate by any means and maximizing its value. “Our politicians became a part of it,” Hasan said. At first the politicians were in control of the mafias, or imagined that they were. “But then the Bolton Market tragedy happened,” he said, “and that showed our politicians that the mafia was stronger than them.”

Hasan had identified something that drove a city when it grew this rapidly – drove its economy, its politics, its conversation, its dreams and its nightmares. Real estate was the heart of the instant city in the early twenty-first century. It was a swiftly growing city’s true faith, a source of passion, hope, mystery, and superstition. Even if all the conspiracy theories were completely wrong (and certainly none was ever proved), the political result was the same. The abruptly vacant land took center stage in the political debate.

Even the bombing of the Shias prompted less comment than the real estate. A reporter for the News International wrote a few days later, “Within an hour of the Ashura blast, which tragically was quickly forgotten, the battle for prime real estate of Karachi began in earnest.” Shias were always being killed in Pakistan. But real estate on Jinnah Road did not become available every day. The question of what to do with the Bolton Market land instantly became a problem for everyone, including Karachi’s mayor, Mustafa Kamal. It even attracted interest and money from the United States.

When I thought about Arif Hasan’s theories of the Bolton Market fires, I recalled something he’d told me a couple of years before. He compared the situation in Karachi to man’s ancient lust for gold.

“Land has replaced gold,” he said. “Everything that was done for gold, is now done for land.” (p. 37)

:
:

Fire crews put out the last of the flames after hundreds of shops were destroyed, but it would be harder to tamp down the political debate. The People’s Party claimed the MQM had failed to properly mobilize the fire crews, which were under the control of MQM politicians. The MQM said the People’s Party had failed to unleash the police. This distraction came at a moment of great tension, when the People’s Party, the MQM, and other political parties were maneuvering against each other for the long-term control of Karachi. The provincial law that had created the local government was about to expire. The parties disagreed on whether and how to renew it, and their indecision raised the possibility that the mayor, the city council, and every other elected official could see their offices changed or even abolished. The moment was even more dangerous because Karachi’s political parties were generally divided between ethnic groups – or more precisely language groups, because each major group had its own tongue, such as Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi, Baloch, and Pashto, and language was the way many defined themselves. A man’s political rival was also his blood enemy, implicated in ethnic warfare that gone on for decades… [I feel that Inskeep is overgeneralizing from the “ethnic” warfare of particular political parties.]

They year of 2009 was an unusually deadly one for politicians and activists, hundreds of whom were killed [in many cases these were common, innocent persons who would be killed in this warfare and later claimed by one political party or the other as its member], but the monthly pace actually increased in January 2010, according to the figures compiled by the Human Rights Commission. During that month thirty-seven deaths fell under the heading of “targeted killing,” which was the typical phrase for the shootings by gunmen who rolled away on motorcycles. Twenty-six more deaths were labeled “political workers killed.” These figures included a political worker who was beheaded in early January. Were the killings related? Unrelated? Who really knew? Many people had theories, but few of the crimes were ever solved. (p. 38)

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My notes: Considering the footage of arsonists and their preparation, among other pieces of evidence, the Ashura bombing was clearly a pre-planned and well-coordinated crime. There is a penchant among many international news reporters of dismissing the possibility of hidden hands and their interests by citing lack of evidence or calling such a possibility a conspiracy theory, instead of uncovering these hands. What this often does (although Inskeep’s account is more nuanced than this) is that the ‘obvious’ causes are taken as the real and only causes – the extremists and their fanatic mindset in the case of the Ashura bombing. The discerning observers who are familiar with Karachi’s politics know which political “ethnic” groups have connections to land mafia in that particular area on the M. A. Jinnah road. And, which “ethnic” political groups have connections to the extremist militants, and which groups have tried to use the specter of Talibanization to target other political groups, their constituencies, and property. And the discerning observers also know the politics of the statements (of condemnation of such crimes and condolences to all bereaved) released to the news media by the same political groups. With such  background information, it is not that difficult to reduce the possibility of the hidden hands to one to two equations - as opposed to throwing this possibility into the basket of “conspiracy theory”. Many local journalist know the hands behind the Ashura bombing, but they would not name these perpetrators because of the risk to their life (and other reasons). But international journalists have more room and security. They should present some conclusions, instead of calling this pursuit as doing conspiracy theory.

