Pakistan intelligence services allow terrorists to slaughter Shia Muslims – Press TV’s report
Pakistan intelligence services allow terrorists to slaughter Shia Muslims: Ali Wasif
In the background to this, the outlawed Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on Saturday that killed at least 81 people, including women and children, and injured nearly 200 others in a predominant Shia Muslim populated area near the city of Quetta in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan Province.
Press TV has interviewed Syed Ali Wasif, president of the Society for International Reforms and Research, from Washington to find out more about this issue. The following is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Mr Wasif, just how vulnerable is the Shia community in Pakistan?
Wasif: Unfortunately, this act of terrorism against the Shias of Pakistan has been going on for almost two decades now. These acts actually are an important part of Pakistan’s domestic policy by its military. These are not random acts but are totally planned killings and genocide of the Shias by Pakistan’s military in the name of Jihad.
The forces behind these killings are Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, its military and the top civil bureaucracy as well. Pakistan’s media is totally complicit with this kind of situation.
These kind of attacks are actually in the name of a strategic death in Afghanistan by the so-called military’s perception of making a breakthrough into Afghanistan to consolidate its northern borders in Afghanistan and through Afghanistan against the Indian onslaught.
This is a myth not a reality. It’s a totally utopian concept of defense made by Pakistan’s military intelligencia. It has nothing to do with the practical aspects of Pakistan’s national security.
Press TV: Mr. Wasif, why isn’t the government doing anything? We hear that the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorism outfit has claimed responsibility for this. First of all, who is this Lashkar-e-Jhangvi outfit serving? Second, just tell us more about the history of this outfit.
Wasif: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a splinter group of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) organization, a terrorist outfit as well, established in the mid-80s by the then President of Pakistan, the military dictator of the Pakistani province of Punjab in the mid-80s.
This Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is a splinter group of the Sipah-e-Sahaba, which was established by the Pakistani’s military elite in that era.
These are the people, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the Sipah-e-Sahaba and all those jihadi organizations are basically in connivance with the military’s policies to crush the Shias there in Pakistan. These actions are totally against the terrorist policies of al-Qaeda, Taliban and other terrorists engaged in terrorist activities against India, the United States and all other countries there, especially those in Afghanistan.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was basically established in the name of the assassinated chief of the Sipah-e-Sahaba in the mid-80s — Maulana Jhangvi who was assassinated in the Punjab province in the late 80s.
These are the people who are now being sheltered and patronized by the military organizations of Pakistan, especially the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence). They work under the patronage of the ISI. Otherwise how could they have received such an amount of munitions and explosive material and financial aid without the supply from the intelligence agencies in Pakistan?
They are the people who at times work on behalf of al-Qaeda, on behalf Taliban and at times they work on their own behalf’s against the Shias there.
They also have killed some generals of Pakistan and attacked military establishments in Pakistan.
Their leader is Malik Ishaq who was just released a year ago after 15 years of imprisonment by the order of Pakistan’s Military Chief General (Ashfaq Parvez) Kayani.
Kayani was engaged in a dialogue when Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and others attacked the military headquarters and took hostage of a couple of generals of Pakistan’s military.
The Chief of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Malik Ishaq, was invited for negotiations and he [Kayani] was the person behind the release of those two generals of Pakistan’s military.
That’s why now the Pakistan military is now paying off its debt by allowing these Lashkar-e-Jhangvi people and all other terrorists to kill Shiites, not just in Quetta but all over Pakistan.
Source: Press TV
Terrorist leaders of LeJ-ASWJ in Balochistan
Any clarification by ISPR after this interview ????
Not at all
By and large every one will know who is behind the screen?
Pakistan military intelligence under fire for failing to prevent Quetta bombing
Inter-Services Intelligence agency too ‘scared’ to tackle growing terror campaign against Hazara minority, governor says
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Jon Boone in Karachi
guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 February 2013 16.40 GMT
Shia Muslims in Lahore take to the streets to protest against Saturday’s bombing in Quetta, which killed 85 people. Photograph: Rahat Dar/EPA
Pakistan’s all-powerful military intelligence services have been on the receiving end of unusually harsh public criticism for being “scared to take action” against militant groups in the wake of a bomb attack that killed 85 members of the Hazara ethnic minority.
A senior politician and the country’s highest-profile television journalist have lashed out at the military Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency (ISI) after Saturday’s mass killings in the troubled city of Quetta, which sparked countrywide protests.
Hamid Mir, who present’s Pakistan’s most popular news show, said the ISI had ignored a tide of sectarian bloodshed after deliberately creating “private death squads” to fight a war against separatists in the country’s troubled Baluchistan province.
Mir’s remarks came after the governor of Baluchistan said the huge blast in a crowded market showed a “failure of our intelligence agencies”.
The security forces are either “scared or cannot take action against” militant groups, governor Zulfiqar Magsi said.
Human rights groups that have previously dared to make similar claims – usually couched in far more diplomatic language – have been vilified by the army.
Mir spoke out, both to the Guardian and in a column in the country’s biggest Urdu language newspaper, amid continued outrage over the bombing, which used nearly a tonne of explosives hidden in a water tanker.
Demonstrations took place across the country on Monday in protest at the attack, which was claimed by the banned Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Karachi was almost completely shut down by a one-day strike.
