Monday, January 10, 2005
EDITORIAL:Story of Gilgit deaths foretold
At least 14 people were killed, six of them burnt alive and 14 injured during sectarian attacks in Gilgit on Saturday, after which a curfew was imposed on the city and troops deployed to restore order. The clashes took place after "unidentified" people shot at the car of Agha Ziauddin, a Shia community leader and imam of the main Gilgit mosque, killing two of his bodyguards and seriously wounding him. One of the assailants was shot dead when fire was returned.
The Gilgit population, which is 60 percent Shia, then came out of their homes and rioted, setting fire to several government and private buildings and torching the home of forest officer Taighun Nabi, burning him and five others alive. In another attack, the local health department chief, Dr Sher Wali, was shot dead by the infuriated mob. A male passer-by was also killed. The injured included the Northern Areas home secretary's assistant and a Gilgit municipal committee member. The Northern Areas home secretary has stated that the one killer shot dead in the return-fire was from'outside' Gilgit.
Let us note that on December 27, 2004, four masked men killed two workers of the Aga Khan Health Services Office in Chitral and burnt four vehicles belonging to the charity organisation. The police registered a case against "unknown assailants" and arrested four persons belonging to "a banned organisation". The press later carried the name of the organisation: Harkatul Mujahideen, whose leader Fazlur Rehman Khaleel - known for his close links with Osama bin Laden - had been released from detention the same week by the authorities in Islamabad. The name of the "banned organisation" was changed in some papers to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a "blanket" term to conceal the identities of those that the state wished to gloss over. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorists so far captured have all been Punjabis.
We editorialised in this paper on December 29, 2007: "This kind of violence has happened in the area before but has gained momentum after the MMA campaign against the Aga Khan Foundation in the rest of the country. In the adjacent Northern Areas (Gilgit) the Aga Khan charity institutions have come under attack regularly in the past years after being targeted by the radical religious elements waging jihad in Kashmir.
"Earlier this year, we had news about sectarian unrest in the North for almost six months. Schools were closed and there were instances of sporadic violence in areas where Shia and Ismaili populations are concentrated but where power and influence have passed to Sunni clerics."
We went on to warn the government that: "The truth is that a hidden desire to exclude one more community from the pale of Islam persists after what the religious fanatics have done to non-Sunni majority locations in the North. What was happening so far in the periphery is now threatening to come to the centre. That is why General Pervez Musharraf must take firm action against the elements which have attacked the Aga Khan Health Services Office in Chitral and are working under a scheme to destabilise the country by exacerbating its sectarian conflict. That is also why he should seriously think of displacing the reactionary MMA with a liberal party in his political affections."
Following the incident in Chitral, the chief of the banned Lashkar-e-Tayba, Hafiz Saeed, proclaimed in Lahore that the government was "apostatising" the Muslims of the Northern Areas, meaning that it was supporting the so-called "heresy" of Ismaili and Shia Islam. The Lashkar-e-Tayba gained influence in the Northern Areas during the Kargil Operation in 1999, not without causing some sectarian incidents. From being a completely Ismaili region in history, it has been injected with external populations through natural immigration from the rest of the country. But there have been manipulations too, as a result of which the region has suffered violence.
Let us take a close look at the distribution of population in the Northern Areas according to the various Muslim denominations. Islam came to the region in the 13th century and it was Ismaili Islam. (The Ismailis were in Multan before Muhammad bin Qasim came to Sindh.) But in the following years there was competition of sorts between the big sects, and clerics from other parts of the country introduced the Twelver Shia and Sunni faiths too. Today Gilgit is 60 percent Shia, 40 percent Sunni; Hunza 100 percent Ismaili; Nagar 100 percent Shia; Punial 100 percent Ismaili; Yasin 100 percent Ismaili; Ishkoman 100 percent Ismaili; Gupis 100 percent Ismaili; Chilas 100 percent Sunni; Darel/Tangir 100 percent Sunni; Astor 90 percent Sunni, 10 percent Shia; Baltistan 96 percent Shia; 2 percent Nurbakhti; 2 percent Sunni.
Saturday's killing in Gilgit is a big incident recalling the 1988 massacre which accounted for 44 deaths after "lashkars" sent in by a politician nicknamed the "devil of Hazara" entered the Shia city after travelling the Karakoram Highway which was supposed to be guarded closely by the Pakistan Army. Then it was the high tide of General Zia's jihad in Afghanistan and the Shia - from Kurram Agency to the Northern Areas - were considered "non-cooperative". That year, Parachinar and Gilgit were both subjected to invasions and hundreds of people were put to death. The climax of the anti-Shia campaign was reached when the all-Pakistan Shia leader Allama Arif ul Hussaini - a Turi from Kurram Agency and close companion of Imam Khomeini - was murdered in Peshawar. Shockingly, ten days later General Zia was himself killed in an air-crash in Bahawalpur.
Was the Musharraf government not forewarned? Sadly, it was, when last year there was unrest in the Balti Shia areas and the local population gathered several times in protest against the textbooks being prescribed in their schools. There were also complaints against clerics coming from'outside' the area and delivering fiery sermons based on sectarian hatred. But nothing was done. The incidents were not treated as a series of connected happenings leading up to a climax. Islamabad seems to be more concerned about mollifying the clergy on "religion entry" in the passports than about thinking of how to save our vulnerable populations from increasingly falling victim to religio-ideological policies. *
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