Gilgit-Baltistan: Murder most Foul By Ambreen Agha Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management The Shias and

Sunnis have always peacefully coexisted in Gilgit-Baltistan. Even t oday they do not consciously take up fights with each other, unless pushed. The history of violence here is old. It goes back to the days when Pakistan establis hed a fake autonomy over us. It is since the last 40 years that our lives have b een plagued by the ever present Pakistan military here. Spokesman of a Gilgit-Baltistan nationalist organization, on condition of anonym ity, in an interview to SAIR, March 2, 2012 At least 18 Shias from Gilgit-Baltistan were killed on February 28, 2012, by arm ed assailants in military uniforms on the Karakoram Highway in the Kohistan Dist rict of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while they were returning in a convoy from a pilgrim age to Iran. According to the Police, the assailants flagged down four buses, bo arded them, and asked the passengers whether they were Shia or Sunni. They then asked the Shias to step out of the buses and checked their identity cards before pumping bullets into them. All those killed were men, while the eight injured i ncluded women and children. Soon after, tension started brewing in Gilgit. In a clash with law enforcement a gencies in Gilgit District on February 29, a man, identified as Naveed was kille d and two others were injured. The Police also recovered a dead body from a moun tain in the Napur area of Gilgit on March 1. Earlier, on February 28, the Gilgit District Administration had imposed Section 144, prohibiting public assemblies or demonstrations and the display of arms, in Gilgit city, and had closed all pr ivate and Government organisations for three days. Meanwhile, the anti-Shia outfit Jandullah commander Ahmed Marwat claimed responsib ility for the attack, declaring, they were Shias and our mujahedeen shot them dea d. However, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Member, Mehboob Khan, in a bizarre statem ent, blamed the people of Gilgit-Baltistan for carrying out the attacks in Kohis tan to settle personal scores. Abdul Sattar Khan, Member Provincial Assembly (MPA) from Kohistans Dassu tehsil (revenue unit) in an attempt to give credence to the theory, noted that two persons belonging to the Sunni-populated Chilas area had earlier been killed in sectarian clashes in Gilgit-Baltistan, and the people of Chilas had vowed to avenge the two deaths. He claimed that the killings could b e the result of the sectarian strife within Gilgit-Baltistan. The MPAs observations appear to be misplaced. Despite a fear of the revival of se ctarian skirmishes in Gilgit-Baltistan on the day of fateful incident, a media r eport from The Express Tribune on March 2, 2012, stated that the elders of the S hia dominated Nagar Valley in Hunza Nagar District took at least 35 Sunni labour ers working in the area into protective custody and handed them over to the Poli ce, who escorted them safely to Gilgit, the next day. Quoting this incident duri ng his telephonic interview, the spokesman of a Gilgit-Baltistan nationalist org anisation observed, A sense of belonging to this region is inherent in the people of Gilgit-Baltista n and binds them together across sectarian lines. Faith based killings, or killi ng for one s identity is not common among the people of Gilgit-Baltistan. Pakist ans brutal encroachment and the eventual fanning of the Shia-Sunni divide by the military and corrupt officialdom installed by Islamabad has sometimes led to som e stray acts of sectarian killings. The general perception of a low level of sec tarian violence in Gilgit, compared to other explosive regions of Pakistan, is cor rect, because people here are not divided on any sectarian or ethnic lines; in f act, they are united on a common goal of attaining their rightful political auto

