The brutal, execution-style
attack on Shi’a Muslims in the Mustang area of Baluchistan this week was, at
once, debilitating, shocking, and instructive.
It was debilitating because it reminded observers and Pakistanis alike that the
threat of indiscriminate violence Pakistanis face as a result of domestic
militant groups shows no signs of abating.
It was shocking because even by the standards of Pakistani society, where
violence is accepted with nonchalance — or "resilience," depending on your point
of view — the attack represented a new low, mainly because of the method of the
killings. As multiple reports have indicated, the militants stopped a bus en
route to Iran, forced the pilgrims off, lined them by the side of the road, and
shot them. As Dawn noted in its editorial on the killings, the attack showed a
"descent into new depths of savagery."
Finally, it was instructive because it shed light on the precise nature of the
militant threat the Pakistani state and society face, and the long-term struggle
ahead to adequately address the threat.
Since Pakistan’s alliance with the United States after 9/11 — I use the term
"alliance" loosely here — Pakistanis have borne extremely high levels of
violence; some 35,000 civilians, police and military officials have perished in
the last seven years. Within the country, this has led to a sharp debate about
the origins of the violence, and the advisability of the partnership with
America.
The dominant narrative within Pakistan is that this war is not "our war"; that
Pakistani leaders, both military and civilian, have allied with the United
States out of a combination of greed and pusillanimity; that the militant
violence directed at the Pakistani state and society would not have occurred had
Pakistan not signed on to do America’s bidding in its war; and that the solution
to the terrorist threat lies in the U.S. exiting the region.
The proposition that the death toll from terrorism would be lower had Pakistan
not gotten involved in the U.S. war in Afghanistan is likely accurate. But to
take that to mean that Pakistan would have been a peaceful society without U.S.
intervention in the region is a step too far.
The gruesome events on Tuesday demonstrate this truth, because groups such as
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which claimed responsibility for the attack, existed well
before 9/11 and will exist well after the U.S. draws down in Afghanistan.
Indeed, rather than being strictly being an anti-American group, LeJ’s raison
d’être is primarily sectarian — they are an offshoot of the Sipah-e-Sahaba
Pakistan, itself an anti-Shi’a terrorist group. The notion that groups such as
LeJ did not threaten Pakistanis until the military and civilian leadership
allied with the United States rests on a very narrow understanding of
"Pakistani." Shi’a still count as Pakistani, despite the efforts of groups such
as SSP and LeJ.
For more than fifteen years, LeJ has carried out attacks against Pakistani
religious minorities. In April 2010, the group was responsible for a bombing in
Quetta – in a hospital, no less – which killed 11 people. That same month, two
Le female suicide bombers blew themselves up at a relief camp for internal
refugees who were waiting to get registered and receive food, reportedly because
Shi’a were receiving food aid. In September 2010, the group was responsible for
a suicide bomb and grenade attack in Lahore, targeting a Shi’a procession that
killed more than 40 people. This year alone, LeJ has been behind at least four
different attacks on Hazara Shi’a in Baluchistan, resulting in dozens of
casualties. And this is just a sample of the group’s activities in recent times.
LeJ is an extremely daring and dangerous organization. In the late 1990s,
then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered a crackdown on it, a move that invited
assassination attempts against him. In Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, Owen
Bennett-Jones reports a remarkable incident of the group’s reach:
The police were told that anyone who managed to arrest or kill Riaz Basra [then
head of LeJ] would be given a 5 million-rupee award.
Despite this, the security forces proved incapable of controlling the militants’
activities. Riaz Basra showed his contempt for the police’s capabilities when he
turned up at one of Nawaz Sharif’s political surgeries [meetings with party
supporters]. Having slipped in with the petitioners who wanted to see the prime
minister, Basra positioned himself directly behind Nawaz Sharif and got one of
his accomplices to take a picture. Three days later staff at the prime
minister’s house received a print of the photograph. The faces of Sharif and
Basra, within a few feet of each other, had been circled and underneath there
was an inscription: ‘It’s that easy.’
Those claiming that widespread terrorism in Pakistan is solely a result of U.S.
involvement in the region cannot address the existence of groups such as LeJ.
Essentially all militant groups operating in Pakistan today, including LeJ,
Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Jaish-e-Muhammad, existed in some form before the U.S.
invasion of Afghanistan. That their activities were less widespread before
Pakistan backed the United States is neither here nor there, because their very
existence on Pakistani soil should be intolerable to Pakistani citizens and the
state.
Unfortunately, the aftermath of the Tuesday attack itself sends a signal of the
state’s woeful capabilities in tackling groups such as LeJ. The organization’s
leader, Malik Ishaq, was meekly placed under house arrest for ten days due to
"security reasons," and authorities followed the next day by placing his key
aide Ghulam Rasool Shah under house arrest as well. Malik Ishaq was released
from prison earlier this year, despite having 44 court cases against him (he was
acquitted in 34, and granted bail in 10). His release was due to a lack of
evidence.
Though outsiders may scoff at a publicly recognizable leader of a terrorist
group not having sufficient evidence tying him to murder, it is actually quite
understandable for those more aware of ground realities in Pakistan. First,
witnesses are scared to death — literally — of coming forward and testifying.
Second, judges themselves are unsafe, and afraid of handing out guilty verdicts
in high-profile terrorism cases. Third, police procedures, investigative
techniques and equipment are not advanced enough to tie individuals to specific
incidents; even if police forces in an area know exactly who is behind a
particular incident, proving it in a court of law is not easy, especially since
Pakistan’s anti-terrorism laws remain flawed. Fourth, there exists a baseline of
sympathy for such organizations and their actions even amongst the "educated"
legal community, as the reaction to the Salman Taseer assassination so
eloquently showed.
All this is to suggest that, unfortunately, the terrorism problem in Pakistan is
not going to disappear as U.S. forces leave Afghanistan. To the contrary, it
will take dedicated work and long-term reform in the Pakistani legal system, the
courts, and the police to rid the country of this scourge.
Most pertinent of all, the Pakistani military must abandon the analytical
distinction between "good" and "bad" militant groups, as well as abandoning the
hope that "good" militant groups can fulfill regional strategic objectives, such
as bringing India to the negotiating table on Kashmir or attaining "strategic
depth" in Afghanistan. If nothing else, the last decade should have put paid to
that theory of national interest. Notwithstanding the security establishment’s
desire to play favorites, the array of militant groups in Pakistan have a lot
more that unites them than divides them. Indeed, LeJ — to take one relevant
example — has deep connections with the Pakistani Taliban as well as al-Qaeda,
both of whom have used extraordinary levels of violence against Pakistani
targets. The idea that the state can take on one set of elements and leave
others untouched is, in the medium- and long-term, completely fanciful.