Pakistan on a Genocide Watch?
April 16, 2012 by Team SAISA
Filed under Analysis
The stories of massacres emanating out of Pakistan despite ban on media to cover the ethno – political, sectarian and religious violence is crossing the threshold of internationally accepted norms. The chicken have come to roost at home for the original architect of “terror as a strategic tool”. The expertise it gained over the first and current Afghan wars and its experiences in India have ultimately resulted in radicalising the society where ethnic cleansing, terrorism, wanton killings, crimes against women and drug wars have become routine. So routine that crimes against the minorities and women are seldom reported in the media.
The radicalisation process started by Zia ul Haq has now matured and makes a strong case for putting Pakistan on the genocide watch, says Nitin Pai in an article in Business Standard.
A genocide takes place in stages. These can be rapid or drawn out in time. Gregory Stanton, an American human rights scholar and president of Genocide Watch, has identified eight stages, starting from classification of people into “us and them” and ending in extermination followed by denial. Pakistan is already through many of the early stages. Instead of waiting until it is too late for too many, the proper thing to do now is to squarely place Pakistan in a genocide watchlist and bring the intense focus of international public opinion to bear. It is understandable that the governments of the United States and India are unwilling to take up the violence against minorities for reasons of realpolitik. It is understandable that China and Saudi Arabia don’t care. It is therefore understandable that the UN Security Council doesn’t care. What is not understandable is that international media and human rights groups appear oblivious to this ongoing tragedy.
The systematic ethic cleansing in Gilgit Baltistan, the targetted killings of the Hazaras and Baloch in Balochistan, the forced conversions of Hindu and Christian minorities, blatant crimes against minorities and the ethno – political battle in Karachi, growing cases of internally displaced persons and forced disappearances are a grim reminder that the international media has to begin focusing attention of the international community to this epicentre of terror. Statistically, South Asia Terrorism portal (satp.org), has tabulated the terror linked deaths from 2003 to 2012. These are disturbing trends:
Brigadier S Chatterji places the Jihadi Military Complex(JMC) dynamics in focus when he argues that Zia’s Pakistan which envisioned an Islamic Caliphate by pulling away from its Indian moorings has come full circle with a society radicalised under the weight of its own machinations. He focuses on the JMC, which for its quest to retain monopoly over the state, has turned Pakistan into a genocidal inferno:
Pakistan’s strategic partnership with the jihadi establishment has too often been touted as a necessary counterbalance to address its asymmetry with its traditional enemy — India. In effect, it has served a plethora of domestic, geopolitical and personal requirements of Pakistan leaders trying to cling to power, far more than countervailing Indian military threats.
General-turned-military ruler Zia-ul Haq is credited with initiating Pakistan’s march to being global jihad’s epicentre. His motives had far less to do with a military imbalance with India, as compared to projecting himself as an Islamic protagonist so that he could wrest support from the domestic fundamentalist constituency.
The Pakistani military establishment had barely any discernible radical influence then. Gradually, as the ISI grew in stature, radical influence increased within the army too. Beyond military cantonments, the main drivers were the mushrooming madrassas; often the sole educational recourse for children from households at the periphery.
Kohistan Shia Massacre
Jinnah’s Pakistan has thus been turned into a state propagating all forms of genocidal behavior with a society increasingly growing insensitive to terror all around it. Now the majority Shias, long subject of forced Shia domination, have turned violent against Sunnis in Gilgit Baltistan (GB) escalating the violence where reportedly 250 people have been killed since the targeted killings of 18 Shias in February this year. JMCs efforts to ethnically cleanse the region has effectively turned the region into an open battleground. Sectarian violence here is an attempt by the Pakistani establishment to deny the local residents their legitimate rights by embroiling them in an internecine war.
Karachi, the hub of ethno-political violence, is soon likely turning into Beirut of eighties within a ‘Lebanonised’ state, says Alok Bansal:
“As neither the ethno-political nor the sectarian dominance is likely to be established soon, the violence is likely to be a long drawn one, with significant presence of Taliban within the city that could be catastrophic. Reports already indicate that the city has as many fire arms as Waziristan. For Taliban, the fractured city provides a unique opportunity to embroil the security forces in a classic urban guerilla war to reduce pressure on FATA”.