nomy and achieving their basic rights. Gilgit-Baltistan has historically remained a peaceful region, with occasional cy cles of orchestrated tension and violence. Shias were a majority in the region u ntil the Government of Pakistan breached the State Subject Rules (SSR) promulgat ed in 1927 by the last Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh, in a massive effort at demogra phic re-engineering. According to the State Subject Rules, no non-local could ta ke up permanent residence or acquire property in the Gilgit-Baltistan region. Th e rule, however, was suspended and violated when the Pakistan Government in the 1970s, during the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto era, settled thousands of people from the t hen North West Frontier Province (NWFP, now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) in Gilgit-Baltis tan, converting the local majority into a minority. The first reported sectarian clash took place during Bhuttos regime in the mid-1970s, when Bhutto prohibited the Shias from setting up stages on the streets. The consequent Shia resentment resulted in firing by the Police, injuring many. Later, in May 1988, military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, in an attempted massiv e sectarian attack, sent a Lashkar (army) of militants, comprising natives of Af ghanistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to attack the Shias living there. The fire of sectarianism was lit by Zia during the last days of his rule. In the words of International Crisis Groups (ICG) report Discord in Pakistans Nort hern Areas: Sunni zealots, predominantly from NWFPs tribal areas, assisted by local Sunnis fro m Chilas, Darel and Tangir, [on May 17, 1988] attacked several Shia villages on the outskirts of Gilgit. For three days, they killed, looted and pillaged with i mpunity while the authorities sat back and watched. Although contingents of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC) were eventually sent in, they too looked the other way while Sunni attackers wreaked havoc. By the time army units were sent in to quell the violence, at least 150 people were killed, several hundred injured and property worth millions of rupees destroyed. The brunt of the radical Islamisation policy of General Zia-ul-Haq in this regio n focused on settling outsiders in the area, impacting directly and adversely on the local people. The policy of Islamisation, the Afghan crisis in the 1980s, t he revolution in Iran in 1979, each had a cumulative impact on sectarian turmoil . Even after these events subsided and the General Pervez Musharraf regime annou nced a policy of enlightened moderation, nothing spectacular happened to assuage t he wounds of the people of Gilgit-Baltistan. Gilgit had come under the firm grip of sectarian violence in 1992 following the assassination of Gayyasuddin, a Sunni leader, on May 30 that year, leading to at least 30 killings. The subsequent conciliatory peace talks ended when Latif Has san, a Shia leader, was shot dead on August 4, 1993, again leading to clashes th at claimed more than two dozen lives. Also, the year 2003 saw trouble brewing in the Northern Areas over the Islamic textbooks that the Pakistan Ministry of Edu cation had issued as part of the curriculum for the schools in the region. Accor ding to Shia community leaders, the textbooks promote Sunni thought and values a nd are an attempt to promote sectarian hatred between the two sects. Apart from cycles of violence and sustained oppression from above, a low literac y rate and acute poverty act as powerful deterrents to any movement to further t he regions democratic demands, and contribute directly to the growth of sectarian fanaticism. The Zia era witnessed the creation of extremist groups like the ant i-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and, in response, the Shia Tehreek-e-Nafaze-Fiqah-e-Jafaria. In 1996, the SSP created an armed wing, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). At the other end, the Shias formed their own armed outfit, the Sipah-e-M ohammedi Pakistan (SMP). The aggressive Sunni Islamisation drive initiated by Ge neral Zia impacted substantially on Shia-dominated Gilgit-Baltistan, with the Pa

kistan Army and politicians in Islamabad seeking to divide the region along sect arian lines to retain tight control over this strategically important area. On December 7, 2005, for instance, a Daily Times editorial noted that intelligen ce agents had discovered that the LeJ and SSP were planning to use suicide-bombe rs to target Shia members of the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Council. Earlier i n October 2005, hired Sunni militants had attacked a group of Shias in Basen, 58 kilometres from Gilgit Town on the Ghezer road, killing two and wounding others . Two of the gunmen escaped, but a third was injured and thereafter arrested by the local police, and taken to the District Hospital, Gilgit. Some documents rec overed from his possession indicated that he came from Kohistan in the NWFP. Sho rtly thereafter, however, the Pakistani Rangers, on orders from the highest quart ers, forcibly removed the perpetrator from the hospital, apparently to avoid his identification and interrogation by the local police, which, sources in Gilgit i ndicate, would have exposed a larger conspiracy. A majority of those killed have been demonstrators who have fallen to the bullets of the states paramilitary for ce, the Pakistan Rangers, and sources in Gilgit claim that, contrary to the offi cial position, there is no tension between local Shias and Sunnis, but rather a deliberate effort from the outside, part of a long-drawn campaign, to create mis chief in the region. A report by Freedom House in 2010, noted, further: A number of Islamist militant groups, including those that receive patronage fro m the Pakistani military, operate from bases in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Militant groups that have traditionally focused on attacks in Indian-administere d Kashmir are reportedly expanding their influence and activities in Pakistani K ashmir, including the establishment of new Madarsas (religious schools) in the a rea. They have also increased cooperation with other militants based in Pakistan s tribal areas, such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) In August (2010), th e Pakistani Government banned 25 militant groups operating within the country, i ncluding those focused on Kashmir. Although the Government claimed to have raide d and sealed off the Muzaffarabad headquarters of the LeT, also known as the Jam aat-ud-Dawa, other reports indicated that the group continued to operate training camps in the region. Though the changed demographic nature of the region and continuous Pakistani att empt to foster sectarian strife to divide the people and thus deprive them of a u nited formation has led to some sectarian strife, the local culture has remained substantially resistant to violence. Significantly, media reports indicate that five people were killed and another eight were injured in sectarian-motivated ki llings in the month of November 2011. However, with little media presence in the region, and tremendous manipulation of reports, suspicions persist that these k illings may have been orchestrated by the Pakistani establishment, rather than m otivated by local sectarian sentiment. Moreover, Security Forces (SFs) are accused of barging into the houses without s earch and arrest warrants. Islamabad and its state apparatus have been accused of engineering disappearances and illegal detentions in the region. In one glaring in cident of excesses, Manzoor Parwana, a leading politician in Gilgit-Baltistan, w as abducted by Pakistans SFs on July 28, 2011, for demanding the rights of the mo re than ten thousand Ladakhi refugees, who reside in different parts of Gilgit-B altistan, and desire reunification with their relatives in India. He is yet to b e released. In September 2011, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) expressed alar m at the arrest of over two dozen political activists in Gilgit-Baltistan and re ports of maltreatment of some of them in detention. In connection with the Augus t 11, 2011 protests over non-payment of compensation to the victims of the Attab ad landslide, an HRCP statement observed,

