1996 was not a particularly bad year for sectarian violence. Indeed, the four months of the caretaker period were conspicuously peaceful. Then came Nawaz Sharif. And 1997 witnessed the worst sectarian violence in Pakistani history. Now 1998 has kicked off with the Mominpura massacre of 30 Shias in Lahore, followed by attacks in Faisalabad and Multan. Has Nawaz Sharif’s brand of religious politics come home to roost? Why can’t the PML deliver on its promise to extirpate sectarianism from the Punjab?
When Mr Sharif came to power early last year, it was clear that the biggest threat to his plans for political stability and economic revival was not the Supreme Court of Pakistan or President Farooq Leghari but sectarian terror which held the nation to ransom. The extremist anti-Shia and anti-Iran militia, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, killed the Iranian consul in Multan. Then, when a police officer nabbed some Lashkar terrorists, he was assassinated in broad daylight. Five Iranians were subsequently killed in Rawalpindi. More followed in Karachi. As the death toll mounted, Mr Sharif swore he would crush the terrorists by promulgating anti-terrorist legislation. But the anti-terrorist courts were not able to get a handle on the sectarian problem. Typically, therefore, Mr Sharif lunged at a “Grand Qadiani Conspiracy” and spent the rest of the year extirpating the judiciary and the presidency.
The jailbreak in D.G.Khan in December involving a group of Lashkar terrorists, and the Mominpura carnage which duly followed, has brought sectarianism back into focus. People are now compelled to ask why the PML government seems particularly vulnerable to religious strife.
The PML is incapable of comprehending why sectarian terrorism is on the rise in its home province of Punjab. Indeed, far from being able to solve the problem, it seems to be an integral part of it. When the Mian Brothers came to power after the February 1997 elections, their father, the famous Abbaji, took them to a cleric known all over Pakistan as a sectarian preacher. The act of seeking blessings from him, however, sent the wrong signal to the Shia and Sunni fundamentalists. But the Sharifs didn’t seem to care. They thought that by keeping the Shia Tehrik-e-Jaafaria and the Sunni Ahle Hadith within the grand PML alliance would automatically solve the problem. But it didn’t. Now these ‘allies’, including the famous cleric, are all cursing Nawaz Sharif in chorus.
The PML is fast being absorbed into the Shia-Sunni schism for two main reasons: its opportunistic mouthings about Islamising state and society and its compulsion to support the “private” jehad in Indian held-Kashmir.
As everyone knows, the militias fighting in Kashmir and Afghanistan are all Sunni-Deobandi and Sunni-Ahle Hadith. These are deployed by the “agencies” for their own external agendas. In exchange, however, the agencies tend to provide a degree of protection to these militias. And no one gives a damn that the “agency agenda” often conflicts violently with the requirements of political stability and liberal democracy in the country. The militias, quite clearly, have another agenda of their own — to kill the Shias and browbeat other religious minorities in Pakistan. How can any country maintain its internal sovereignty when armed militias like these are allowed to operate freely?
There are regions in Punjab which are declared strongholds of the different militias fighting in Kashmir. In such districts, the locally dominant militia tends to control the administration. In many cases, it has penetrated into the ranks of the district officers and police. Anyone who has studied the 12-year Lebanese civil war can see that the militias are gradually taking over Pakistan in the same way. The sectarian poison has entered the mosque and now no one is free of the sectarian bias: even those who don’t declare their sectarianism nurse sympathies for their sect.
Mr Sharif has wittingly strengthened the movement to transform Pakistan into an anti-Shia state by appointing a Deobandi judge as president of Pakistan. The compulsions of jehad have also pushed Pakistan into confrontation with the Shia state of Iran next door. Worse, it is incomprehensible how Mr Sharif can talk of uniting all the Shia and Sunni factions in Afghanistan in cooperation with Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan even as his “agencies” condone Sunni warfare against the Shias in Pakistan.
The sectarian crisis needs firm handling. The militias have to be ruthlessly dismantled even if it hurts the dwindling jehad in Kashmir. The 12000 seminaries run by the religious parties have to be taken over and run by the state with its own funds and curriculum rather than with foreign funds and curricula dictated by sectarian mullahs. All mosques must return to the ambit of state control and their khateebs should be appointed on the basis of standard education rather than mere religious fervour.
There is no easy way out for Mr Sharif. He must first purge the state of its supra-governmental external ambitions. Then he should disarm and crush the militias. If this is not done quickly, the problem will seriously begin to eat into Mian Nawaz Sharif’s economic agenda. And if that comes to pass, the militias will become monsters and devour whatever civil society remains in this country.