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 today 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 established a fake
autonomy over us. It is since the last 40 years that our lives have been
plagued by the ever present Pakistan military here.”
Spokesman of a
Gilgit-Baltistan nationalist organization, on condition of anonymity, in an interview
to SAIR, March 2, 2012
At least 18 Shias from
Gilgit-Baltistan were killed on February 28, 2012, by armed assailants in
military uniforms on the Karakoram Highway in the Kohistan District of Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa, while they were returning in a convoy from a pilgrimage to Iran.
According to the Police, the assailants flagged down four buses, boarded 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 included
women and children.
Soon after, tension
started brewing in Gilgit. In a clash with law enforcement agencies in Gilgit
District on February 29, a man, identified as Naveed was killed and two others
were injured. The Police also recovered a dead body from a mountain 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
private and Government organisations for three days.
Meanwhile, the
anti-Shia outfit Jandullah ‘commander’ Ahmed Marwat claimed responsibility for
the attack, declaring, “they were Shias and our mujahedeen shot them dead”.
However, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Member, Mehboob Khan, in a bizarre
statement, blamed the people of Gilgit-Baltistan for carrying out the attacks
in Kohistan to settle ‘personal scores’. Abdul Sattar Khan, Member Provincial
Assembly (MPA) from Kohistan’s 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 be the result of the sectarian strife within
Gilgit-Baltistan.
The MPAs’ observations
appear to be misplaced. Despite a fear of the revival of sectarian skirmishes
in Gilgit-Baltistan on the day of fateful incident, a media report from The
Express Tribune on March 2, 2012, stated that the elders of the Shia dominated
Nagar Valley in Hunza Nagar District took at least 35 Sunni labourers working
in the area into protective custody and handed them over to the Police, who
escorted them safely to Gilgit, the next day. Quoting this incident during his
telephonic interview, the spokesman of a Gilgit-Baltistan nationalist
organisation observed,
A sense of belonging
to this region is inherent in the people of Gilgit-Baltistan and binds them
together across sectarian lines. Faith based killings, or killing for one's
identity is not common among the people of Gilgit-Baltistan. Pakistan’s brutal
encroachment and the eventual fanning of the Shia-Sunni divide by the military
and corrupt officialdom installed by Islamabad has sometimes led to some stray
acts of sectarian killings. The general perception of a low level of sectarian
violence in Gilgit, compared to other ‘explosive regions’ of Pakistan, is
correct, because people here are not divided on any sectarian or ethnic lines;
in fact, they are united on a common goal of attaining their rightful political
autonomy and achieving their basic rights.
Gilgit-Baltistan has
historically remained a peaceful region, with occasional cycles of orchestrated
tension and violence. Shias were a majority in the region until the Government
of Pakistan breached the State Subject Rules (SSR) promulgated in 1927 by the
last Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh, in a massive effort at demographic re-engineering.
According to the State Subject Rules, no non-local could take up permanent
residence or acquire property in the Gilgit-Baltistan region. The rule,
however, was suspended and violated when the Pakistan Government in the 1970’s,
during the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto era, settled thousands of people from the then
North West Frontier Province (NWFP, now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) in
Gilgit-Baltistan, converting the local majority into a minority. The first
reported sectarian clash took place during Bhutto’s 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 massive sectarian attack,
sent a Lashkar (army) of militants, comprising natives of Afghanistan 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 Group’s (ICG) report Discord in Pakistan’s Northern Areas:
…Sunni zealots,
predominantly from NWFP’s tribal areas, assisted by local Sunnis from 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
impunity 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 region 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, the
revolution in Iran in 1979, each had a cumulative impact on sectarian turmoil.
Even after these events subsided and the General Pervez Musharraf regime
announced a policy of ‘enlightened moderation,’ nothing spectacular happened to
assuage the 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 Hassan, a
Shia leader, was shot dead on August 4, 1993, again leading to clashes that 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
Education had issued as part of the curriculum for the schools in the region.
According to Shia community leaders, the textbooks promote Sunni thought and
values and are an attempt to promote sectarian hatred between the two sects.
Apart from cycles of
violence and sustained oppression from above, a low literacy rate and acute
poverty act as powerful deterrents to any movement to further the region’s
democratic demands, and contribute directly to the growth of sectarian
fanaticism. The Zia era witnessed the creation of extremist groups like the
anti-Shia Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and, in response, the Shia
Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-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-Mohammedi Pakistan (SMP). The aggressive Sunni Islamisation
drive initiated by General Zia impacted substantially on Shia-dominated
Gilgit-Baltistan, with the Pakistan Army and politicians in Islamabad seeking
to divide the region along sectarian lines to retain tight control over this
strategically important area.
