Ind4Ever
BANNED
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2015
- Messages
- 3,579
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
How Pakistan Protects Itself from Regional Sectarian War
Arif Rafiq
September 18, 2015
Source Link
As sectarian wars continue to rage across the Middle East, Pakistan has managed to largely insulate itself from this regional plague. After a surge in Sunni-Shia sectarian violence from 2007-13, deaths from sectarian violence plummeted in 2014 by approximately 60 percent, in comparison to the previous year. In 2014, about two hundred Pakistanis died in Sunni-Shia sectarian violence, compared to approximately six hundred in 2013.
While fatalities from Sunni-Shia sectarian violence this year are on pace to exceed those of last year, the uptick is due to two gruesome massacres that make up a slight majority of this year’s deaths. The actual number of incidents of Sunni-Shia sectarian violence this year have dropped by about half, compared to last year.
Regional Sectarian Fault Lines Pass Through Pakistan
Pakistan is located outside the Middle East, but given its border with Iran and strong ties to Gulf Arab states, it is susceptible to contagions emerging from that part of the world, especially when its leaders play the role of facilitators.
Iranian consulate in Peshawar (though failed to reach it). In 2013, the year that had just ended, both sectarian violence and terrorist violence hit record highs.
And in the backdrop, the war in Syria raged on and Saudi officials were aggressively lobbying the PML-N government to assist it in countering Iran throughout the region. After a flurry of visits by Saudi officials, Riyadh gave Islamabad a grant of $1.5 billion in early 2014. The king of Bahrain made his firstvisit to Pakistan in March 2014 and was met by Shia protesters. At the same time, the Iranian Sunni Baloch militant groups based in Pakistan stepped up attacks on Iranian security personnel, further straining relations between Islamabad and Tehran, which renewed its sponsorship of Shia militants in Pakistan.
…But Pakistan Deftly Dodges a Perfect Storm
In early 2014, it appeared that Pakistan was going to be swept up in a Sunni-Shia sectarian war engulfing the region. But by the year’s end, the bottom fell out of the country’s sectarian war. And into 2015, sectarian terrorism continues to wane in frequency. So how did Pakistan manage to avert the looming sectarian disaster?
One, the downturn in sectarian violence is a positive externality of a comprehensive, nationwide crackdown on terrorists who challenge the writ of the state. Anti-Shia and anti-state terrorist networks overlap. And so the Pakistani government’s attempts to disrupt, dismantle and defeat the anti-state Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has weakened the ability of the group and its expressly anti-Shia partners, Lashkar-e Jhangvi, to target Shia Muslims.
In June 2014, the Pakistan Army launched Operation Zarb-e Azb in North Waziristan, which had been the lone tribal area untargeted by comprehensive ground and air operations. It served as a safe haven for the anti-state TTP and a medley of other sectarian, regional and transnational jihadist groups.
And so the drop in sectarian violence has come alongside a steep decline in terrorism overall. In 2015, terrorist attacks in Pakistan have dropped for the second consecutive year. Civilian fatalities as a result of terrorism are at their lowest levels since 2006. In 2014, civilian deaths in terrorist attacks dropped by over 40 percent compared to 2013. And this year, they are on pace for another drop of over 40 percent.
Two, the Pakistani government has isolated and eliminated several hardcore sectarian terrorist leaders. In February 2015, Usman Kurd, the leader of the Balochistan wing of prime anti-Shia terrorist group, Lashkar-e Jhangvi, waskilled in a shootout with Pakistani paramilitary forces. And in June, Malik Ishaq and Ghulam Rasool Shah, the prime ASWJ militants in Punjab, werekilled by police forces in the Punjab province. Ishaq had spent much of the previous two years under administrative detention. But the escape of Kurd from prison in 2007 and release of Ishaq from jail in 2011 helped spur a resurgence of LeJ.
Three, in contrast to previous counterterrorism operations, it appears that militants in the Punjab province will not go unscathed. In fact, the killing of Ishaq in June signaled the start of intensifying counterterrorism operations in Punjab. TTP terrorists later killed the province’s top security official, Shuja Khanzada, in August, in reprisal. But the federal and Punjab governments have made clear through the media and in deed that counterterrorism operations in the province will only become more severe.