Shia killing on the rise in Pakistan

The last two months have witnessed a surge in Shia killing, with tragic instances in Kohistan (K-PK), Parachinar (FATA), Khanpur (Punjab), and Quetta, Karachi, and D.I. Khan. The causes, again, are complex, and the local, national, and international forces all appear entangled. For one, I doubt that Jundallah (based in the Balochistan province, which claimed responsibility of the Kohistan attack on Feb 28) could have done this attack without support of the local militant groups in that remote area of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province (that is, if Jundallah did indeed carry out this attack). Jundallah's Washington connection is also well known. The attackers were also said to be wearing army uniforms.

On the interconnections among various militant groups and their foreign supporters as identified in wikileaks cables, see here.

The Pakistani media -- and police -- often frames the target killing of the Shias as a "sectarian conflict". The label implies that Pakistani Sunni and Shia communities are fighting against each other. That is far from the truth. The label also hides the fact that both Shias and Sunnis have been killed by the same militant groups (for instance, see here and here). The label, moreover, gives a sense of symmetry ("Sunnis kill Shias, then Shias kill Sunnis"), whereas in reality a disproportionally high number of Shias have been killed or injured in recent years. It is more appropriate to call the recent surge as "Shia" killing, not "sectarian" killing. Each incident also requires a nuanced analysis of the causes (consider, for instance, the entangled causes surrounding the December 2009 Ashura blast in Karachi).

Twenty dead in Karachi violence

BBC reports that "at least 20 have been killed" in yesterday's spree of target killings which appear to be part of ongoing ethnic-political rivalry between two groups in Karachi. See previous posts on this topic: Feb 2, 2010; May 25, 2009; May 11, 2009; May 1, 2009.

Eighteen dead as violence revisits Karachi
Dawn, May 20, 2010
Source

KARACHI: At least 18 people were killed in a fresh wave of ethnic and political killings across Karachi on Wednesday.

A four-year-old boy was killed along with his father in one of the attacks.

The targeted killings staged a comeback just a day after the coalition parties reiterated their pledge to work together for peace and prosperity of Sindh.

Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah ordered agencies concerned to take effective measures for maintaining law and order.

Talking to a delegation of the Awami National Party, led by Amin Khattak, he gave the assurance that those involved in the killings would be arrested soon and taken to task.

He asked the administration and law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on the activities of miscreants, increase deployment of police and Rangers and ensure a round-the-clock police patrol.

The chief minister said that some miscreants were out to disturb the law and order situation in Karachi for “ulterior motives” and their designs would be foiled by the coalition parties with the cooperation of citizens.

Home Minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza and Karachi police chief Wasim Ahmad also attended the meeting.

The chief minister also went to the Governor’s House and exchanged views with Dr Ishratul Ibad on the law and order situation and other matters, including by-election for a vacant seat of the Senate.

Both leaders expressed concern over the incidents of lawlessness and ordered the authorities concerned to take immediate and effective action.

They also consulted leaders of coalition parties, including the ANP’s provincial chief Shahi Syed.

The governor and the chief minister stressed the need for the elected representatives to help improve the situation in their areas.

They appealed to people to maintain unity and keep an eye on miscreants.

Qaim Ali Shah and Ishratul Ibad asked the authorities concerned to point out the reasons for recurring incidents of lawlessness and elements involved in them.

“It is a matter of concern that criminal elements play with the life of innocent people after intervals for their nefarious designs,” they said.

The governor and the chief minister stressed the need for coordination between the allied parties at the lowest level.

They expressed hope that the coordination committee of coalition parties would sort out the matter on Thursday.

MQM Plea to ANP

The Muttahida Qaumi Movement appealed to the ANP and those leading a movement for Hazara province to refrain from issuing provocative statements and resolve all issues through dialogue.