The battle for political influence over the economic centre of Pakistan has serious impact on the failing economy of Pakistan as violence dominates economic activity.
The ongoing spate of sectarian violence against the Hazara community in Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan demonstrates a growing nexus between Baloch nationalists and anti-Shia militants outfits. The oil rich province has seen a sharp rise in violence over the years as Pakistan establishment continues to suppress dominant nationalistic demands of Baloch and Shia Hazaras.
With the inception of ethno-religious violence in Pakistan in general and in Balochistan in particular, in early ’70s, the political opposition turned into a violent campaign against Hazaras. Their indiscriminate massacre is under way and so far hundreds of Hazaras, hailing from all walks of life – from poor fruit venders to highest intellectuals – have been ruthlessly killed. Over the last two years there has been an escalation in violence against them in Balochistan, in FATA and Gilgit-Baltistan.The recent protests against Shia genocide in Pakistan on 14 April is a sign of growing dissatisfaction finding voice, which if left unchecked, would further escalate violence in the intolerant Pakistan society. This caricature sums up the situation in Balochistan lucidly.
As per satp.org assessment, Balochistan has for long earned notoriety as the land of extra judicial killings, disappearances, SF high handedness, and repression, as well as a playground for terrorists operating beyond the frontiers of the Country. The Province witnessed 711 fatalities, including 542 civilians, 122 SF personnel and 47 militants in 2011, as against 347 fatalities, comprising 274 civilians, 59 SF personnel and 14 militants in 2010, according to partial data compiled by the Institute for Conflict Management (ICM, all data till December 31, 2011).
Human Rights Watch has stopped at urging the Pakistani government to “take all necessary steps to ensure the security of Shia Muslims in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The government should hold accountable those responsible for ordering and carrying out a campaign of targeted killings against the Shia.”
Another disturbing trend is the growing sectarianism making inroads in the Pakistani Taliban ranks and file. Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella group of Pakistan Taliban, is an ideologically motivated militant outfit, predominantly consisting of fighters from Deoband School of Thought. But now with the heavy influx of foreign militants’ – mostly from Middles East and Central Asian Republics (CARs), it has a substantial number of Salafids. Thus, Salafi Jihadi ideology has rapidly been burgeoning among Pakistani Taliban, posing serious threat to the influence of traditional Deobandi dominance. The open war between army and the Taliban in FATA is vitiated further where each side is taking extreme steps to muzzle the other. However, the locals of FATA are bearing the brunt by getting caught in the cross fire.
The Durand line is a free for all between the Pakistan Taliban and various Afghan groups such as Haqqanis and the Quetta Shura, violence in KP and FATA is the only accepted human emotion.
Nitin Pai opines that:
The perpetrators and immediate motives in each of these cases are different. They range from Sunni jihadi groups targeting people they consider apostates, to rival communities seeking domination, to the Pakistani armed forces fighting insurgents. They are called sectarian violence, gang warfare, ethnic cleansing, kill-and-dump or counter-insurgency. It is perhaps because there are individual names for these crimes that we are missing the possibility that they might amount to a bigger one — genocide.
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) and the International Coalition for The Responsibility to Protect (ICRtoP) — two prominent international NGOs that champion the Responsibility to Protect populations against mass atrocities as an international norm — do not even list Pakistan in the crises they are tracking. Organisations like Human Rights Watch are bravely reporting events on the ground, but their wide mandate precludes them from focusing on this one issue.
The UN Human Rights Council is more interested in outlawing giving offence to religion than killing in its name. The Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), always ready to talk about the world’s oppressed Muslims, can be trusted to maintain a resolute silence in this case.
Closer home, the Indian media stands indicted too. So completely are our television channels beholden to the narrative of the peace process that they are, literally, overlooking mass murder.
