The ambulances transporting the bodies of the six young men killed in Gadap Town on the outskirts of Karachi (Image: Ppiimages/Demotix)
In a fresh wave of violence that gripped the southern port city of Karachi at the turn of the new year, six young devotees of Sufi saint Ayub Shah in Gadap Town, on the outskirts of the city, were killed on January 7. Their bodies were found by the caretaker the following morning in a mud-house close to the shrine.
A note left near the dead, allegedly by the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP), stated that a similar fate awaited anyone visiting the shrine. The police told AFP the note said: “Stop visiting shrines!”
Sufism, strongly practiced in Pakistan’s Sindh province, is opposed by the Taliban who follow the Wahabi and Salafist school of Islam.
The brutal killings have reinforced the long-standing fear among the people of Karachi that the militant group which infiltrated the city a few years ago has now not only consolidated itself, but is also imposing its belief system.
“The part of Karachi where this incident took place is a known stronghold of the Taliban,” explained Imtiaz Ali, correspondent for Dawn newspaper. He said Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl’s body was also found in Gadap. Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, also one of the four men who founded the Taliban movement in Afghanistan in 1994, was arrested from there in 2010. Gadap has often been in the news during anti-polio campaigns which have had to be suspended in recent years after attacks on vaccinators and health workers.
Just a month back, 25-year-old Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, had warned of the Talibanisation of Pakistan. “They are surrendering our culture, our history, our identity and our religion based on a lie cloaked in an imported, fictionalised version of Islam,” he said at an event announcing a two-week cultural festival to take place in February.
While Karachi is no stranger to violence, Ambreen Agha, research assistant at New Delhi’s Institute for Conflict Management, agreed with Zardari. This particular incident, she said, should definitely ring alarm bells for Pakistan’s security apparatus as it indicated the “deeper penetration” of Pakistani Taliban in the city.
“The TTP’s upward mobility should be taken as a serious threat for the concerned agencies,” she said, warning that the gradual trickling down of the “Talibanised ideology” posed a potent threat to the establishment.
It also puts a big question mark on the targeted “operation” carried out by security forces and law enforcement agencies in the city, which have been ongoing since September. Touted as a success by the government, Sindh governor Ishratul Ibad last week voiced his satisfaction, saying there was a “significant decrease” in target killings and kidnappings for ransom.
Labelling the operation nothing but “buffoonery and horseplay”, Agha, however, pointed out: “The tact with which the outfit [Taliban] carries out its activities and the pattern that they follow in the metropolitan city suggests something more than what meets the eye.” She added: “TTP’s operational success suggests implicit collusion with the gangsters and their political patrons.”
“The claims of success by the Rangers [paramilitary force] should be questioned,” said Zohra Yusuf, the chairperson of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Naeem Sadiq’s, a citizen of Karachi, says the militant attacks “are a result of the armed private militias, so faithfully encouraged by the government’s own ‘proliferation of weapons’ policy.” He believes the only way to prevent incidents like Gaddap, is to cleanse the city of weapons and has filed a petition in the Supreme Court of Pakistan calling for this. “De-weaoponise all individuals and groups – starting with the world’s most militant parliament with its 69,473 prohibited bore weapons!” he said.
When Shamsheer Khan, learnt about the drone strike on Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban supremo, on Nov 1, the 45-year old taxi-driver in Karachi, went to the mosque and prostrated before God to help the young fighter. “I prayed that if he were fighting a jihad against the Americans, Allah should protect him and if he had expired in way of jihad, to elevate him to the highest position of an Islamic fighter.”
Mehsud was killed in a US drone strike in the Dande Darpakhel, in the North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan. He had succeeded Tehrik Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) Baitullah Mehsud, in 2009, after the latter was killed in a similar attack by the drones.
Mehsud has claimed to have orchestrated several fatal attacks on the Pakistan army and also had a hand in the 2010 suicide attack in Afghanistan in which seven CIA agents were killed.
Strangely, Khan’s empathy for a perpetrator of violence finds resonance across the country where anger against drones is high, a reason for such an extreme anti-American sentiment.
Shortly after Mehsud’s death was confirmed, leaders from religious-political parties like the Jamaat-i-Islami’s (JI) Munawar Hasan called him a “martyr” and Jamiat Ulema-i Islam’s (JUI) Fazlur Rehman went a step further saying anyone killed by US is a martyr.
The taxi driver justified the violence saying: “When the leaders of this country have sold their souls to the West, somebody has to bring them back to the true path of Islam and if violence is what is needed, then be that.”
