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Aurangzeb Farooqi, a leader of a radical group called Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2013. A Pakistani court cleared him to run for office despite accusations that the group has ties to militants.CreditAkhtar Soomro/Reuters
By Maria Abi-Habib, Shah Meer Baloch and Zia ur-Rehman
- July 17, 2018
He is also a candidate for national political office, running with the blessing of Pakistani courts.
Mr. Farooqi is among several candidates with ties to Islamist extremist groups who were the subject of last-ditch petitions by activists seeking to bar them from contesting elections this month. An election tribunal threw out those petitions last month, claiming there were not enough valid complaints to justify barring the candidates.
Despite publicly proclaimed campaigns against religious extremism, the ability of candidates like Mr. Farooqi to campaign suggests that far from being curbed, extremists are being encouraged.
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Their candidacies are all the more remarkable because Pakistan was just returned to a “gray list” by the Financial Action Task Force, a global body based in Paris that fights terrorism financing, for not doing enough to counter terrorists’ ability to operate from Pakistani territory. The country had been off the list since 2015.
To prevent being blacklisted by the task force, which could lead to international sanctions, Pakistan agreed last month to an action plan to crack down on terrorism at home.
But almost simultaneously, Pakistan’s electoral commission was paving the way for candidates with extremist ties to run for office.
Some of the petitioners were victims of the terrorism they say was inflicted upon their communities by candidates like Mr. Farooqi. He is a leader of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, a banned radical group that incites hatred and violence against Pakistan’s minority Shiite population. A.S.W.J. is widely believed to be the political front for Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an even deadlier sectarian militant group with ties to Al Qaeda. The party denies any link.
With all obstacles to his candidacy removed, Mr. Farooqi is running for a parliamentary seat representing Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, and has a good chance of winning after losing the last election in 2013 by 202 votes.
quietly taken off the so-called fourth schedule, or terrorism watch list, last month, just as Mr. Ludhianvi announced his candidacy. Yet the party remains on a watch list issued by Pakistan’s National Counter Terrorism Authority.
Military pressure is thought to be behind Mr. Ludhianvi’s removal from the fourth schedule. He was taken off the list by the country’s caretaker government, which forms during every election to ensure that the vote is fair but is not supposed to make these kinds of decisions.
ousted by the Supreme Court last July for failing to disclose assets abroad in his 2013 election application.
convicted Mr. Sharif of corruption and sentenced him in absentia to 10 years in prison.
reassert his civilian government’s control of Pakistan’s defense and foreign policy, which the military has had in its firm grip for decades. He also openly challenged the military’s support for terrorist groups and opposed its plans to mainstream radicals.
In the current election, a court decision disqualifying Mr. Sharif’s replacement as prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, was reversed at the last minute, leaving him barely a month to campaign.
By that time, Mr. Farooqi was already campaigning with confidence in his impoverished Karachi neighborhood, greeting and shaking the hands of dozens one night while sidestepping open gutters clogged with garbage.
“Teacher! Teacher!” young voters cried out to Mr. Farooqi, asking to take photographs with him.
“We believe in democratic process,” said Mr. Farooqi, who denies that he is behind sectarian violence. “I am from the area. If I am elected, I will be representative of the people and try to resolve their civic issues.”
deaths of eight security officials in 2014. In recent years, Mr. Mengal’s sectarian violence has spilled over into neighboring Sindh Province, prompting the counterterrorism chief of police there to ask the federal government to arrest him.
“It is easy to be registered as a candidate, but it was made difficult for me by my political opponents,” Mr. Mengal said in an interview at his home. “They made false accusations against me.”
“I have never supported violence on the basis of ideological differences,” he added. “This is propaganda.”
His opponent, Akhtar Mengal — no relation — disputes this.
Akhtar Mengal, a provincial lawmaker and former chief minister of Baluchistan, said Shafiq Mengal was responsible for the killing of dozens of civilians in the province and had worked with the country’s security forces to quell anti-military dissent. He also accused his opponent of running a kidnap-for-ransom scheme and extortion operations, an accusation supported by Mr. Hamid, Karachi’s police superintendent.
“Wherever you find missing persons in Baluchistan, you find Shafiq Mengal,” Akhtar Mengal said in an interview.
But officials have still found such candidates acceptable, he said, and even desirable.
“The establishment,” he said — referring to the military — “wants to wash them and dry clean them and push them into power.”
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Maria Abi-Habib and Zia ur-Rehman reported from Karachi, and Shah Meer Baloch from Khuzdar, Pakistan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/world/asia/pakistan-election-extremists.html
