Security: Lawlessness and Sectarianism Soaring

As a member of a minority community, Pakistan's founding father Muhammed Ali Jinnah, a Shia, was keen to establish religious liberty as a core principle of Pakistan. Likewise the Bhuttos, as minority Shiites, have stood on a platform of religious liberty, equality and secularism.

However over the past two and a half decades Saudi Arabia and the USA have both pumped money into Pakistan to advance their own interests. The Saudis started investing massively in Sunni-majority Pakistan after Iran's 1979 Islamic (Shiite) Revolution to create a Sunni fundamentalist bulwark against Shiism on Iran's eastern border. The USA started investing in Pakistan in 1980, funding the mujahideen's jihad against the Communists.

The combined effect is that Pakistan has been turned into a veritable factory for Sunni fundamentalist Deobani and Wahhabi ideologues and mujahideen. But Pakistan is (like Iraq but to a lesser degree) a Sunni-Shia sectarian fault-line state. Pakistan has the world's second largest Shiite population after Iran. (Pakistan's Shiite population is estimated at up to 20 percent. Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia both have Shiite populations of around 15 percent). Deobandi and Wahhabi Sunni Islam condemns Shiites as apostates. So as Saudi-sponsored, vehemently anti-Shia, Sunni fundamentalism has taken root and grown in Pakistan since the 1980s, Sunni vs Shiite sectarian tension and violence escalated, with Saudi Arabia and Iran funding and training their proxies in the struggle for dominance in the Muslim world.

According to sources as many as 4,000 people are estimated to have died in Sunni vs Shiite sectarian fighting in Pakistan in the last two decades and the conflict is intensifying. Pakistani Shiites have historically been linked to Najaf (Iraq), not Iran. But the explosion of Sunni-sponsored, anti-Shiite Wahhabism led many Pakistani Shiites to seek training in Qom (Iran). Sectarian violence has further escalated since the war in Iraq took on sectarian tones. And as is common, when Sunni vs Shiite sectarian violence escalates, so does violence against Christians.

On Friday 6 April, Sunni militants shot at Shiites as they were gathered at their mosque in Parachinar, about 150 miles southwest of Peshawar, the capital of the highly Islamised and Talibanised North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Normally Pakistan's minority Shiite communities absorb the violence against them, which includes targeted killings and mosque bombings. But Parachinar is a majority Shiite town and this time the Shiites retaliated violently, burning down some 400 Sunni-owned shops and homes. At least 40 people were killed and more than 40 were wounded. (Link 2) (This may well have been a deliberate attempt to provoke a Shiite response that would elicit an even more violent and wider Sunni "response".)

Christians in Charsadda district on the north-eastern outskirts of Peshawar have since been threatened with severe consequences if they fail to either flee or convert to Islam. Over recent months local market stalls trading in the "un-Islamic" (such as music, videos, fashion, and haircuts) have been bombed and threatened. Likewise, girls in Charsadda and neighbouring Mardan districts have been threatened with "consequence" if they don't stop attending school. Girls Higher Secondary School at Gumbat, Mardan district, was bombed in the early morning of Friday 4 May. The region is being systematically cleansed, purged of all that is un-Islamic; Islamised by force and threat of death. The situation for Christians in Charsadda and throughout NWFP is intolerable. (Link 3)

But Islamisation and Talibanisation are no longer problems confined to NWFP or western Pakistan in general. Islamisation and Talibanisation are spreading eastwards across Pakistan like an air-borne virus. Pakistan's national capital and nerve-centre, Islamabad, and the National Assembly are both succumbing.