The Punjab government, which previously accommodated anti-Shia agitators from the ostensibly banned ASWJ, is finally utilizing once again existing laws to detain or punish those engaging in sectarian hate speech. At least two clerics associated with the Deobandi Jamiat Ulema-e Islam-Fazl party have been arrested on charges of hate speech against Shias and Ahmadis. Punishment of anti-Ahmadi hate speech is extremely rare in Pakistan—and this arrest may signal the government’s resolve to combat hate speech with an unprecedented vigilance.
The Punjab government has also held the ASWJ’s firebrand leader Aurangzeb Farooqi has been held in detention since June. Utilizing detention powers under the Fourth Schedule of the 1997 Anti-Terrorism Act reduces sectarian pollution in public space. And Pakistani police official who have long been in the fight against the LeJ say that these measures also slow down the momentum of sectarian and terrorist networks.
Four, sectarian terrorists have far less operating space inside the country than before. The Pakistan Army now is now engaged in active combat operations in all seven tribal areas. The Kurram Agency, located adjacent to North Waziristan, was home to a Sunni-Shia sectarian war that raged from 2007-11. When the Pakistan Army launched the North Waziristan operations last summer, there were fears that terrorists would resettle in Kurram and renew the sectarian war there. But with the army’s active operations across the tribal areas, the TTP can no longer play a cat and mouse game.
Five, at a national level and in all four provinces, there is a whole-of-government approach toward combating sectarianism and militancy. There is unprecedented intelligence sharing and coordination between the civilian and military security agencies in Balochistan and Karachi, where most of the sectarian violence has taken place in recent years.
To be clear, the military is in the driver’s seat. But the net effect has been joint operations by Pakistani paramilitary and police forces in Balochistan and Karachi. Scores of anti-Shia LeJ terrorists have been arrested or killed in Karachi. In Balochistan, targeted killings and mass casualty attacks on Hazara Shias have waned in large part due to the efforts of Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti, who has prevented anti-Shia preachers from entering the province and has swiftly arrested newly created militant cells behind the targeted killings of Hazara Shias this year. Paramilitary forces in Balochistan now providesecurityfor Shia pilgrims en route to Iran.
At the national and provincial levels, government officials are bringing Sunni and Shia leaders together to get them to remove hate speech, terror financing, and incitement material in their curriculums. The government is also considering a ban on takfir—the practice of declaring other Muslims as disbelievers.
Finally, Pakistan’s refusal to play an active combat role in the Saudi-led Yemen war has proved to be a wise strategic decision, helping ensure the country’s internal cohesion. Involvement in the Yemen war was unpopular across the board, but especially with the country’s Shias. A Pakistani combat role in Yemen would have possibly invited Iran to play a destabilizing role in Pakistan, which would then spur Sunni extremists into action.
Digging in for a Long-Term Fight
There appears to be recognition among Pakistan’s senior leadership that Sunni-Shia sectarianism is a cancer that eats at the very idea of Pakistan, which was founded as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims. In both word and deed, Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership have made clear their seriousness in combating, and eventually eliminating, the scourge of sectarianism.
When Talib Hussain, a Shia private security guard, was killed in July while preventing a suicide bomber from entering a Hazara Shia enclave in Quetta, he was hailed as a hero by the Pakistan Army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, and the Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Malik Baloch. The senior military official in Quetta, Lt. Gen. Nasir Janjua, visited Haider’s family. Weeks earlier, Gen. Sharif canceled a scheduled visit to Sri Lanka to head to Karachi after themassacre of Shias by Sunni extremists.
More work, of course, needs to be done. Many key leaders of the ASWJ in Balochistan, Punjab, and Sindh have gone unscathed. Some ASWJ leaders may lack direct linkages to the expressly militant LeJ, but in the case of people like Rafiq Mengal, the ASWJ’s leader in Quetta, the LeJ connections are direct. Mengal was detained in the summer. While Pakistan has made significant gains in reducing sectarian violence in the country over the past two years, victory will come when the arrest, conviction and punishment of extremists like Mengal (who was detained this summer) becomes not the exception, but the rule.
Arif Rafiq (@arifcrafiq) is president of Vizier Consulting, LLC, which provides strategic guidance on Middle East and South Asian political and security issues. He is the author of the monograph, “Sunni Deobandi-Shi`i Sectarian Violence in Pakistan Explaining the Resurgence Since 2007.”