But Mosharaf Zaidi, a political analyst has no illusions that Mehsud is none other than a “mass murderer.” Calling Mehsud “a martyr was a grave tactical error and a dangerously immoral thing to do,” he said, adding. “The TTP is a terrorist organisation that deserves neither any sympathy from Pakistan, nor from any other country,” he added.
Zahid Hussain, defence analyst and author blames it on a “complete disarray” he sees in Pakistan’s policy. “Nawaz Sharif wants to normalize relations with the US, but there is no clarity on how he wants to deal with the issue of rising militancy in Pakistan that also threatens the US interests in the region.”
When news of Mehsud’s death reached the rulers, the narrative changed slightly. Though not directly empathising with the TTP, Pakistan’s interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar said the drone attack had scuttled the peace process that the government was about to start with the Taliban. Imran Khan, also in favour of talks with the Taliban, threatened stopping the NATO supply line going through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is ruling, if drone strikes did not end.
“The TTP shura [council] had frequently derided the notion of peace talks and, even before the death of Mehsud, had not committed to negotiations,” pointed out said Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, noted peace activist and an academic.
Still, if negotiations have to happen, Zaidi said these “must begin with the organisation’s [TTP] acceptance of the Pakistani constitution and the sovereignty of the Pakistani republic over Pakistani territory.” He, however, was sceptical of saying “no sign of such an acceptance” seemed to exist.
To a nation, in the throes of daily violence, last week’s events have only led to historic bewilderment bordering on the dangerous. A wave of confusion seems to have enveloped the people blurring the distinction between a hero and a villain.
“It only confuses an already shattered national discourse in Pakistan about rule of law, national sovereignty and a bright future for Pakistani children,” said Zaidi.
Hoodbhoy finds Mehsud being termed a martyr incredulous. “It indicates some kind of collective mental disorder!” he said, adding: “The Pakistani mind, whipped into hyper anti-Americanism by the media and parties like PTI and JI, appears to have lost its sense of balance.”
To Zaidi, Pakistan’s handling of the TTP has been nothing short of tragic. He puts the blame squarely on both the government and political leaders who helped “create a narrative in which Mehsud, seems to have become a victim of drones.” He said the drone strikes would not exist if the Pakistani state had taken care of the criminals and terrorists that have been “festering and building up in FATA and beyond since well before 9/11”.
With the new TTP leader Mullah Fazlullah though, there is little doubt among the Pakistani people over who their foe and versus friend is. Fazlullah had virtually held the valley of Swat hostage and embarked on a systematic, violent movement to wipe out dissent back in 2007-2009. Last year it was his men who had shot Malala. Eventually the army had to step in and flush him and his followers out of the region.
To Hoodbhoy, this change of guard has given the Pakistani state a “narrow window of opportunity to hit Fazlullah and his band of terrorist thugs before he consolidates his power.”
But, he questioned: “Will we be able to find the courage and strategic wisdom? He answered it himself with a grim: “I doubt it!”
On 10 Nov, the Inter Services Public Relations, which is the official PR cell of the army, condemned the use of the word martyr to describe Mehsud, saying it misleading and irresponsible.
Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, who was targeted by the Taliban for fighting for girls’ education, will address the United Nations today.
The speech will be her first public appearance since the attack in October 2012. Malala, who won Index on Censorship and Doughty Street chambers Advocacy award this year, was shot in the head and chest by an unknown assailant while she was on her way home from school. The Pakistani Taliban spokesman took responsibility for the attack, saying that the young girl was “anti-Taliban and secular”.
Watch Malala’s speech live here:
At 11, Malala began blogging anonymously for BBC Urdu about living in Swat, a Taliban-controlled district in Pakistan. She eventually became an outspoken advocate for girls’ education, and brought international attention to the importance of education for children. Since her attack, she has established the Malala Fund, an organisation that demands education for all.
UNESCO has called the right to education a “fundamental human right”, that serves as a foundation for all other rights, including freedom of expression. With 200 million children denied the basic right to an education around the world, Malala’s fight is important now more than ever.
Malala’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, accepted the Index award on his daughter’s behalf saying: “I want to give a message to the world. I didn’t do anything special. As a father, I did one thing, I gave her the right of freedom of expression. All fathers and mothers, give your daughters and sons freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is a most important right. The solution of any conflict is to say the right thing, to speak the truth.”
Listen to what Malala’s father had to say at this year’s Index awards:
Two journalists were among 50 people killed by suicide bombers on December 6. Abdul Wanab, from Express News and Pervez Khan Waqt TV died and a third journalist Mohib Ali was injured in the attack on an administrative building in the town of Ghanalai, on the border with Afghanistan. The journalists were covering a peace jirga in which local government officials and tribal elders were discussing an anti-Taliban strategy.
