Sectarian Conflict, Shia Killings, What Next?

There’s something about funerals that freaks me out; especially the ones where the deaths have been sudden and the kin of the deceased seem so devastated that they are inconsolable. It was with a sinking feeling therefore, that I attended the last rites of a local boy’s father yesterday. This man left Karachi a week ago to travel to his native hometown in Gilgit, Baltistan. And yes, he fell victim to one of the most cold-blooded murders you will ever hear about in our modern world.

On his way from Rawalpindi to Gilgit, his bus was interrupted at Lulusar by armed militants dressed in Pakistan Army attire. These militants proceeded onto the bus and sorted the passenger into two groups, subsequently dragging one of these off the vehicle. Mere words cannot express the horror and brutality of what happened next. For reasons known only to those militants alone (or maybe not?), this group of twenty-five people was then murdered dispassionately, either shot at point-blank range, or bludgeoned to death.

While the heart-wrenching cries of this unfortunate man’s daughter weighed me down, I tried to drown them out by thinking of the implications of this incident. When it comes to matters concerning me, my family, my nation or my community, I try my utmost to remain unbiased. So, I refused to fall prey to the rumors and theories that my communal circle has been buzzing with for the last year or so. When conversations turned to the alleged ‘Shia Genocide’ during hangouts with Shia friends, they would debate on who could be behind it, while I debated on whether it was myth or reality. My friends’ mentions of recurring bomb blasts at Shia processions and mosques all over the country (Karachi, Quetta, Khanpur, Gilgit) fell on deaf ears as I pointed out that almost a similar number of Sunni mosques and processions had been targeted.

Nobody was able to convince me until the incidents at Mastung in September 2011 and Kohistan in February 2012. Bomb-blasts are one thing. Methodical, merciless butchery is another. This butchery has reached a point that is gruesome even by Pakistani standards of viciousness. People on the buses were identified to be shias, either by their beards, names skimmed off their NICs, or from zanjeer marks upon their backs. They were then marooned from the rest of the passengers, pulled off the bus, lined up and put to their deaths in the most inhumane of manners and yet, this slaughter remains a nameless crime as the media uses euphemisms to describe the mass murder of a beleaguered community.

These ruthless events, combined with a recent surge in target-killings of prominent and successful Shia persons and the consistent oppression of the community in some tribal areas such as Hangu, all seem to be a part of an attempt at some sort of communal cleansing. Even as I write this, it sounds like an eccentric wacko theory. But if this is not genocide, then we really are in the presence of a crime without a name. What is irrefutable though, is that an entity is now operating in Pakistan which aims to put an end to Shia religious activities, wholly or partially, by infusing the community with fear. They shall not succeed.

But fear is natural. I fear, for my safety, and the safety of my family and my community. But more so, I fear for the integrity of my nation. When you neglect or target a particular faction within your nation, or let them be targeted without rising to support them, you cannot expect them to show any loyalty to the nation anytime later. That’s what happened with the Bengalis, and that’s what happened with the Balochs. We must not let this happen again. We must realise that this will not stop here. Yesterday, it was the Ahmadis. Today, it’s the Shias. Tomorrow, it might be the Bohras. And the day after, possibly the Sunnis. Unity and love are the needs of the hour as we must come together now to defeat hate. Now, or never.