Date: Sat, 09 Oct 1999 23:00:48 +0800 From: Daedalus <manoo-AT-brunet.bn> Subject: PKF: Mime-Version: 1.0 <html> <font face="Comic Sans MS" size=6 color="#FF0000"><b><table border=0> <tr><th width=590>State strategy and sectarianism</font></b></th></tr> </b></table> <br> </b><font size=3 color="#000000"><table border=0> <tr><td width=590>Pakistan has once again hit international headlines, this time for its sectarian mayhem. In the last few days, dozens of followers of various religious organisations as well as innocent citizens have been murdered. But the government, as usual, seems confused about the identity of the perpetrators of the bloodbath. Punjab governor Zulfiqar Khosa has declared that "only Allah knows who has done it"; Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif has angrily pointed the finger at RAW; and federal interior minister Chaudhary Shujaat is double-minded - he says that while the intelligence agencies don't have a clue, he personally believes that the assassins have come from Afghanistan! To top it all, a Shia senator in Islamabad has put the blame squarely on the usual, elusive 'agencies'.</font></td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590>The murders started in Punjab in September after the prime minister released the chief of the biggest sectarian Sunni party, Maulana Azam Tariq of the Sipah-i-Sahaba, following some sort of an 'understanding' between the two of them. But no one paid attention to this development even though the Shia party aligned to the PML, the Tehreek-i-Jafria Pakistan, lodged a strong protest. It is said that Mr Sharif staked Maulana Tariq's release on his promise to oppose the Grand Democratic Alliance agitating against the government.</td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590>However, as if on cue after three sectarian Shia murders in Punjab, the killing fields have rapidly spread to Sindh and the NWFP. The intelligence agencies say that this is not a RAW operation, even though RAW may have been responsible for certain other acts of unexplained terrorism. Indeed, closer-to-home facts may be more relevant. The sectarian blood-letting is directly connected to the state's internal and external strategies. It may be recalled that General Zia ul Haq, aided and abetted by General Fazle Haq, tried to get rid of the Shias in Parachinar to facilitate their Afghan jehad. General Zia also encouraged the rise of sectarianism in Punjab so that, in due course, the demand for the apostatisation of the Shias arose from Punjab when the province became the centre of anti-Shia sentiment and much blood was spilled regularly, including the blood of Iranian diplomats.</td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590>Now the trail of blood is leading to Sindh and the NWFP. What was considered a Punjab problem has become an all-Pakistan crisis. Whether we like it or not, the "Sunni state" is willy-nilly in the process of cleansing its Shia population. Despite the government's pious declarations and the lack of involvement of the people of Pakistan, Shias are being killed because of the state's "strategic reflex". And the fact that the Shias have retaliated by killing Sunnis in Karachi who belonged to two sectarian outfits also involved in the Kashmir jehad suggests that the state's 'low-cost external option' is taking a heavy toll at home. Therefore, instead of knee-jerk answers, we must look at the strategic picture closely in order to get at the other face of the truth.</td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590>Pakistan is "supporting" two jehads in territories on its borders where the majority populations are Sunni. The mujahideen who enter these territories from Pakistan are exclusively Sunni, belonging to militias that have an anti-Shia dogma. On the other hand, and from the start, the Shia groups have stayed away from the jehad in Afghanistan and Kashmir - the Hazaras of Afghanistan looking to Iran for their safety and the Shias of Kargil staying clear of the struggle. But in Pakistani cities, where the Shia-Sunni populations are less imbalanced, the sectarian war is popular and intense, instigated by the militias which also pose as the mujahideen. And in the three areas of balanced populations - Jhang in Punjab, Gilgit in the Northern Areas and Parachinar in the Tribal Areas - the rise of the jehadi policy in Pakistan vis-a-vis Afghanistan and Kashmir has led to sinister consequences. Certain state agencies allow publication of patently anti-Shia articles in the national press which also warn against the setting up of a 'new pro-American' province in Gilgit-Baltistan. Therefore, when the jehadi militias become hostile to the government in power, it is the latter which is forced to 'remove the misunderstandings'. Governments are also inclined to take steps without thinking of the consequences: Benazir Bhutto unwittingly chose to back the Pakistan-supported mujahideen who were intensely anti-Shia; and Nawaz Sharif has freed sectarian Sunni leader Azam Tariq of Jhang from jail while kicking Shia minister Abida Husain from Jhang out of his cabinet.