Shias in Pakistan have become sitting ducks
The shooting down in cold blood of at least 47 members (this figure will go up as there are at least 20 wounded, some critically) belonging to the Shia-Ismaili community in Karachi on Wednesday, shows that the Government of Pakistan has been unable to take a grip on the growing sectarian violence in the country. The brazenness with which the six to eight gunmen carried out the recent attack demonstrates the absence of fear of the law in the minds of the perpetrators. Perhaps this confidence has to do with the fact that many similar attacks in the recent past have either gone unpunished or the culprits have managed to remain un-booked. All of this speaks volumes for the lethargy and the sheer inefficiency of the Government of Pakistan in tackling hate violence.
The Government and its security apparatus cannot claim to have been taken by surprise; there had been other targeted attacks against the minority sects in the Muslim order in the country, and every time they happened, Islamabad vowed to crack down on the militant elements and strengthen security for the minority Muslim sects, particularly the Shias who constitute some 20 per cent of the country's population. In the Wednesday massacre, the terrorists — for they were nothing but that — waylaid a bus carrying the Shia-Ismaili community members and shot the passengers in the head.
There is no doubt that militant organisations will rush to take responsibility for the attacks. Reports from Pakistan say that a few pamphlets of the Islamic State were recovered from the site of the tragedy. Some experts also believe that the attack had the imprint of outfits such as the Taliban and the lashkar-e-Jhangvi. It is important to know the perpetrators of the fresh round of violence in order to act against them. But the worrying point is that the strikes continue to happen unabated. It can be argued that the law and order agencies could have done little to prevent this attack since the gunmen had donned police uniform to escape suspicion. But this is where the role of intelligence comes into play. Surely, given the past incidents of sectarian violence, adequate measures could have been taken for the safety of predominantly Shia-Ismaili passengers in the bus, and that too in Karachi, which has become a city of bloodshed and the sectarian militants’ hunting ground.
Only five months ago, in January, a suicide bomber had blown himself up at a Shia mosque in Shikarpur in Sindh Province. More than 60 worshippers and bystanders had lost their lives. There have been other dastardly attacks as well, and keeping a count has become an onerous task. It is clear that deep fault-lines have developed within Pakistani Muslim society, and the use of violence as a means of retribution has gained common currency. Instead of dabbling in the internal affairs of other countries on the pretext of extending moral support to ‘fellow Muslims', Islamabad must set its house in order.