Pakistan Cannot Progress with Siphae Sahaba Given a Free Hand

Sipahe Sahab Pakistan(SSP, currently camouflaged as Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat ASWJ) is a banned extremist organization.

Comprising radicalised Jihadi-sectarian assets of Pakistan army, the SSP-SWJ represents a tiny minority of the Deobandi sub-sect of Sunni Islam, and per se does not represent the majority of Sunni Barelvi, Deobandi or Salafi Muslims.

Sunni Muslims inPakistanare divided into three main sects or sub-sects: Barelvis (70%), Deobandi (25%) and Ahl-e-Hadith (5%).

During the CIA-Saudi sponsored Jihad against the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan (1979-87), Pakistan army (ISI in particular) recruited and brainwashed thousands of Deobandi Muslims, most of them from Deobandi madarasahs (seminaries) in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to deploy cheap mercenaries in the so called Jihad in Afghanistan.

There were two types of Deobandi Jihadis produced by Pakistan army: Internal and External.

The Internal Jihadis were tasked to attack all those individuals and groups (political parties, religious sects, rights groups etc) who could cause an obstruction in the way ofPakistanarmy’s international Jihadist agenda. WithinPakistan, the internal jihadis focused on killing leaders of progressive political parties (e.g., ANP, PPP, other progressive intellectuals etc) as well as religious sects opposed to radical Deobandi-Wahhabi agenda. Shias, Sunni Barelvis, Ahmadis and Christians were particularly targeted by the brainwashed Jihadist Deobandis.

The External Jihadis were tasked to operate in Afghanistan, India, Bosnia, Chechnya and other countries to promote the goal of international Islamic Empire or Caliphate.

In view of the mounting international pressure in the aftermath of the 9/11, General Musharraf declared the extremist Deobandi organization (the internal Jihadi branch) Sipahe Sahaba as outlawed in 2002. The organization was banned in 2002 as a terrorist organization under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997.

However, while the SSP was apparently banned, the organization was secretly allowed to operate byPakistan’s military establishment. The organization continued its Jihadi-sectarian activities by simply adopting a new name “Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat” (ASWJ).

The adopting of the ASWJ was a cunning move by the SSP leadership because Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal-Jamaat or Jamaat-e-Ahle-Sunnat is a name particularly used byPakistan’s Sunni Barelvis, moderate Sufi Muslims who constitute a dominant majority ofPakistan’s Sunni Muslims and are strictly opposed to extremist Deobandis’ (SSP) Jihadi-sectarian agenda.

In fact, Jihadi-sectarian militants of SSP (which also operates as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi LeJ) have conducted numerous attacks not only on Shias, Ahamdis and Christians but also on Sunni Barelvis in which hundreds of Barelvi Muslims have been killed or injured.

Jihadi-sectarian militants of the SSP-LeJ are pro-Wahhabi and puritanical in their ideological interpretation and practice of Islam and consider Sunni-Barelvi Muslims as polytheists (mushrik) and deviant Muslims. In the last few years, LeJ-SSP-Taliban terrorists have attacked dozens of Sunni Barelvi congregations including attacks on sufi shrines in Islmabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar etc and also attacks on Eid Milad-un-Nabi’s processions and Sunni Barelvi mosques. Numerous Sunni Barelvi leaders have been killed by the LeJ-SSP militants including but not limited to Saleem Qadri, Abbas Qadri, Sarfraz Naeemi and several others.

