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Written by Ali Jawad
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Wednesday, 15 April 2009 03:04 |
 Tucked away between soaring snowy-peaks and deep gorges in the fragile
north-western region of Pakistan is the tiny town of Parachinar.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, one of the more charismatic leaders in the history of this
troubled nation, is said to have called it Pakistan’s own “Switzerland”. Humbled
by towering snow-tipped mountains and covered by endless fruit orchards,
Parachinar’s natural charm is breathtaking. Its narrative for the last two years
however, has been anything but reflective of the serene beauty of its
surroundings.
Strangled by recurring sieges laid on the town, and a plight concealed from the
consciences of the outside world by a silent media, the lives of Parachinaris
have been a tale of untold suffering. Since early 2007, violence has gripped the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which holds Parachinar, and the
surrounding North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) leading to the deaths of
hundreds. Even more have been left homeless and without means of sustenance with
homes and local businesses regularly torched down just because their owners
happen to fall under the wrong “sect”. Despite the periodical nature of
sectarian violence in these regions, the unrelenting wave of the recent outbreak
has been by far the bloodiest in recent memory.
Tensions began in April 2007 when a procession of Shias came under fire from
fanatical Wahhabis who view Shia Muslims as heretics. What followed on from that
initial attack however, has been a systematic attempt to wipe out Parachinar of
its’ Shia presence. Shias represent a majority of the population in Parachinar
constituting over fifty-percent (50%) of the population. They also have a
considerable presence in neighbouring towns in the north-west of the country
with a strong and historic Hazara presence further north of the FATA.
During the rule of General Zia-ul-Haq, the Kurram Agency (which hosts the town
of Parachinar) came under increased focus for its strategic location as it
provided the shortest route from within Pakistan to the Afghan capital, Kabul.
Jutting out into Afghanistan almost like an island peninsula, it was famously
nicknamed the “Parrot’s Beak” by US forces during the Soviet-Afghan War and was
regularly used as a launching-pad by American-backed "jihadists" to strike out
at the Soviets. As a result of this strategic importance, towns in the FATA
region were flooded by inflows of Wahhabist and Salafist anti-Soviet “jihadists”
well-known for their hatred towards Shias.
Following on from the early and comparably minimal killings unleashed in April,
armed Wahhabi groups have since caved in on the local Shias of Parachinar from
all sides. The Shia residents of Parachinar have repeatedly claimed that Wahhabi
elements from Afghanistan have joined in the attacks against the town’s Shias,
but these cries have been met by deaf ears in Islamabad’s Pakistani central
government.
An all-out attack against the Shias of Parachinar has been underway for a long
time now; even Sunni locals seen to be “friendly” towards Shias have not been
spared in this maelstrom of killing. Gruesome images of beheaded and mutilated
bodies, with arms and legs chopped off from corpses, have surfaced on the
Internet since the outbreak of violence. Such showings of utter barbarity are
not altogether unique. The collective massacres of Hazara Shias in next door
Afghanistan - more notably in Mazari Sharif in 1998 where during a 48-hour
period over 8,000 Hazaras were mercilessly slaughtered - evoke similar images of
ruthlessness. By the end of the killing spree then, corpses littered the streets
of the city after express orders were given out by the Taliban government for
the dead to be left unburied.
Eerily reminiscent of massacres conducted against Afghan Shias in the recent
past, Riaz Ali Toori, a villager from Parachinar, protested in a letter to a
Pakistani daily:
“Today Parachinar is burning: daily bodies of more than five beheaded persons
reach Parachinar. The situation of Parachinar is getting worse day by day and so
is the life of all people living there. It’s a matter of great sorrow and shock
that Pakistan, in spite of bringing Fata into the mainstream of the country, has
been pushed into fighting a continuous war and facing terror.” (Letters to the
Editor, The Dawn, April 08 2008)
Surprisingly, at a time when the “civilized” world is on a so-called offensive
against “terror”, coverage of the sorrow-filled plight of Parachinaris within
western media has been periodical at best. The reasons for this are unclear. May
be it is because Parachinar, fatefully, does not sit over barrels of oil; or
perhaps our probing of the historical context behind these massacres will lead
us to discover that Parachinar is yet another piece of anecdotal evidence of the
much disregarded “blowback” stemming from the Soviet era.
In July of 2008, the New York Times ran a piece highlighting the rise of
“sectarian conflict” in Parachinar. By then, the town had already been subject
to a siege that had spanned for months; food and medical supplies had been in
severe shortage after the main Thal-Peshawar highway leading to the town was
blocked off by armed groups. The New York Times article carried the story of
Asif Hussain, a Sunni driver, in a relief convoy headed for Parachinar; the
convoy was ambushed, and its drivers taken captive. Asif Hussain was let off
after convincing his captors that he was Sunni, the other eight drivers were not
as lucky. (Power Rising Taliban Besiege Pakistani Shiites, New York Times, July
26 2008)
Today, the violence has spread out over a larger radius extending all the way
through to the southern tips of the NWFP. Attacks on Shias in Hangu, Chakwal and
as far south as Deira Ismail Khan have become a thing of the norm. Late in
August of last year, a suicide bomber detonated himself inside the DI Khan
hospital killing thirty-two Shia followers who had come to claim the remains of
one of their leaders slain earlier in the day.
As recently as last week, another suicide bomber struck a Shia mosque in Chakwal
instantly killing thirty and leaving hundreds more injured. The systematic
targeting of followers of the Shia sect in various regions of Pakistan, more
specifically in the north-west of the country, amounts to nothing other than a
project of ethnic cleansing. According to a reputed scholar of the phenomenon of
ethnic cleansing, Drazen Petrovic, he defines it as such:
“ethnic cleansing is a well-defined policy of a particular group of persons to
systematically eliminate another group from a given territory on the basis of
religious, ethnic or national origin. Such a policy involves violence and is
very often connected with military operations. It is to be achieved by all
means, from discrimination to extermination …”
The above definition provides an almost perfect fit to the present situation on
the ground in Parachinar. If international silence continues as it has over the
last two years, the same story will have repeated across many towns in the FATA
and NWFP.
That the Pakistani government holds principal blame for its failure to restrain
the killings is indisputable and goes without mention. Wider global apathy to an
ongoing project of ethnic cleansing however, is certainly not comprehensible and
deserves a great deal of mention.
Parachinar deserves better. And the people of Parachinar certainly deserve
better. The least we can do is speak out and urge our leaders to press the
Pakistani government to bring an immediate end to these massacres. Then, and
only then perhaps, can it be said that we have extended a hand to the forgotten
victims of Parachinar.
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Ali Jawad is a political activist and a member of the AhlulBayt Islamic Mission
(AIM)
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the article is incredibly biased. totally one-sided