In a statement, the MQM coordination committee said that like any political party, the people of Hazara had a right to demand a separate province. Like other communities, the people of Hazara also had a right on Karachi, it added.

GEO Documentary: Security Failures in Karachi Muharram Blasts

See below for GEO-TV's investigative report in Urdu on the security failures before and on the day of Ashura in Karachi. My comments can be seen here: "Six Talking Points About the Ashura Blast in Karachi" and "Muharram Blasts in Karachi: Why The Government is Implicated". Further, "On Militant Extremists in Pakistan and their Supporters."


Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


See a similar investigative report by Dunya News that was released soon after the Ashura blast (December 28, 2010). It was very timely and insightful.

Muharram Blasts in Karachi: Why the Government is Implicated

The government is of course implicated in these blasts. First, because the government is supposed to protect its citizens and their religious and civil rights. Unfortunately, some government officials once again want to blame their security failures on the public nature of the Muharram commemorations. They fail to recognize that be it indoor or outdoor location – government buildings, mosques, or schools – they have failed to stop terrorists from carrying out their attacks in the last couple of years. They also fail to recognize that Imambargah Ali Raza, Masjid-e Haideri, Mehfil-e Murtaza, and a number of other religious places that were hit by terrorists in the past few years were all indoor locations.

But, the failure to take adequate security measures is not the only reason that the government is implicated in this tragedy. For years, the power-holders and policy makers in this country have nurtured and manipulated the extremist-militant elements, within and outside of Pakistan, in the name of security, ‘strategic depth’, and ‘Jihad’. During the Cold War, these extremist groups openly received funding, training, and, quite often, their agenda through middlemen or directly from America and Saudi Arabia. Both of these powers were interested in curbing the influence of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and containing the Soviet advancements. The ‘establishment’ also saw it in its interest to support this agenda. From the 1980s onward, the security agencies allowed, and even endorsed, these extremist elements to spread hatred and violence against all others that did not confirm to their twisted ‘Jihadist’ ideology and politics – Shia and Sunni alike.

However, more recently, when this policy backfired and the country suffered the blowback with waves of suicide attacks and bomb blasts, the establishment took recourse in propagating a distinction between “Good Taliban” and “Bad Taliban”. Good Taliban are those who still follow their dictate; the Bad Taliban are those who have become independent or who now take their dictates and funding directly from other powers, within or outside of the country. While the Musharraf regime claimed to fight the war on terror, it continued to support the “Good Taliban” over the last decade with the money received in military aid from the US. The perpetual ‘India threat’ paranoia of the establishment as well as their desire for “strategic depth” was also at work. The establishment also feared that once the NATO forces would leave Afghanistan, Pakistan would be left with a hostile neighbor. (The “strategic depth” policy was recently reiterated by General Ashfaq Kayani, albeit in a modified version). What the establishment has not realized yet is that there are no good or bad Taliban – neither is good for the future of Pakistan or Afghanistan. Furthermore, America is not leaving Afghanistan in any near future. The “Af-Pak” is the new geographical category in the neo-imperial planning, with assigned roles given to both countries.

The establishment needs to stop using the “Good” Taliban and similar extremist-militant groups within and outside Pakistan as tools for its strategic objectives. This policy has demonized Islam and ideologically polarized the Pakistani society. Furthermore, the establishment needs to stop playing as mercenaries in the neo-imperial American plans for the region, under pressure and/or for military assistance. The American presence in the region, and its continuous bombardment and killing in the last few years, has only fueled more extremism and violence. Pakistan did not have any suicide bombers in 1998, and now it exports them! More violence gives the US more reasons to stay in this region to keep a check on Iran, Russia, and China. The so called “war on terror” has actually allowed Washington to expand its neo-imperial ambitions. Furthermore, for years now, America, Israel, and India have continuously conspired to undermine and neutralize Pakistan's nuclear capabilities. It is clear that Pakistani interests and those of the foreign powers are diametrically opposed to each other, and it makes no sense for the establishment to continue following the line given to it by Washington.