The inferno next door has ominous signs of exploding under the intensity of its own flames with serious ramifications to regional and global peace. It is time the international community looked at Pakistan beyond a tool to help resolve Afghanistan to a Pakistan ready to explode with dangerous portends. The time to put international pressure to put Pakistan on the genocide watch list is here and now lest it is too late. After the sordid experiences of the genocide leading up to dismemberment of East Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh, Pakistan is keen on balkanising again. It needs to be stopped!
Related articles
- Citizens protest #ShiaGenocide in Pakistan (twitchy.com)
- South Asia Intelligence Review-Volume 10, No. 40, April 9, 2012 (theromangate.wordpress.com)
- Shias rally against sectarianism across the country (dawn.com)
- Is South Asia Losing the Plot? (southasianidea.com)
- 8 Shia Hazaras Martyred in Quetta by the Target Killing of LeJ ;15-day toll rises to 26 (jafrianews.com)
- Will the jihadi tiger devour Pakistan? (Rediff.com)
- Sectarian militancy thriving in Balochistan (dawn.com)
- Put Pakistan on a genocide watch list (Business Standard)
Related: Partition violence in Punjab, Sialkot and Gujranwala.
This Huffington Post article of date throws light on the worsening Hazara crisis in Balochistan.
I am taken aback by the tone and tenor of an otherwise well written and lucid article. The compliments to SAI, however exclude the key contributers to the article’s “body” in the main.
Presuming that the state of Pakistan is placed on Genocide Watch; whatever this phrase might mean, what would be the “desired end state” for this act of compliance?
None of the quoted writers have elucidated.
Would the UN take over Pakistan? Would any Human Rights NGO do that? USA and ISAF are leaving with bloodied noses, so no point asking whether they will want to take a mess they fuelled and spread, however inadvertantly. Who will? Russia? the horrors of their loss in Afghanistan still hurt. China, with its festering Uighur problems?
The point is made. Those writers who clamour for the paper transaction of declaring Pakistan “Tankhiya” cannot say with honesty where this “my-conscience-is-clear”, noble act will lead to.
The reality that Pakistan was founded on a secessionist, bleak, hate India platform. A birthing nation needs a great idea which can rally its disparate elements at times of national need. Pakistan has none. Claiming a historicity of several thousand years and claiming that Bharat was once part of Pakistan is being on Rave or Ecstacy or its local base, Heroin. Does not help at all, does it?
My “desired end state”?
Let Pakistan implode under its own weight of a thousand cuts because it is genuinely beyond succour. A Gandhi clone or a Kemal Ataturk clone who could relaunch Pakistan on paak (pure ideas on nationality) isnt there either and the future points to no such hope as the Pakistani DNA can throw up only a challenged Imran Khan as its best alternative. Great Cricketer though and greater humanist with his anti Cancer concerns but thats about all.
The world will not end if Pakistan ceases to exist as a nation.
Yes, it would have helped India to deal with one responsible, democratic entity. Since that will not happen or is most unlikely, let factionism take its toll on Pakistan and let several “Republics” emerge, if they will…The world and even India will learn to cope.
The Americans know enough about Pakistans nuclear program to cap it when they need to; so that should not become a cause for ensuring that Pakistan is placed on “Genocide Watch” to legitimise foreign intervention, I suppose.
In any case, USA is or ought to be smart enough not to “leave” the area, Presedential elections notwithstanding. It will always have enough well positioned clout and intelligence to do what it might have to, one day, to defang Pakistan.
My sincere advice to all Genocide Watch supporters…
Chill.
Let India prepare to joust with China and increase its Asian footprints; equally importantly, mind its own house and its internal dissensions.
The purpose of every act is not always to achieve the final solution to all our problems. It is to change the scene such that it helps us to achieve our goals.
The scene here is simple: greater international scrutiny of Pakistan is good to the extent that it compels their leaders to focus on addressing criticism. Keeping the pressure on Kayani & Co from as many directions as possible is a good idea.
No grander goal is intended.
