Pakistan’s poorest province, Balochistan has also been convulsed since 2004 by a Baloch nationalist-separatist insurgency and a brutal Pakistani military-led counter insurgency campaign that has involved disappearances, torture and summary executions.Quetta has become increasingly ethnically polarized.
No organization has claimed responsibility for last month’s killings. In the past, several Sunni fundamentalist organizations, including the Lashkar-e-Jangvi and the Sepah-e-Sahaba, have boasted of targeting the Hazaras, a Shia group that originates from Afghanistan and who speak Farsi (Persian).
The killings come at a time when Pakistan security forces are facing widespread public criticism for the brutal and illegal methods they have used in combatting the Baloch insurgency. Faced with incontrovertible evidence that security forces have been illegally disappearing civilians, including young boys, the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders for the authorities to explain their whereabouts.
Not only do the killings of the Hazaras turn attention from the crimes of the security forces, they are serving as a pretext to push for a further militarization of Balochistan.
Although Balochistan, with a population of just 10 million, is Pakistan’s smallest and poorest province, it is highly important from an economic and geopolitical standpoint. It is rich in minerals and natural gas and borders both Afghanistan and Iran. It is the site of the Chinese-built Gwadar port facility, which could provide Beijing with an Arabian Sea naval base and serve as the starting point for a land route for shipping oil and natural gas from the Middle East to China, thereby largely bypassing the US-dominated Indian Ocean.
Last month’s targeted killings of Hazaras provoked widespread protests in Quetta, where half a million Hazaras live, elsewhere in Pakistan, and internationally. On Saturday, April 14, one day after a major protest that saw Quetta effectively shut down for the day, nine more Hazaras were killed in three separate attacks.ver the past decade, the target killings of Hazaras have resulted in virtually no arrests, let alone convictions.
The indifference of the Pakistani establishment to the plight of the Hazaras was exemplified by statements made by Balochistan Chief Minister and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Nawab Aslam Raisani last year after 40 Hazaras were killed in Mastung. Raisani, who hails from Mastung, dismissed the ethno-communal killings as “no big deal” and said that he would send “a truckload of tissue papers” to the families of the dead.
Unable to provide a progressive solution to mass poverty and economic backwardness, the rival factions of the Pakistani elite have long stoked religious-sectarian and ethnic conflict.
This includes the Balochi nationalists and separatists, who seek to exploit the genuine grievances of the Balochi people over endemic poverty and state indifference and repression, to advance the interests of the traditional sardars (tribal leaders/landowners) and other privileged layers.
The April 13 protests were supported by many mainstream parties and backed by the Majlis-e-Wahdat-ul-Muslamin or MWM, a Shia organization. Especially prominent was the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP).
Both the MWM and HDP have raised the call for the imposition of Governor’s Rule, a form of emergency government that entails the dissolution of the provincial assembly and the elected ministry and a strengthening of the power of the executive. Under Governor’s Rule, the security forces and military have frequently been given free rein to run roughshod over basic rights and judicial norms.
Formed in 2003, the ethically based HDP describes itself as a secular, social-democratic party. Faced with the indifference of the government and likely complicity of sections of the military-security apparatus in the killings of the Hazaras, the HDP is urging Hazaras to turn to the Western powers and the United Nations for support, including pressing them to invoke the UN “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.”
The United States has supported a succession of military dictatorships in Pakistan—including that of General Zia-ul Haq, which openly promoted Sunni fundamentalism.
While the HDP denounces Iran for “meddling” in the affairs of other countries, it supports the US on the Afghanistan theatre. The HDP is critical of Hamid Karzai not because he is dependent on the US and NATO to protect him from the wrath of his people; but because his government has failed to protect the Afghan Hazaras from “Pashtun aggression.”
The HDP justifies its support for the US on the grounds that when the Sunni fundamentalist Taliban ruled Afghanistan they targeted the Hazaras. The HDP leaders conveniently “forget” not just the US’s previous arming of the Sunni fundamentalists in Afghanistan and support for General Zia’s dictatorship, but also its initial support for the Taliban regime. At the very point when they were repressing the Hazaras, Washington is eagerly pursuing ‘talks’ with the Taliban.