The civilian government is similarly implicated. The conditions under which the deal between General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto was brokered by the Bush Administration are still unclear. The NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance) was certainly one manifestation of that deal. Now it is an open secret that the establishment and the civilian governments are at odds with each other. First, over consolidation of one's power over the other. Next, over the agenda given to the civilian government by Washington. That tussle was clearly reflected in the civilian government’s failed attempt to bring the ISI under its control in July 2008. This tussle is a major reason for the ongoing instability in Pakistan.

Furthermore, the civilian government shares the responsibility of the tragedy because it showed no serious interest in tracing the hands behind the Ashura blast. No independent inquiry commission was set up. Rather, the government seemed more concerned about maintaining its political alliances and holding on to power. Otherwise, there was clear evidence about the systematic nature of the Ashura attack and the violence in the aftermath, and if examined carefully, the evidence would have unmasked many faces. However, the multiple hands that could have been exposed in the investigation are once again being covered up by throwing the labels of "suicide bombing" and "Talibanization" in public discourse. These labels serve as both description and explanation of violence: Call it "mindless fanaticism" and then there is no need to dig deeper for the hidden hands or bigger game plans. If the government is really sincere, then it should set up an independent inquiry commission to investigate both the apparent and hidden perpetrators and bring them to justice.

For specifics of the Ashura blast and the list of questions it raised, see "Six Talking Points about the Ashura Blast in Karachi." See a brief report of the Chehlum (or Arbaeen) blasts here.

Arbaeen Procession in Karachi: A Short Eyewitness Account

"There were clear reports in the media that the Arbaeen (also called, Chehlum) procession in Karachi would be targeted by terrorists once again, following the deadly attack on the last Ashura. No real guarantees that anyone participating in the commemorations would return home safely. But that did not stop the mourners from joining. It was estimated that the turn out was at least three times higher than usual – much more than what was on the day of the last Ashura. A good number of mourners came wearing symbolic white shrouds. Some shrouds had written on them Azadari Ya Shahadat (Commemoration or Martyrdom!), others had Shahadat Sa'adat (Martyrdom is Success). Even after reports of the two blasts that came one after another within the span of just two hours in the afternoon, the mourners – men, women, children, elderly – continued their march, unceasingly chanting, Labbaik Ya Hussain, Labbaik Ya Hussain.

The mourners clearly understood that the real target was Muharram processions. The enemies wanted to confine these processions to indoors. They wanted to reduce them to a spiritless ritual, so that these gatherings that inspire the world with the message of truth and resistance against injustice of any kind would not be effective any more. After the last Ashura blast, some well-intentioned but naïve people in the authorities also made similar suggestions of "limiting" or "confining" the processions in the name of security. But over years of being targeted by one or another form of violence, the Shias in Pakistan have understood very well the real goals of their enemies. The enemies want to impose a 'defeatist mentality' on them, that the Shias would be allowed to perform their religious practices as long as they remain invisible in the public sphere, and that they should not dare to interfere in determining the future of religion and politics in Pakistan or resist the neo-imperial plots in the region.

No single person or organization was controlling the miles-long Arbaeen procession on Friday. It had not been surprising for any other crowd to lose patience and break discipline upon hearing the news of the tragic blasts. That is perhaps what the terrorists would have wanted. But the self-discipline with which the mourners continued the procession spoke of their political maturity and fearless devotion as a nation. One was reminded of the political resilience and organized response of the Lebanese Shias during and after the 2006 Israeli war."

Also see,
Muharram Blasts in Karachi: Why the Government is Implicated

Six Talking Points about the Ashura blast in Karachi

photo courtesy: online

Dawn Editorial: Karachi violence continues

Karachi violence continues
Dawn Editorial, Feb 02, 2010
Source

A disturbingly familiar pattern of violence is once again emerging in Karachi, where over 15 people belonging to specific ethnic backgrounds have been killed since Friday. The latest round of violence began with the killing of an MQM activist, which led to greater bloodshed.