Posted by Strategic Studies at 00:35
Indian Strategic Studies: How Pakistan Protects Itself from Regional Sectarian War
Arif Rafiq
September 18, 2015
Source Link
As sectarian wars continue to rage across the Middle East, Pakistan has managed to largely insulate itself from this regional plague. After a surge in Sunni-Shia sectarian violence from 2007-13, deaths from sectarian violence plummeted in 2014 by approximately 60 percent, in comparison to the previous year. In 2014, about two hundred Pakistanis died in Sunni-Shia sectarian violence, compared to approximately six hundred in 2013.
While fatalities from Sunni-Shia sectarian violence this year are on pace to exceed those of last year, the uptick is due to two gruesome massacres that make up a slight majority of this year’s deaths. The actual number of incidents of Sunni-Shia sectarian violence this year have dropped by about half, compared to last year.Regional Sectarian Fault Lines Pass Through Pakistan
Pakistan is located outside the Middle East, but given its border with Iran and strong ties to Gulf Arab states, it is susceptible to contagions emerging from that part of the world, especially when its leaders play the role of facilitators.
Iranian consulate in Peshawar (though failed to reach it). In 2013, the year that had just ended, both sectarian violence and terrorist violence hit record highs.
And in the backdrop, the war in Syria raged on and Saudi officials were aggressively lobbying the PML-N government to assist it in countering Iran throughout the region. After a flurry of visits by Saudi officials, Riyadh gave Islamabad a grant of $1.5 billion in early 2014. The king of Bahrain made his firstvisit to Pakistan in March 2014 and was met by Shia protesters. At the same time, the Iranian Sunni Baloch militant groups based in Pakistan stepped up attacks on Iranian security personnel, further straining relations between Islamabad and Tehran, which renewed its sponsorship of Shia militants in Pakistan.
…But Pakistan Deftly Dodges a Perfect Storm
In early 2014, it appeared that Pakistan was going to be swept up in a Sunni-Shia sectarian war engulfing the region. But by the year’s end, the bottom fell out of the country’s sectarian war. And into 2015, sectarian terrorism continues to wane in frequency. So how did Pakistan manage to avert the looming sectarian disaster?
One, the downturn in sectarian violence is a positive externality of a comprehensive, nationwide crackdown on terrorists who challenge the writ of the state. Anti-Shia and anti-state terrorist networks overlap. And so the Pakistani government’s attempts to disrupt, dismantle and defeat the anti-state Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has weakened the ability of the group and its expressly anti-Shia partners, Lashkar-e Jhangvi, to target Shia Muslims.
In June 2014, the Pakistan Army launched Operation Zarb-e Azb in North Waziristan, which had been the lone tribal area untargeted by comprehensive ground and air operations. It served as a safe haven for the anti-state TTP and a medley of other sectarian, regional and transnational jihadist groups.
And so the drop in sectarian violence has come alongside a steep decline in terrorism overall. In 2015, terrorist attacks in Pakistan have dropped for the second consecutive year. Civilian fatalities as a result of terrorism are at their lowest levels since 2006. In 2014, civilian deaths in terrorist attacks dropped by over 40 percent compared to 2013. And this year, they are on pace for another drop of over 40 percent.
Two, the Pakistani government has isolated and eliminated several hardcore sectarian terrorist leaders. In February 2015, Usman Kurd, the leader of the Balochistan wing of prime anti-Shia terrorist group, Lashkar-e Jhangvi, waskilled in a shootout with Pakistani paramilitary forces. And in June, Malik Ishaq and Ghulam Rasool Shah, the prime ASWJ militants in Punjab, werekilled by police forces in the Punjab province. Ishaq had spent much of the previous two years under administrative detention. But the escape of Kurd from prison in 2007 and release of Ishaq from jail in 2011 helped spur a resurgence of LeJ.
Three, in contrast to previous counterterrorism operations, it appears that militants in the Punjab province will not go unscathed. In fact, the killing of Ishaq in June signaled the start of intensifying counterterrorism operations in Punjab. TTP terrorists later killed the province’s top security official, Shuja Khanzada, in August, in reprisal. But the federal and Punjab governments have made clear through the media and in deed that counterterrorism operations in the province will only become more severe.