The Commission takes serious exception to the manner in which the authorities ha ve chosen to deal with public resentment following the August 11 killings. The P olicemen accused of the killings have yet to be arrested but many political and civil society activists have been held in a crackdown against the protesters. HR CP has noted with concern reports of mistreatment of some of the activists. The population of Gilgit-Baltistan is silenced by an overwhelming military and i ntelligence presence, arbitrary detentions and disappearances. A devastating repor t by the European Union Rapporteur, Baroness Emma Nicholson, while deploring docu mented human rights violations by Pakistan declared unambiguously that the people of Gilgit and Baltistan are under the direct rule of the military and enjoy no d emocracy. Nicholsons report was scathing on the sheer oppression of the people, on the complete absence of legal and human rights and a Constitutional status, as well as on the enveloping backwardness that had evidently been engineered as a m atter of state policy in the region. The President of Pakistan selects the Chief Ministers of Gilgit-Baltistan, and the y are not, consequently, answerable to the local people. They remain subject to military and bureaucratic pressures from Islamabad. Not surprisingly, Chief Mini ster Mehdi Shah of Pakistan Peoples Party, in a startling revelation, disclosed t hat he had been forbidden to take action against corrupt officials in the past b y sitting Assembly Members, on political and sectarian grounds. However, the spe aker of Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly, Wazir Baig, of Pakistan Peoples Pa rty Parliamentarian (PPPP), an electoral extension of PPP in Gilgit-Baltistan, a ccused the Chief Minister of orchestrating recent extra judicial killings and th e arrest of dozens of innocent local youth. Despite a fitful focus on the more extreme developments in the region, Gilgit-Ba ltistan has largely been ignored by the international media and community, subst antially as a result of its remoteness and intentional isolation by Islamabad. T he denial of basic rights is a quotidian reality in the region, with periodic es calation of orchestrated excesses by state agencies or Islamist extremist proxie s. Despite clear directives from the Supreme Court of Pakistan, the ambiguity of the regions constitutional status and hence the denial of legal and constitution al protection to the population persists. Islamabad has combined the military ja ckboot with the instrumentalisation of extremist majoritarian Islam as its princ ipal strategy of political management in Gilgit-Baltistan, and the population co ntinues to despair for any proximate relief in a situation where every dissentin g voice is immediately and effectively suffocated. Source: South Asia Intelligence Review URL: http://www.newageislam.com/islam-and-sectarianism/ambreen-agha/gilgit-balti stan--murder-most-foul/d/6789

COMMENTSIt is a tragedy to see that the violence has been highlighted after few decades of the continuation of the incidence. Human rights of the world acts mor e like servants of the western world to serve their interest. Today after pakist an pissed off america all the problems are allowed to come out and were ignored conveniently till today. By satwa gunam - 3/5/2012 8:36:14 AM