Political violence of this kind usually has a political explanation, and it appears that a turf war may have broken out now that the tentative date for the next local government elections has been announced. Lending credence to this theory are the areas in which the violence has broken out: neighbourhoods and townships such as Qasba and Orangi have pockets of Pakhtun populations and the ANP may be harbouring ambitions of electoral gains there — ambitions that are sure to be fiercely opposed by those who believe that these areas ‘belong’ to them.

Whatever the reasons for the violence, though, they are completely unacceptable. The city is being nudged towards ethnic strife. The parties that have clout in the restive areas must be bluntly told to control the violence. (Given the pattern of such violence — turned on and off like a faucet — it is inconceivable that the parties involved cannot stop it.) We understand there are other, historical reasons that are contributing to the violence: the fact that the city is armed to the teeth, the reality of a police force that is nakedly and thoroughly politicised, etc.

However, there is this fact, too: in certain areas inhabited by a specific ethnic group, no ‘outsider’ can even sit on a bus and pass through a ‘rival’ neighbourhood without being forced to disembark and questioned about his ‘unauthorised’ and ‘unwanted’ visit. So, whatever the grievances, whatever the rivalries, whatever the fears, the political parties must bluntly be told to take their hands off the trigger and in fact to exert their influence in a way that reduces, instead of exacerbates, ethnic tensions. Karachi is as much a tinder box for historical reasons as it is for the proclivity of its present masters to readily turn to violence, a proclivity that needs to be decisively curbed. We have said it before: there is something truly awful about the fact that Karachi is no safer from ethnic strife despite the fact that the three major parties in the city are all in government together. We did not expect democracy to be an immediate panacea. But neither did we expect a return to the bad old days so quickly.

Six Talking Points about the Ashura Blast in Karachi

A few points for your consideration:

First, this blast on December 28, 2009 that killed over 50 people should be seen as part of the ongoing wave of violence against Shia Muslims in different parts of the country, including D.I. Khan, Hangu, Peshawar, and Parachinar. Hundreds have lost their lives in these attacks. They also are linked to broader wave of violence and blasts that have been going on throughout the country for the last couple of years.

Second, it was nothing less than a systematic and careful plot. Many local and international players were probably involved. Just a few days ago, four Jundallah members were captured by Karachi police, which claimed that the members confessed their involvement in the three Muharram blasts in Karachi this year, including the Ashura blast. Jundallah is widely known for its connection to the US (see an acknowledgment in ABC News). Jundallah is also known for its connection to local extremist-militant groups in Pakistan.

However, one should also take the Police's claim with a grain of salt, given their silence on how exactly were these members involved, and given the way the Police works in Pakistan: It is not unimaginable for the Police that under the pressure of their superiors or public demanding justice and efficiency they would capture innocent people or petty criminals and charge them for a high-profile crime.

It is hard to tell the reality of those captured from outside. It won't be surprising if those captured were really not responsible for the blast. But that should not invalidate the general statement that various interests were probably behind this blast (which I argue further below). This also should not invalidate the fact that since the 'Afghan Jihad' many extremist-militant groups in Pakistan have more or less remained connected to and dependent on Pakistan's security agencies, and some of them directly to foreign actors (like in the case of Jundallah). Their involvement in “sectarian” violence in the past is no secret. Time and again, they have done their master's bidding. Jundallah, for example, claimed responsibility of the bomb blast in the Iran-Pakistan border area in October 2009 that killed more than 40 people including Iranian military officials and local tribal elders – Sunni and Shia both.

Third, consider also the systematic nature of arson and torching of shops and buildings in the particular vicinity (Bolton Market) by masked miscreants who were all dressed in black and came prepared with cutters and inflammable chemicals. All of this was captured by security cameras (see Urdu clip from Dunya News). It is hard to imagine that they could be the Azadars (participants of the Muharram processions) with those accessories ready who somehow knew beforehand that a blast would happen and they would have the opportunity to steal and torch those shops.

Consider also that the "reactionary violence" by "angry protesters" - as some news sources framed it - happened only in the Bolton Market. If the reactionary violence was indeed caused by irrational impulses of angry protesters, then the systematic arson and property destruction should have happened at multiple points in the miles long procession on the M. A. Jinnah road. The plotters surely screwed up this part in their planning.