On December 7, 2005,
for instance, a Daily Times editorial noted that intelligence agents had
discovered that the LeJ and SSP were planning to use suicide-bombers to target
Shia members of the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Council. Earlier in 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 recovered from his possession indicated that he came from Kohistan in
the NWFP. Shortly thereafter, however, the Pakistani Rangers, on orders from
the ‘highest quarters’, forcibly removed the perpetrator from the hospital,
apparently to avoid his identification and interrogation by the local police,
which, sources in Gilgit indicate, would have exposed a larger conspiracy. A
majority of those killed have been demonstrators who have fallen to the bullets
of the state’s paramilitary force, the Pakistan Rangers, and sources in Gilgit
claim that, contrary to the official 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 mischief in the region.
A report by Freedom
House in 2010, noted, further:
A number of Islamist
militant groups, including those that receive patronage from the Pakistani
military, operate from bases in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Militant groups
that have traditionally focused on attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir are
reportedly expanding their influence and activities in Pakistani Kashmir,
including the establishment of new Madarsas (religious schools) in the area.
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),
the Pakistani Government banned 25 militant groups operating within the
country, including those focused on Kashmir. Although the Government claimed to
have raided and sealed off the Muzaffarabad headquarters of the LeT, also known
as the Jama’at-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 attempt to foster
sectarian strife to divide the people and thus deprive them of a ‘united
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
killings in the month of November 2011. However, with little media presence in
the region, and tremendous manipulation of reports, suspicions persist that
these killings may have been orchestrated by the Pakistani establishment,
rather than motivated by local sectarian sentiment.
Moreover, Security
Forces (SFs) are accused of barging into the houses without search and arrest
warrants. Islamabad and its “state apparatus” have been accused of engineering
‘disappearances’ and illegal detentions in the region. In one glaring incident
of excesses, Manzoor Parwana, a leading politician in Gilgit-Baltistan, was
abducted by Pakistan’s SFs on July 28, 2011, for demanding the rights of the
more than ten thousand Ladakhi refugees, who reside in different parts of
Gilgit-Baltistan, and desire reunification with their relatives in India. He is
yet to be released.
In September 2011, the
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) expressed alarm at the arrest of
over two dozen political activists in Gilgit-Baltistan and reports of
maltreatment of some of them in detention. In connection with the August 11,
2011 protests over non-payment of compensation to the victims of the Attabad landslide,
an HRCP statement observed,
The Commission takes
serious exception to the manner in which the authorities have chosen to deal
with public resentment following the August 11 killings. The Policemen 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. HRCP has noted
with concern reports of mistreatment of some of the activists.
The population of
Gilgit-Baltistan is silenced by an overwhelming military and intelligence
presence, arbitrary detentions and ‘disappearances’. A devastating report by
the European Union Rapporteur, Baroness Emma Nicholson, while deploring
“documented 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 democracy”. Nicholson’s 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 matter of state policy in the region.
The President of
Pakistan ‘selects’ the Chief Ministers of Gilgit-Baltistan, and they are not,
consequently, answerable to the local people. They remain subject to military
and bureaucratic pressures from Islamabad. Not surprisingly, Chief Minister
Mehdi Shah of Pakistan People’s Party, in a startling revelation, disclosed
that he had been forbidden to take action against corrupt officials in the past
by sitting Assembly Members, on political and sectarian grounds. However, the
speaker of Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly, Wazir Baig, of Pakistan
People’s Party Parliamentarian (PPPP), an electoral extension of PPP in
Gilgit-Baltistan, accused the Chief Minister of orchestrating recent extra
judicial killings and the arrest of dozens of innocent local youth.
Despite a fitful focus
on the more extreme developments in the region, Gilgit-Baltistan has largely
been ignored by the international media and community, substantially as a
result of its remoteness and intentional isolation by Islamabad. The denial of
basic rights is a quotidian reality in the region, with periodic escalation of
orchestrated excesses by state agencies or Islamist extremist proxies. Despite
clear directives from the Supreme Court of Pakistan, the ambiguity of the
region’s constitutional status – and hence the denial of legal and
constitutional protection to the population – persists. Islamabad has combined
the military jackboot with the instrumentalisation of extremist majoritarian
Islam as its principal strategy of political management in Gilgit-Baltistan,
and the population continues to despair for any proximate relief in a situation
where every dissenting voice is immediately and effectively suffocated.
Source: South Asia Intelligence Review