</td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590>The tilt of the state in favour of jehad actually means the arming of the Sunni fanatics against the Shias. But when the Shias arm themselves in defence, they are immediately branded as "sectarian" and disarmed through appropriate police operations. The state is thus seen as taking sides in the sectarian war. This is a very dangerous perception. The Shia population is very large, the Shias are found in all the institutions of the state, including the armed forces, and they occupy important professional positions in civil society. But, barring the Shia organisations which have spawned in reaction to Sunni fanaticism, the Shias are non-sectarian and unconnected with Iran's regional strategy. Unfortunately, however, the sectarian elimination of the Shias is gradually sowing the seeds in the Shia community of a subconscious reaction and inclination to become a separate 'nation' within Pakistan.</td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590>Pakistan's regional strategy has also brought it into collision with Iran. It is Pakistan's Sunni-centric policy that renders it helpless in the face of the compulsion for policy-change in Kashmir, Central Asia and Afghanistan. The Shia of the region can no longer communicate with it. The moderate Muslims of Central Asia have been forced to lean towards Iran and India. Pakistan's biggest reversal has actually been brought on by this brand of politics. India is consulting with the US on the fanaticism of the Taliban whose anti-Shia politics actually unfolds in Pakistan; Iran is consulting with India on the terrorism that emanates from the seminaries of Pakistan; and China is inclined to consult with India, Russia, Iran and the US to rein in the Sunni terror 'blowback' reaching it in the province of Sinkiang. Now Russia is consulting with the US on the Sunni-Islamic terrorism in Chechnya and Dagestan.</td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590>The killing fields of sectarianism in Pakistan actually reflect a strategy that has become obsolete over the years, causing extreme isolationism. The burden of this isolation is now falling on the people of Pakistan. The establishment is no longer able to junk this obsolescence because its 'experts' have acquired partisan vested interests not only for themselves but also for their Sunni seminaries. In exchange, the seminaries continue to prepare the ground for the strategy of jehad within civil society, thus building up an irresistible pressure on the politicians. Therefore everybody in Pakistan seems to be committed to a strategy that increases Pakistan's isolation and brings it diplomatic reversals.</td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590>Is Pakistan condemned to creating new nations within itself because of its rigid strategies? Has it progressed unthinkingly in the direction of creating a Sunni state on top of a mixed population? The Shias were the first to rebel when Zakat was imposed by General Zia as a device of self-legitimisation. This was the most thoughtless step taken by the dictator which his successors have adopted as an article of faith. The non-Muslims were also reduced to a nation of 'zimmis' through the introduction of separate electorates, which helped produce the demand among Sunni extremists for the apostatisation of the Shias. The state also nurtured the muhajirs of Karachi into a new 'nation' but was offended when they demanded their own homeland within Pakistan. And so on.</td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590>The killing of the Shias in Pakistan is an unwitting progression of the state towards the spawning of a new disaffected 'nation'. The tragedy is that there is little ability within the establishment and among the politicians to grasp the danger and change the strategy of the state to save it from imploding under the weight of its own ideological rigidity.</td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590>An institutional reform within the state is a Herculean task and may not be within the capacity of any government. But a gradual and sensitive change of the grand strategy of the state that has brought about the present state of affairs remains possible. For starters, the government can implement the Supreme Court decision on Zakat to remove the 'distance' which has been created over the years between the two religious communities. Islamabad can also make a gradual advance on the Afghan and India fronts vis-a-vis policies started by prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 1997, now bogged down after the Kargil crisis. Indeed, if an ISI general can make an objective analysis of the national situation in Washington, why can't the same general help the government in overcoming the negative effects of the old cold-war 'grand strategy'? _______ from <i>The Friday Times</i>, Lahore, 8 October 1999</td></tr> </table> <br> <table border=0> <tr><td width=590></td></tr> </table> <br> <BR> </html> ********************************************************************** Contributions: mailto:feyerabend-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Commands: mailto:majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Requests: mailto:feyerabend-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
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