The blast and its aftermath were clearly well-planned, perhaps coordinated among multiple groups whose diverse interests all converged into making it happen in Karachi.

Fourth, to frame these attacks as "sectarian" in the news misleads an uninitiated viewer into believing that this is a fight between the Sunnis and Shias in Pakistan. That is not true. For one, consider the background of people killed in the Ashura blast: according to one report 15 of the 50 killed were Sunnis, two Bohra Shias, and one Christian. Anyone familiar with the ground reality in Pakistan knows that Muharram processions are widely attended by Muslims from diverse sectarian background, and at some places, even non-Muslims also participate. Thus the processions are not an exclusive tradition of Shias, contrary to how it is framed in the international news media. They are for all those who want to commemorate the noble sacrifice of the grandson of the Holy Prophet, Imam Hussain. However, the reductive representation in the international news media further distorts the image of Sunni-Shia differences in the mind of general viewers: An attack on Muharram procession is automatically seen as an attack on "Shias by Sunnis" in news and analysis. Perhaps that was also the intention of the perpetrators of these attacks: to provoke sectarian differences and to distance Sunnis from Shias (and Muharram processions).

This is not a fight between Sunnis and Shias in Pakistan. The ongoing wave of terrorist attacks is aimed at not only Shias but also those Sunnis who are against extremism or who do not fit into the strategic equations of the bigger players in this game. Maulana Sarfraz Ahmed Naemi who was killed in a suicide attack on June 12, 2009 is a case in point. (For the role of the Taliban in Pakistan and how their various groups intentionally or unintentionally play into the hands of bigger players, see here).

Fifth, the Ashura blast should also be seen in relation to the "ethnic" clashes among different groups that are going on in Karachi for many months now. The clashes are partly about political control against the fear of a demographic shift (with the continuous influx of "migrants" from northern Pakistan (and interior Punjab) areas) and partly about land-grabbing interests. In the past, concerns were raised by different groups that a certain ethnic group may be targeted in the name of curbing "Talibanization" in Karachi. That, all it would require is a provocation - from whatever side it may come from and in whatever name it may be carried out (sectarian or otherwise) to spark clashes. In response, others contended that there was indeed a rise of extremist-militant activities in certain neighborhoods in Karachi and the "Talibanization" threat was real and imminent.

In one broader perspective, the purpose of planned violence all throughout the country is to pressurize the civilian government or the Army to give in to certain demands, and for that reason, Blackwater's role should also be considered in any investigation (See Blackwater in Pakistan: Loose End or Larger Strategy). Another perspective suggests that the volatile conditions may further weaken the central government and destroy its political alliances, paving the way for a sweeping political change.

Sixth, in the global context, one should also question the simultaneous escalation in "sectarian" violence in Iraq and Pakistan. Political analysts argue that instability in Pakistan, Iraq, and particularly Lebanon are key indicators of possibly a decisive move by the US or Israel against Iran and/or Palestinian resistance. Instability in the case of Pakistan and Iraq would lead to further chaos, so their populations would be kept busy in themselves. For Lebanon, it may be internal strife among different militia groups or an attempt to 'neutralize' the resistance movement so that it cannot respond to any major Israeli or US aggression against Palestine or Iran.

One should carefully follow the developments on the international scene, including the media's role in manufacturing consent for wars. In the last couple of days, front page headlines on the line that 'US arms gulf states against Iran attack' were seen on all major news sources in the US and UK (See, for example, NYTimes, WSJ, Telegraph). Recently, General David Petraeus, who heads the US Central Command overseeing US forces in the Middle East, Gulf, and Central Asia, has repeatedly made provocative statements about bombing Iran. However, this also could be just psyops to pressurize Iran. On a related note, on Jan 18, 2010, the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz reported that the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Lebanon that "Israel may be planning attack". A statement like this to come from Turkey is not very usual.

Within the context of these reports, the point here is to keep an eye out for political developments at the international level, as they will certainly have an impact on politics at the national and local levels in concerned countries.