List of key attacks on Sunni Barelvis by extremist Deobandis of SSP:

18 May 2001:  Sunni Tehreek leader Saleem Qadri was assassinated by the SSP.  His successor, Abbas Qadri, charged President Pervez Musharraf’s regime with “patronising terrorists” and “standing between us and the murderers.” (Source). Various Sunni Barelvi outfits alleged that the country’s intelligence agencies were responsible for the killing of Maulana Saleem Qadri. According to these outfits, the agencies were utilising the SSP to trigger sectarian violence among the Shia, Deoband and Sunni Barelwi sects. (Source). When the SSP’sKarachifinance secretary was arrested after the murder of Sunni Tehreek chief Saleem Qadri, he revealed that his organisation received 32 lakh rupees a year from Karachi for the purposes of posting bail, assisting its imprisoned activists and the families of deceased activists. This entire amount was reportedly kept as amanat (safe custody) with one Maulvi Saadur Rehman, head of a religious school inKarachi, and the withdrawals were made through written messages. (Source). Qadri, a high-profile Muslim cleric of the Sunni Barelvi school, was ambushed, apparently by a team of six well-trained assassins riding three motorbikes while he was on his way to Noorani Masjid in Rasheedabad no 7 for the Friday congregation. Qadri and five others were killed on the spot, and three others, including his six-year-old son Bilal Raza, and eight-year-old nephew, Ahmed Raza, were wounded. The dead include Anis Qadri, 23, Mohammed Altaf Junejo, 40 (Qadri’s nephew and brother-in-law), Ibrahim Qadri, 30, van driver Abid Baloch, 30, and police constable, Hafeez Qadri. The corpse of one of the killers, who was later identified as “Arshad alias Polka, an activist of the Sipha-e-SahabaPakistan(SSP)”, was also found in the vicinity of the Qadri killing soon afterwards, who was killed in retaliatory firing by Saleem Qadri’s guards. (Source)

19 March 2005: An SSP-LeJ suicide bomber killed 36 at the shrine of Pir Rakhel Shah in Jhal Magsi, Balochistan.

27 May 2005: As many as 20 people were killed and 100 were injured on May 27, 2005 when an extremist Deobandi suicide-bomber attacked a gathering at Bari Imam Shrine during the annual festival. According to the police the two men, said to be active members of Sipah-e-SahabaPakistan(SSP), were arrested from Thanda Pani and police seized two hand grenades from their custody. The police said that the two men brought the suicide-bomber from Northern Areas and provided him boarding at the house of another member of the SSP inRawalpindibefore sending the attacker to the shrine.

11 April 2006: A grand Sunni Barelvi congregation celebrating the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad on Eid Milad un Nabi was suicide-bombed by an extremist Deobandi. 57 died including almost the entire leadership of the Sunni Tehrik; over 100 were injured. T

16 December 2008: Pir Samiullah was killed by extremist Deobandis in Swat, his dead body was exhumed and desecrated.

17 January 2009: Pir Rafiullah was killed inPeshawar.

18 February 2009: JUP-Noorani’s provincial leader Maulana Iftikhar Ahmed Habibi was killed inQuetta.

8 March 2009: Attack on Rahman Baba Shrine by extremist Deobandis

12 June 2009: Mufti Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi was killed by an extremist Deobandi. He was a leading Sunni Islamic cleric fromPakistanwell known for his moderate and anti-terrorist views. He was killed in a suicide bombing in Lahore, Pakistan after publicly denouncing the Taliban’s terrorist actions and ideologies.

2 September 2009: Attack on Hamid Saeed Kazmi in Islamabad. He sustained injuries but survived.

1 July 2010: The July 2010Lahorebombings occurred in Lahore. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up at the Sufi shrine, Data Durbar Complex. At least 50 people died and 200 others were hurt in the blasts.

7 October 2010: 10 people killed, 50 injured in an attack on Abdullah Shah Ghazi shrine in Karachi

25 October 2010: 5 killed, several injured in an attack on the shrine of Baba Farid Ganj Shakar in Pakpattan.

14 December 2010: Attack on Ghazi Baba shrine in Peshawar, 3 killed.

3 April 2011: At the annual festival of Sakhi Sarwar Shrine near D.G.Khan, a twin suicide attack left 42 dead and almost a hundred injured.

List of Deobandi and Wahhabi Muslims killed by SSP:

30 May 2004: A senior Deobandi religious scholar and head of Islamic religious school Jamia Binoria, Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, was gunned down in his car while leaving his home in Karachi.