Genocide watch, norcotics watch, gun running watch and whatever else; Pakistan’s inherited British kind of administration and Armed Forces have been in the breakers yard (the ‘yard’ NOW powerfully exists widely inside the country and is fully legitimized as ‘difa-e-Pakistan). The adminstration may in time be taken over by a Jehadist elite that has steadily emerged. Lashkar Toiba and its auxiliary organizations now enjoy full respectability, nay devotion, in the public and has the capability of defeating any comers (USA INCLUDED) Afghanistan style. Unstinted Chinese support for any contingent defence of Pakistan in UN is there IF needed. Yes, plenty of bloodshed and mayhem is in store as little local ethinic insurgencies against Pakistan are mercilessly annihilated. Thereafter Pakistan will have shrugged off the western democracy non-sense and achieved a new identity, AFPAK. India is, of course, welcome to proudly retain the divisive neta infested multi-ethnic democracy.
I wrote the foregoing to please the Indian readers who love to read a narrative like the foregoing. It could come true though.
Systematic cleansing is to be expected when people follow the ideology of a religion which believes that one man is the last Prophet, his religion the final word and in a holy book (Saudi Arabian version)which has a verse as below:
Quran 9:29 Fight those who (1)believe not in Allah(2) nor in the last day(3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger(Muhammad) and (4) those who acknowledge not the religion of truth(ie Islam) among the people of the scripture(Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
Pakistan(Land of the Pure) just wants to purify their country by cleansing the country of non conformists and minorities.In this noble endeavor they are supported by the conspiracy of silence by a media which is shy of reporting truth.
May allah of the pure help you. Hope you survive the holocaust to make AfPak, PakAf but not before traversing the graves of all the minorities in Pakistan. As the article suggests the minorities will also hit back as they have started doing leaving you to preside over the dead remains of Sufis and salafis alike.
I am not certain whether I agree with the unfortunate religious slant of Rajan Menon’s take while conceding that he has every right to his opinions. I have read several versions of the Quran and find much to commend each version. The gentle hint is that the writings have to be read and interpreted in the context of those times; not today’s times.
Pakistan’s need for “purification” is not a nationally supported agenda and certainly the common man and woman have little to do with this mindless blood letting.
It came upon Pakistan as a consequence of the application of Che Guevera to Pakistan’s Kashmir obsession. What Pakistan got from bleeding India was short term gain. The people who fell back to Pakistan after the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan and those let into Kashmir by Zia and then Musharraf are trained, armed and know no religion other than Jehad. pakistan has been driven to implosion by their acts, which I feel do not have popular support nor media support.
The Pak media hardly observes a conspiracy of silence. But for their fanatic elements (we have them too, the majority is brutally critical of pak happenings and takes on the Govt on a daily basis. Some of their analysis is quite reasoned and well thought out and liberal in outlook.
My point remains. Pakistan has been savagely harmed by its own shenanigans and
“Genocide Watch” (looks smart on paper) wont help it. People awakening will but there is no such transformational leader with them to awaken the awaam. It can self destruct and we may as as well live with that reality and move on.
An article just copied from face book that speaks of Bharat having been part of what could best be termed as Greater Pakistan…
“We ruled you for over a thousand years”
by Gautam Ramaswamy on Saturday, March 31, 2012 at 12:18pm ·
This is a claim, that forms the basis of the Pakistani self assurance of their regional supremacy, if not over the whole world. This is a claim that many an Indian Muslims would also acknowledge as fact.
What is the criteria to qualify as “We”?
Does “We” mean Pakistani? In which case, “we” fall a little less than a millennia short of time to rightfully claim so, as “we” are just a little over half a century old as a Nation.
Next, does “We” mean Muslims?
The aggregated Islamic rule over Bharatvarsh, has never encompassed any more than 65% of its territories at its greatest extent. Further, this was summarily punctuated with the shifting of power bases to other indigenous powers like the Maratha Empire, the Sikh Empire, the Ahoms, the Hindu Shahis in Kashmir and The Travancore Kingdom.
The Islamic rulers of India were foreigners, who were a very small minority of the population. They rarely intermarried, be it the Mughals or the Turkic rulers of Delhi or the Deccan, or the Afghans.
But for a few exceptions, they maintained the ethnic makeup of their dynastic house. (Please do spare me the Jodha- Akbar argument at this point). As I have mentioned, these were exceptions and such exceptions rarely gave heirs to their thrones.