Commenting on the Indian reaction to the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, the Pulitzer Prize winner author, Arundhati Roy wrote in her characteristic perceptive style (Guardian, Dec 12, 2008): "Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible."

Building on the same premise, the above talking points draw attention to the multitude of players (rather than simply the "Taliban"). All evidence suggest that the Ashura blast should not be seen as an isolated occurrence and cannot be simply explained through "mindless fanaticism" of the "Taliban" (without tracing the hands behind them). Moreover, these talking points raise the question of interests and ends: Who benefits? And, how do such tragic events fit in the broader equations of different political players?

Ethno-Nationalist Parties in Sindh React to IDPs Arrival

Editorial: Reaction to IDPs in Sindh
Daily Times, May 25, 2009
Source

Just as the army was engaged in battle with the Taliban inside Mingora in Swat, the internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the region were facing hostile reaction in Sindh. At the call of the MQM, the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz and other “nationalist” forces, the province of Sindh experienced a virtual shutdown on Saturday in response. Outside Karachi, the strike was more or less peaceful, except in Hyderabad where there was heavy firing reported from many localities; a coaster and a car were set ablaze in Tandojam, and an agriculture department jeep was torched in Qasimabad. Scores of JSQM activists were arrested in Khairpur, Nawabshah and Mirpurkhas for forcing shopkeepers to close their shops.

In Karachi, the stronghold of the MQM, matters were different. During a near-total shutdown, a woman was killed when the rioters set a bus on fire while she was still inside. Three people were killed despite increased deployment of both police and Rangers, and young men on motorcycles torched at least 15 vehicles in the city, including several buses, two water tankers and a motorcycle. The reaction from the ANP, which defends the rights of the IDPs to take shelter anywhere in Pakistan, is a threat once again to resign from the Sindh cabinet. As usual, Mr Imran Khan has “slammed” the government’s decision to deny the Swat IDPs entry into Sindh even as the Sindh government denies it has banned entry to them.

The PPP federal information minister says the government is simply registering the IDPs before letting them into Sindh, and that takes time at the provincial border posts. The interior minister, Mr Rehman Malik, however, is clearly sticking to a policy of keeping the IDPs from scattering all over Pakistan. He says anyone leaving the NWFP and seeking refuge outside it will not get government aid. But the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, says the IDPs have the right to go anywhere in Pakistan, keeping in mind the Constitution of Pakistan which gives this right to them. Despite this, someone has gone to court in Karachi against anyone opposing the IDPs’ rights in this connection. But the picture is not as black and white as it appears.

Registration of IDPs was shown on TV as it was being done on the Sindh border. It is not an easy process for those who conduct it and for those who are subjected to it. The point made in favour of registration is that government aid will start flowing on this condition. But what if the IDPs say they don’t want any government aid? (This is what some of them actually said.) The other reason, however, is more worrisome, and that is that the government wants to make sure no Taliban terrorists are going in along with them. It is worrisome because one is not sure how the government plans to stop a Taliban onslaught in Karachi by this act of registration. There are already enough Taliban in Karachi to do the job and many of them are caught virtually everyday confessing that they have been “sent” by the Taliban high command to cause havoc in the city.

The reaction from the MQM is well known, but the new “solidarity” with their old foe on the party of the “nationalists” tells us that the fear of another migratory wave in Sindh is being felt despite all the sympathy expressed for the Swat IDPs at the national level. In this situation, the PPP too is likely to be defensive in not wanting to lose Sindhi votes to the nationalists. The riposte from these Sindhi parties is: that they too feel for them but why not settle them in Punjab? We are thus back to the old argument. The refugee will go where he has a community of co-ethnics to look after him. He will go in the direction where there are jobs on offer. And Karachi is a job magnet, not only for Pakistanis, but for the whole of Asia. The biggest irony, however, is that the IDPs are running away from the atrocities of their co-ethnic Taliban; and where they are going there are many co-ethnics who are ready to do the bidding of the Taliban.

But the war we are fighting today must be fought to the end. All the related difficulties can be dealt with, but not the consequences of abandoning it and going back to the status quo ante of gradually yielding ground to terrorism.