17 September 2007: Maulana Hasan Jan was killed in Peshawar.

19 September 2008: A bomb exploded at an Islamic religious school inQuettakilling five people and wounding at least eight. The school was run by Jamiat Ulemae Islam of Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman.

2 October 2010: Dr Muhammad Farooq Khan, Mardan

When Will Pakistan Control Laskare Jhangvi & Sipae Sahaba?

Poisoned minds-fuelling the massacre of Shias inPakistan

by Saba Imtiaz 

On September 19, 2011, 26 people were shot dead in Mastung, Baluchistan, after a bus carrying pilgrims toIrancame under fire from militants later claimed as their own by the anti-Shia sectarian group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. According to the bus driver, the pilgrims were told to step out of the bus and were shot dead after being identified as Shia. The attackers escaped, leaving behind bullet-ridden bodies – which lay unattended for an hour until locals initiated their own rescue operation – and a community in mourning, yet again.

So far 179 people have been killed in sectarian attacks this year.

This was not the first attack targeting the Hazara Shia community inBaluchistan – at least 347 Hazaras have been killed since 1999, and that 105 had been killed in 2010. Since September 2010, 395 people have been killed in 40 incidents of sectarian violence. Over a 100 people have been killed inQuettaalone, and 216 have been injured in the provincial capital and Khuzdar. Given the frequency of attacks by sectarian organisations, it would be optimistic to assume that it was the last.

 

Four days after the massacre in Mastung, three Hazara Shias were shot dead by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants while en route to Sibi. The community was targeted again barely two weeks later on October 4, when a bus carrying 20 passengers was targeted by gunmen nearQuetta. Twelve Hazara Shias were killed in the incident.

The government’s response was characteristically non-committal, with one official stating that the ”pilgrims should have told where they were going.” In addition, the Advocate General of Baluchistan stated that pilgrims should obtain a NOC before leaving for pilgrimage. The irony that pilgrims need an NOC to travel and militants can gun down any number of people at any given time is not lost on anyone.

That the state has failed in protecting its citizens is neither new nor ground-breaking. It is a fact of life that Pakistanis have grown used to, having lost thousands in suicide attacks, assassinations and bomb blasts. However, the fact that the state nurtures these elements and lets them turn on its own is a grave matter. Propped up by the state in the past, the Sipah-e-Sahaba’s militant offshoot, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, has claimed responsibility for several of the targeted attacks. On Eid-ul-Fitr, a suicide bomber from the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi killed 12 people and injured 32 as he blew up his explosives-laden car near the Eid prayer congregation. Had he reached the congregation itself, over 20,000 people would have been targeted.

The anti-Shia Sipahe SahabaPakistanwas formed in 1985 by then leader of Jamiat Ulemae Islam, Haq Nawaz Jhangvi. Its stated goals include declaring Shias a non-Muslim minority like Ahmadis, proscribing their processions during Moharram and imposing its version of shariah law on the state and society. Scholars have linked the rise of the SSP to the Majlise Ahrar movement, which led the anti-Ahmadi agitation and riots in the 1950s and found ‘success’ when Ahmadis were declared non-Muslims in 1974. The movement became a ”prototype” for the anti-Shia movement launched by Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, who wanted Shias to be declared apostates through constitutional means. Scholars also link the Sipah-e-SahabaPakistan’s success and government backing to two external events – the 1979 revolution inIranand the Soviet invasion ofAfghanistan. General Ziaul Haq, distrustful of the influenceIrancould wield on Pakistani Shias, offered support to hard-line Sunni organisations that now thrive in the country. A 2005 report on the state of sectarianism inPakistanestimates that 5,000 to 6,000 Sipah-e-Sahaba activists have undergone jihadi training.

Lashkare Jhangvi was formed in 1996, after Jhangvi was killed. Its leadership included Riaz Basra, who was himself was killed in 2002 in a police ‘encounter’, and AkramLahori, who is currently in jail. Another prominent leader, Malik Ishaq, was released from jail this August after 14 years. He was accused of killing 70 people in 44 cases, out of which, Ishaq was acquitted in 34 cases and bailed out in 10. Ironically enough, Ishaq also planned to go for religious pilgrimage toSaudi Arabiaafter recently obtaining a passport. However, his plans were deterred as he was detained under the Maintenance of Public Order act a day after the massacre in Mastung.