The Punjab government, which previously accommodated anti-Shia agitators from the ostensibly banned ASWJ, is finally utilizing once again existing laws to detain or punish those engaging in sectarian hate speech. At least two clerics associated with the Deobandi Jamiat Ulema-e Islam-Fazl party have been arrested on charges of hate speech against Shias and Ahmadis. Punishment of anti-Ahmadi hate speech is extremely rare in Pakistan—and this arrest may signal the government’s resolve to combat hate speech with an unprecedented vigilance.
The Punjab government has also held the ASWJ’s firebrand leader Aurangzeb Farooqi has been held in detention since June. Utilizing detention powers under the Fourth Schedule of the 1997 Anti-Terrorism Act reduces sectarian pollution in public space. And Pakistani police official who have long been in the fight against the LeJ say that these measures also slow down the momentum of sectarian and terrorist networks.
Four, sectarian terrorists have far less operating space inside the country than before. The Pakistan Army now is now engaged in active combat operations in all seven tribal areas. The Kurram Agency, located adjacent to North Waziristan, was home to a Sunni-Shia sectarian war that raged from 2007-11. When the Pakistan Army launched the North Waziristan operations last summer, there were fears that terrorists would resettle in Kurram and renew the sectarian war there. But with the army’s active operations across the tribal areas, the TTP can no longer play a cat and mouse game.
Five, at a national level and in all four provinces, there is a whole-of-government approach toward combating sectarianism and militancy. There is unprecedented intelligence sharing and coordination between the civilian and military security agencies in Balochistan and Karachi, where most of the sectarian violence has taken place in recent years.
To be clear, the military is in the driver’s seat. But the net effect has been joint operations by Pakistani paramilitary and police forces in Balochistan and Karachi. Scores of anti-Shia LeJ terrorists have been arrested or killed in Karachi. In Balochistan, targeted killings and mass casualty attacks on Hazara Shias have waned in large part due to the efforts of Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti, who has prevented anti-Shia preachers from entering the province and has swiftly arrested newly created militant cells behind the targeted killings of Hazara Shias this year. Paramilitary forces in Balochistan now providesecurityfor Shia pilgrims en route to Iran.
At the national and provincial levels, government officials are bringing Sunni and Shia leaders together to get them to remove hate speech, terror financing, and incitement material in their curriculums. The government is also considering a ban on takfir—the practice of declaring other Muslims as disbelievers.
Finally, Pakistan’s refusal to play an active combat role in the Saudi-led Yemen war has proved to be a wise strategic decision, helping ensure the country’s internal cohesion. Involvement in the Yemen war was unpopular across the board, but especially with the country’s Shias. A Pakistani combat role in Yemen would have possibly invited Iran to play a destabilizing role in Pakistan, which would then spur Sunni extremists into action.
Digging in for a Long-Term Fight
There appears to be recognition among Pakistan’s senior leadership that Sunni-Shia sectarianism is a cancer that eats at the very idea of Pakistan, which was founded as a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims. In both word and deed, Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership have made clear their seriousness in combating, and eventually eliminating, the scourge of sectarianism.
When Talib Hussain, a Shia private security guard, was killed in July while preventing a suicide bomber from entering a Hazara Shia enclave in Quetta, he was hailed as a hero by the Pakistan Army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif, and the Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Malik Baloch. The senior military official in Quetta, Lt. Gen. Nasir Janjua, visited Haider’s family. Weeks earlier, Gen. Sharif canceled a scheduled visit to Sri Lanka to head to Karachi after themassacre of Shias by Sunni extremists.
More work, of course, needs to be done. Many key leaders of the ASWJ in Balochistan, Punjab, and Sindh have gone unscathed. Some ASWJ leaders may lack direct linkages to the expressly militant LeJ, but in the case of people like Rafiq Mengal, the ASWJ’s leader in Quetta, the LeJ connections are direct. Mengal was detained in the summer. While Pakistan has made significant gains in reducing sectarian violence in the country over the past two years, victory will come when the arrest, conviction and punishment of extremists like Mengal (who was detained this summer) becomes not the exception, but the rule.
Arif Rafiq (@arifcrafiq) is president of Vizier Consulting, LLC, which provides strategic guidance on Middle East and South Asian political and security issues. He is the author of the monograph, “Sunni Deobandi-Shi`i Sectarian Violence in Pakistan Explaining the Resurgence Since 2007.”
Posted by Strategic Studies at 00:35
Indian Strategic Studies: How Pakistan Protects Itself from Regional Sectarian War