Further, we also know that most Muslims from the subcontinent were local converts. Can they claim to be a part of the rulers? If this were to make sense, it would mean that a local Hindu, in those days, was “the ruled”, until one fine day when his descendants converted to Islam, and all of a sudden turn from “the ruled” to being “the rulers”.
It is absurd for an average Muslim from the subcontinent, who cannot claim lineage from any of the Muslim dynastic houses that ruled parts of Bharatvarsh to claim the legacy of rule of that dynasty.
Distorting history is an art you chaps clearly haven’t mastered yet. It is my advice to the Pakistanis and Indians who prescribe to the above disarmed viewpoint to work towards the upliftment of your medieval society. We share the same DNA and culture, which is a silver lining, a ray of hope for your lot to develop into a civilized people.
I find hard to digest the word genocide for ethno-religious civil war happening in Pakistan. Genocide word was invented by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to describe the Nazi campaign for Jewish extermination, Geno means race and Cide means killer.
What is happening in Pakistan is religious and ethnic war happening simultaneously. The attack on Hazaras is majorly because they are predominately Shia. In the same way, Gilgit Baltistan has historically been Shia where the Sunni immigration has changed the sectarian dynamics. The ethnic war in Pakistan is happening in Baluchistan and Sindh. Baluch are fighting for a separate state while in Karachi, the recent ethnic troubles are between Mohajirs and Pashtun.
Pakistan is proving the price of becoming the only country solely on the basis of religion. The other country that could come close is Israel, however, the word Jew means race, ethnicity and religion as well. Pakistan is a modern state just like India, though on a smaller version with different ethnicity, religion, religious sects, languages. Any modern State, that is not a nation state, can only prosper as a democracy. Otherwise, Pakistan will continue to bleed on both religions and ethnic reasons.
Agree with Abhishek Sharma’s broad take that the only salvation for Pakistan is the path of democracy for which, regrettably they do not have either leadership or past success except as short lived chimeras between dictatorships.
The blood letting is NOT a popular, People led obsession as the average Pakistani seeks prosperity and peace as much as any one else does. The problem has always been that Pakistan, mired in insecurity and failing to create a grand Vision for Pakistan other than assumed religious commonality, empowered its military to cast its insidious shadow on the nation from Day 1 as opposed to the armed forces of India who considered themselves as servants of the people and the Governance from Day 1 and will live and die for the nation in that role.
The problem with this USA driven obsession with “branding” as in “Genocide Watch” is that, while it looks smart and up country, suave and sophisticated, it is actually sophistry with words and suggests solutions which are good as long as they remain on paper.This is because they cannot stand close scrutiny related to the ground situation.
As an aside, the Western world daily churns out reams of newsprint and byte space in giving sermons on what is wrong in Af-pak and where the solutions lie. It is both ironic and comic that the tack changes weekly and with the earlier earnestness, when things get out of kilter as they do almost daily in the troubled region.
I say yet again; STOP this needless and heedless branding. Let Pakistan survive or perish off its own volition. The only real solution it has is people power and people empowerment for which it needs to learn from the imperfect yet live democracy that India is.
In the meanwhile, let us move on and prepare to joust with the Chinese and with greater Asia, with BRICS…
This article by Murtaza Haider, “Pakistan imploding under sectarian violence” is a reiteration of the arguments put forward by us in view of deteriorating situation in Pakistan.
The article by Haider is quite a fair round up of all that is wrong. He does not of course talk of Genocide Watch as a valid world reaction, but, correctly looks towards Pakistan seek an internal solution. Repeated favourable comparisons to India quite obviously suggest that the democratic ways of India are far better for seeking solutions rather than Pakistans sectarian ways.
There is really NO other solution. Genocide Watch will at best amount to ticket punching as per western thought/demands but not change the ground situation at all…. Might even exacerbate it…
An incisive article, The Geography of News, in The Express Tribune opines that terror related incidents are not reported evenly in Pakistan. While Sindh with its political moorings is attractive, KP and Balochistan rarely get desired media attention despite a high rate of incidents.