The case of Malik Ishaq once again raises serious questions about the state abetting militant networks. Ishaq was released from Kot Lakhpat jail in August in a hailstorm of rose petals, vivid scenes similar to those that greeted Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of the late Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, at his court hearing. Following his release, Ishaq gave a number of speeches smacking of bravado. He has little reason to fear given thatPunjabgovernment has provided him with a police escort and his family a stipend, in what can only be described as a macabre welfare program for militants.

Ishaq went on an extensive speaking tour after his release, addressing crowds in Rahim Yar Khan,Lahore, Samundri and Khairpur, among other places. Footage of his rallies features him promising to continue his mission of ‘protecting the finality of the Prophethood (peace be upon him)’ and showing crowds allegedly blasphemous material to invoke them to fight for Islam. Ishaq repeatedly mentioned his pride in the Sipah-e-SahabaPakistan, how his release shows that he was on the guided path and that the ‘agencies’ and government are keeping an eye on him.

Law enforcement agencies had tracked Ishaq’s movements after his release, including his inflammatory speeches and meetings with people listed on the fourth schedule of the Anti Terrorism Act. Detention does not appear to have deterred Ishaq. In a message to his followers, Ishaq stated that he believes the fear of prison, bullets, handcuffs and detentions to be polytheism.

Since its creation, the Lashkare Jhangvi has been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of Shias and Iranian nationals and even tried to assassinate then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999. During the October 2009 siege of the Pakistan Army headquarters inRawalpindi, Ishaq and fellow member of the LeJ Ghulam Rasool Shah, also currently in jail, were reportedly flown in to negotiate with militants. Impunity for the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi implies a level of tolerance the state cannot afford for these groups.

On November 11, 2010, Karachi’s residents living on opposite ends of the city were jolted by the impact of an explosion that leveled the Crime Investigation Department headquarters, killing 20 people and causing extensive damage to the neighbouring living quarters for police officers. The attack came a day after the police had arrested alleged Lashkar-e-Jhangvi members. Sectarian strife fuelled by the organization has had far reaching consequences on the country’s psychosocial fabric. One incident among many others is from Sahiwal,Punjab, where a man had stabbed his 17 year old daughter to death. He had severe differences with his wife, the biggest contention being the wife’s faith: she was Shia, while he was Sunni. Even though his family was Barelvi and believed in the tradition of pirs and mureeds, he had begun to follow the diktat of the Sipae Sahaba. His distraught wife speculated that it may have been his outrage at their children following some Shia religious practices that prompted his brutal attack on their eldest daughter. It is murders like these, and massacres in Mastung, that should finally push the government to fully implement its bans on the Sipahe Sahaba Pakistanand Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

The Munir Commission Report of 1954 presented an exhaustive inquiry examining the events and incitement – with complicity from elements of the state and the press – that led to the anti-Ahmadi riots of1953. The report should be made mandatory reading for government officials to understand the implications of not acting against elements that foment hatred and instigate riots; the importance of the role played by the bureaucracy, district administration and law enforcement agencies to deal with situations; and how important it is to deal with existing threats as legitimate law and order situations, before they turn into full-blown crises.

It highlights a foreboding letter written in 1951as anti-Shia violence was beginning inPunjab. “What is happening now, seems almost a writing on the wall and God help us if we do not stop these ignorant people from cutting each other’s throat and thus bringing comfort and cheer to our enemies.” Another letter sent by the government to deputy commissioners, which stated that while religious communities and sects were free to practice their faith, religious controversies must be discouraged and disorder follows when deputy commissioners do not take timely action. The letter asks, ”Have they not allowed the people to assimilate the poison which was administered to them?”

Fifty-seven years later, it is this question that demands an answer.