Sectarian violence from Sindh to Gilgit

Editorial in the Daily Times, Lahore,k Aug 19, 2009
Allama Ali Sher Hyderi — we have taken the spelling of his name from his YouTube videos — was the leader of the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan. He was killed by a rival criminal clan in Khairpur, Sunday night. Public reaction to his assassination in the country in general and Sindh in particular should worry the PPP and the nationalist parties of Sindh, and those who thought that the Sipah was merely a South Punjabi phenomenon.

After the killing of the internationally known Sipah leader Maulana Azam Tariq in 2003, its leadership had fallen on Allama Hyderi of Khairpur in Sindh because under him the province had become the biggest stronghold of the organisation.

There was nothing secret about him. You can listen to him on YouTube under the rubric of Radd-e-Shiat (refutation of the Shia) and read what he had to say about Ahmedis and Ismailis too on ahnaf.com. And people believed in what he said to them.

Expectedly, there has been a violent reaction to his death. It has erupted in Khairpur and spread to Gilgit where one can expect more trouble in the coming days. Impact will also be felt in such cities as are home to big Shia settlements: Dera Ismail Khan, Parachinar, Gilgit, Jhang, Kohat, Hangu, and other far-off places where the writ of the government is weak.

Concern about the rising strength of the Sipah in Jhang, its place of birth, has already been raised in Parliament. MNA Sheikh Waqqas Akram last week complained about the comeback of the Sipah there, in the context of its show of force against the Christians of Gojra in Toba Tek Singh.

In Sindh, the followers of the Sipah have gone around forcing the shops to close. Trains have been stopped in the railway stations of the province and track damaged in a planned manner. Foreseeing the trouble, the administration in many districts has closed down schools for three days and the matriculation exam has been stopped in the middle.

In Karachi, the mobs were out with sticks in hand, breaking everything in sight, including a bus and a car which they later burned. There was heavy fighting and exchange of fire in Judia Bazaar and its adjoining markets in Karachi, pointing to the sensitive areas where the factions have already drawn their battle lines.

A Sipah lawyer-cleric was killed in the city a fortnight ago. Sipah workers “took positions in two domes of the mosque in the area and opened fire on the streets”. Karachi is home to the most powerful madrassas of the faith to which the Sipah belongs.

In faraway Gilgit where a majority Shia population makes the region vulnerable, sectarian clashes occurred in the aftermath of Hyderi’s death, the trouble-makers obviously assuming that the murder was committed by the other side. If the fire spreads, Gilgit will be the one place where most violence can be expected.

The Pakistan Ulema Council has condemned the killing of Allama Ali Sher Hyderi and has announced three days of mourning across the country. It thinks that the murder is a “conspiracy” to restart the sectarian war that Pakistan has been going through in the recent past. Some TV channels also took up the conspiracy theory — usually implicating India — for reasons of self-defence in the days to come when violence at the national level is expected. However, it is wrong to assume that sectarian violence is at a low ebb. It is there in DI Khan and Parachinar and is clearly one-sided against the Shia.

A lot of research is available on Sipah-e-Sahaba because it is the mother of all jihadi organisations fielded by the state of Pakistan as “non-state actors” against India. Living in civil society, these organisations have injected violence into the lives of ordinary citizens.

In the past, the Sipah targeted the Shia and killed them inside mosques and imambargahs and the country shook under the intensity of the sectarian hunger for death. But then, one by one, most of the leaders of the Sipah were killed, including the father of Allama Ali Sher Hyderi; most of the clerics supporting the Sipah have been done to death too. And both sides engaged in this terrible war blame the state of Pakistan and vow revenge against it. www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\08\19\story_19-8-2009_pg3_1