In a series of bombings in the Southwestern city of Pakistan on Thursday over a hundred people were killed and more than 150 injured. Reports say the twin blasts targeted a billiard club on Alamdar Road, a predominantly Shia neighborhood inhabited by the Hazara ethnic. An Al-Qaeda allied banned terror outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility for the attack, vowing to continue cleansing Pakistan of Shias. In media statements carried by local papers in Quetta, the group said it had “warned the Hazara Shias to leave Pakistan by 2012, while some escaped, many have stayed dear to their properties. We will not let them escape alive in 2013 from Balochistan.”
Meanwhile, the Provincial Government of Balochistan has ordered a commission to ‘investigate’ the attacks. It is their criminal complicity to turn blind eye towards the perpetrators of a targeted campaign of systematic genocide an ethno-sectarian minority in Quetta. When LeJ claims responsibility with all details about the attacks after every incident, and their political leadership of the Ahl-Sunnat Wal-Jammat hold open public rallies threatening religious minorities across Pakistan, what remains there to investigate?
The same day when residents of Quetta cried in blood announcing in mosques for homes to bring in shroud for the dead bodies of over a hundred, Malik Ishaq leader of the LeJ/ASWJ held a rally in Karachi threatening Shias. The activist Pakistani Supreme Court released him in case of hundreds of murders, clearly under fear of the LeJ death squad.
On Friday, mourners staged a sit-in protest on Alamdar Road, holding dead bodies of the victims saying they will not be buried until Pakistan Army intervenes in Quetta. Community leaders strongly condemned and questioned the military establishment about the intensifying carnage.
We believe elements in the Pakistani security establishment have sympathy with banned outfits like LeJ who have besieged a minority community—Hazara—on genocidal scale in a small city of few millions, while continuing targeted killing of other Shias across Pakistan. The Pakistani Army and its intelligence apparatus needs to sever ties with local sectarian death squads and launch a cleanup operation; else Pakistan will drift into a civil war.
The Human Rights Watch has said failure of the Pakistani state to protest its minority citizens amount to complicity. They asked government to “hold accountable those responsible for ordering and participating in attacks on Shias across Pakistan, particularly the Hazara Shia in Quetta. As Shia community members continue to be slaughtered in cold blood, the callousness and indifference of authorities offers a damning indictment of the state, its military and security agencies.” On the other hand, while Pakistani judiciary has failed against the death squads, media also ignores the rising violence almost on daily basis that now equals to genocidal nature and scale.
In a usual typical media statement, the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon also condemned the attacks in Quetta, but did not bother to urge the international community to take notice of a genocide-in-making and pressurize the Pakistani security establishment to stop it.
Hazaras – a community of 500,000 people whose ancestors migrated from Afghanistan to the Quetta city in late 18th century to escape their genocide by Abdur Rahman Khan, the then king of Afghanistan – has suffered most of the violence against Shias in Balochistan, due to their ethnic features easily making them singled out. According to media figures, the community has lost about 1,000 lives in the last ten years.
Almost all attacks claimed by LeJ. In 2012 alone, at least 132 people belonging to the Hazara community were killed by militants who operate with impunity. The year 2013 has been started with the bloodiest attack the community has ever faced in Quetta—and LeJ vows to surge such attacks in coming days.
In past attacks, members of the community have been identified, taken out of public buses and massacred in lines. Their travel vehicles have been bombed regularly on routes near Quetta city. Most of such attacks occur in Mastung, a town where LeJ has one of it’s training camps, and home to most of its members. Their leaders in ASWJ held a press conference at Quetta Press Club few weeks ago threatening the community. Pakistani state, its security establishment and judiciary has turned a blind eye to their terror campaign. After over 1000 deaths, not a single perpetrator has been arrested.
Thursday’s attack targeted a populated area where community thought it was safe from the commercial centers of the city mixed with people from all ethnicities and faith, where LeJ operatives target-kill and escape freely on daily basis. The minority community lives in constant fear and helplessness. The international community, world media, human rights organizations and the UN should pay attention to the genocide-in-making and take action to stop a human crisis, where Pakistani state has failed its minority citizens.