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Pakistan’s Sectarian Death Squads
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Pakistan Reels With Violence Against Shiites
By DECLAN WALSH
QUETTA, Pakistan — More than 100 Hazara Shiites have been killed by Sunni extremist gunmen this year.
Pakistan Reels With Violence Against Shiites
Declan Walsh/The New York Times
By DECLAN WALSH
Published: December 3, 2012
QUETTA, Pakistan — Calligraphers linger at the gates of an ancient
graveyard in this brooding city in western Pakistan, charged with a
macabre and increasingly in-demand task: inscribing the tombstones of
the latest victims of the sectarian death squads that openly roam these
streets.
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For at least a year now, Sunni extremist gunmen have been methodically
attacking members of the Hazara community, a Persian-speaking Shiite
minority that emigrated here from Afghanistan more than a century ago.
The killers strike with chilling abandon, apparently fearless of the
law: shop owners are gunned down at their counters, students as they
play cricket, pilgrims dragged from buses and executed on the roadside.
The latest victim, a mechanic named Hussain Ali, was killed Wednesday,
shot inside his workshop. He joined the list of more than 100 Hazaras
who have been killed this year, many in broad daylight. As often as not,
the gunmen do not even bother to cover their faces.
The bloodshed is part of a wider surge in sectarian violence across
Pakistan in which at least 375 Shiites have died this year — the worst
toll since the 1990s, human rights workers say. But as their graveyard
fills, Hazaras say the mystery lies not in the identity of their
attackers, who are well known, but in a simpler question: why the
Pakistani state cannot — or will not — protect them.
“After every killing, there are no arrests,” said Muzaffar Ali Changezi,
a retired Hazara engineer. “So if the government is not supporting
these killers, it must be at least protecting them. That’s the only way
to explain how they operate so openly.”
The government, already battling Taliban insurgents, insists it is
taking the threat seriously. During the recent Mourning of Muhurram,
when Shiites parade through the streets over 10 days, the Interior
Ministry imposed stringent security measures such as blocking cellphone
signals for up to 12 hours — to try to prevent remote bomb detonations —
and banning doubled-up motorcycle riding. Even so, Sunni bombers struck
at least five times, killing at least 50 Shiites and wounding several
hundred. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the biggest
attacks, highlighting an emerging link between that group and
traditional sectarian militants that has worried many.
Yet the unchecked killings have also raised wider questions about
Pakistani society: about the spread of a cancerous sectarian ideology in
a public that even just a decade ago seemed more tolerant, and about
what might be spurring the growing audacity of the killers, some of whom
are believed to have links to the country’s security services.
The murders in Quetta, for instance, involve remarkably little mystery.
By wide consensus, the gunmen are based in Mastung, a dusty agricultural
village 18 miles to the south that is the bustling local hub of
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the country’s most notorious sectarian militant
group.
Like so many Pakistani groups that combine guns with zealotry,
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi thrives in a wink-and-nod netherworld: it is
officially banned, but its leader, Malik Ishaq, was released from jail
last year amid showers of rose petals thrown by supporters. Now Mr.
Malik lives openly in southern Punjab Province, protected by armed men
who loiter outside his door, allowing him to deliver hate-laced
statements to visitors. Shiites are “the greatest infidels on earth,” he
told a Reuters reporter last month.
In Quetta, his followers are similarly unfettered. In targeting the
Hazara — who, with their distinctive Central Asian features, are easy to
pick out — Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants block busy highways as they
search vehicles for Hazaras and daub walls with hate slogans. “The face
is the target,” said Major Nadir Ali, a senior Hazara leader and retired
army officer. “They see the face, then they shoot.”
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