Who to Blame For Quetta Carnage?

By Amjad Hussain
The provincial capital of Balochistan witnessed another mass massacre of innocent citizens on Friday which caused at least 75 people dead and over 200 wounded. The carnage was jointly carried out by a suicide bomber and Pakistani security forces. The bomber ripped at a rally taken out by Shiite Muslims, mostly belong to Hazara tribe, against the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem to mark Youm-ul-Quds. The incident occurred at the most-crowded square of Quetta city known as Meezan Chowk. As usual, the banned sectarian outfit and Taliban and Al-Qaida subsidiary, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, claimed the responsibility.

The deplorable aspect of the gruesome act as eye-witnesses assert is that the blast did not cause as much casualties as the point-blank firing of the security personnel at the rally participants who were protesting the blast. Security personnel repeated their same intense reaction and personal grudge against the Shiite Hazaras which they had once manifested six years ago by shooting dead more than fifty people following a suicide attack on tenth Moharram procession near the same point on Liaquat Road when the procession participants were agitating against the attack which had caused only a few people dead.

Some media personnel were also injured while a driver of a private tv channel got killed in Friday’s tragic incident. Unfortunately, it was misreported in the media that the rally participants were all armed with weapons and fired at passersby as a reaction soon after the blast causing many casualties. Eye-witnesses, however, say that there were some private armed security guards in the rally who resorted to aerial firing after the blast as a protest which the security personnels took as violation of law and opened direct fire not only on those armed guards but also on other empty-handed protesters which led to heavy casualties. Bodies and injured taken to various hospitals of the city also confirm that almost ninety percent of the victims had received bullet wounds. Moreover, if the misleading information of the firing of rally participants is taken as true then the victims must have been the security personnel and passersby, but almost all of them with a few exception are protesters themselves. This is not the first time when under a well-conceived plan media reports were turned against the aggrieved community to deprive them of any sympathy from any quarter which is really very shocking.

Interestingly, in a bid to hush up their inefficiency and security loopholes, interior minister Rehman Malik and Balochistan police chief Iqbal Malik both have shifted the blame of the blast to the rally participants by saying the organizers had not been allowed to move beyond a specific point. One must ask these naive officials as to what was the guarantee that the bomber would not have proceeded to that specific point to hit his target if the rally had not moved forward to Meezan Chowk. The attacker had to accomplish his mission at any cost whether at Meezan Chowk or on Alamdar road. The question is that most of the casualties are not the result of the blast, but of the security personnel’s firing which must be probed into and all those officials responsible for this must be taken to the task.

In fact the horrible carnage in Quetta is the fallout of the poor security arrangements of police and other law enforcement agencies. The provincial police chief has himself admitted that they had been tipped off about a terrorist strike in the capital city following the deadly blasts in Lahore only two days ago, but he forgot to tell as to what security measures had been adopted to avert any such strike. Wasn’t it his prime responsibility to have had heightened security arrangements in the city besides having had a vigil eye on suspicious elements? If security forces can disgrace the noble Baloch citizens by conducting their body search at public places terming them as militants or separatists what precludes them from body search of the real terrorists at crowded sites like Meezan Chowk?

Sources in Police say the banned outfit Lashkari Jhangvi has had its stronghold in Mastung – the home district and constituency of the provincial chief executive – where it had brutally murdered a retired headmaster Abdul Qadir Baloch a few months ago for converting to Shiaism and thereafter threatened all the local Shiite Muslims to leave the district immediately or be ready for the dire consequences. Newly appointed city police chief Abid Notkani, while serving on the same post a few months ago, had also claimed that the group activists had its den in Splinji area of Mastung, but the police is unable to raid the site due to some constraints which he, however, did not reveal. Some local Shiite residents are of the view that the banned outfit has gained so much strength in Mastung that no body not even the chief minister dare to offend them by nabbing their members. The group also holds a considerable sway in Bolan and parts of Kalat districts which the provincial administration is also aware of very well, but is hesitant to take any action to purge the areas of these religious extremists.

The helplessness, or in other word patronage, of the provincial government to this terrorist group is also evident from the on-record statement of Balochistan’s home minister Mir Zafarullah Zehri on provincial assembly floor wherein he had confessed to know these terrorists but expressed his inability to take action against them simultaneously. This perception has further got strength from the fact that none of the terrorists belonging to the group have so far been convicted rather one of their most notorious activists indicted in a number of sectarian terrorist attacks, Usman Saifullah, was got released from heavily guarded Anti Terrorist Force’s jail from a high-security zone of Quetta cantonment in 2008. Thirteen officials of the jail were suspended after the incident, but the responsibility is yet to be shifted to any body as the case has been put in dormant. Moreover, fleeing of the sectarian target killers from the crime scene after committing murder in sensitive, crowded and highly guarded areas of the city also raises doubts about the role of the government and its agencies regarding prevention of Hazaras and Shias killings in Quetta.

All these events infer that there are some powerful forces involved in killings of Shia Hazara community in Quetta in front of which the provincial government has no say.

Some analysts are of the view that these forces could be the Pakistani spy agencies who are trying to create rift among people in Balochistan on the basis of sect, caste and nationality to achieve their own ulterior motives though the government officials blame the Indian and Afghan governments for these terrorist acts without any solid proof. Some of the provincial ministers of Balochistan have also confessed to this notion while speaking to the writer though requesting their anonymity.

Some other analysts argue that the US could be involved in mass massacre of Shias in Pakistan as an attempt to strain the relations between Pakistan and Iran to achieve their own goals.

Whatever are the motives behind the killings of Hazaras in Balochistan and their Muslim brethren in other parts of Pakistan in the name of sect, there is an urgent need the government take the sectarianism issue seriously and crack down on all religious extremist groups without any further delay.