Nadeem Paracha, a columnist for the Dawn newspaper, said a “sense of horror and tragedy is being felt by all Pakistanis … It’s very noticeable that this is the first time the people are not just blaming the government, but asking what exactly the intelligence agencies that are paid millions of rupees up to?”
Quetta’s Hazara community, which is overwhelmingly drawn from the minority Shia sect of Islam, mounted a powerful protest by ignoring the Islamic burial custom of quickly burying the dead. Community leaders vowed the bodies of 71 victims would remain on public display in a prayer hall until their demands for action were met.
“We want concrete actions,” said Abdul Khaliq Hazara, the president of the Hazara Democratic party said. “They are killing our women, our young people and even young children aged three to five.”
It was the second time in five weeks that the Hazaras had taken the drastic step. In January, nearly 100 victims of a vicious double bombing at a snooker hall were laid out on the streets. The prime minister responded by flying to Quetta and sacking the provincial government.
But rule by a governor directly appointed by Islamabad has not been able to stop what has been termed a “Shia genocide” in Pakistan. Many Shias are demanding the army take direct control of Baluchistan, something critics of military policy in the province say misses the point.
“The fact is that the military and paramilitary forces have been in control of the province all the time,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director of Human Rights Watch.
“When protesters demand army rule in Quetta in effect what they are doing is calling the army’s bluff, asking it to take responsibility for what it has in fact been in charge of all along.”
But it is criticism from popular journalists like Mir, who was once thought to be close to the army, that will most sting the ISI.
“Some of these people who go by the name of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi are part of the same private death squads created by the security agencies against Baluch militants,” Mir told the Guardian hours before he prepared to repeat his claims on his hugely popular programme Capital Talk.
“Yes, sometimes they oblige the security agencies by taking action against the Baluch militants, but on the other hand they quietly organise their own actions against the Shia community.
“Every Pakistani is aware that this is a complete failure by the intelligence agencies. Now we want to know, what action has the governor of the province, or the president, or the army chief, taken against these failed intelligence operators?”
Violence by Sunni fundamentalists against Shias, who they regard as apostates, is a growing problem in Pakistan. There have been attacks in every major city and murderous ambushes of buses carrying Shia passengers in the mountainous north.
The outlook for Quetta’s 500,000 Hazaras is especially bleak. As an ethnic group, they have distinctive features that make them easy to target and also speak a dialect of Persian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/18/pakistan-inteliigence-isi-quetta-bombings
‘Pakistan extremists seek Shia genocide’
Fire rages from destroyed houses at the blast site in Pakistan’s southwestern city of Quetta on February 16, 2013.
Sun Feb 17, 2013 7:4PM GMT
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An Iranian lawmaker condemns the recent bomb attack targeting Shia Muslims in a market in southwestern Pakistan, blaming extremists for such acts of terror.
On Sunday, member of the Majlis Presiding Board Alireza Monadi Sefidaan expressed regret for the deadly attacks on Pakistan’s Shia communities, and said the promotion of Wahhabi-inspired anti-Shia ideology poses a serious challenge to both the Islamabad government and the Muslim world.
He added that the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has targeted Shia Muslims across Pakistan over the past few years, and is pursuing its long-term goal of exterminating Shias using religious excuses.
Monadi Sefidaan also criticized senior Pakistani officials for their failure to protect Shias from recurring sectarian attacks.
“The negligence of the Pakistani central government in providing security for the Shia in the country has caused these terrorist groups to kill Shias easily and without any concern [as part of efforts] to change the demographic population of Pakistan through the massacre of the Shias,” he pointed out.
The Iranian lawmaker criticized the silence of international organizations over attacks against Pakistani Shias, calling on the United Nations and international humanitarian foundations to take effective measures and stop the violence.
Dozens of people were killed in a bomb attack targeting Shia Muslims in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, located 700 kilometers (435 miles) southwest of the capital Islamabad, on Saturday.
According to the police, most of the victims were Hazara Shias. Burnt school bags and books of schoolchildren were scattered everywhere, witnesses said. Nearly 200 people were also wounded in the attack.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Pakistani government has failed to stop violence against Shias, who account for around 20 percent of the 167-million-strong population of the country.
The pro-Taliban militants have been involved in a violent campaign against Shia Muslims in Pakistan over the past years.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/17/289477/pakistan-extremists-seek-shia-genocide/
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Iran criticizes Islamabad’s inability to protect Pakistani Shiites
Senior Iranian lawmaker says Pakistani government has failed to give enough care to protection of lives of its Shiite community.
Middle East Online
Violence spares no one in Pakistan
TEHRAN – Pakistani government has failed to give enough care to the protection of the lives of its Shiite community, a senior Iranian lawmaker said on Sunday.
Member of the parliament’s Presiding Board Alireza Monadi Sefidaan expressed deep regret over the growing trend of anti-Shiite attacks in Pakistan, and said that the long-term goal of extremist groups is massacring the Shiites in genocidal attacks.
“The negligence shown by Pakistan’s central government has allowed these terrorist groups to kill Shiites easily and carelessly in an effort to change the demographical strategy of Pakistan to the loss of the Shiites,” Monadi told ICANA.
He further lashed out at the international circles for their silence over these crimes and the extremist groups’ genocidal attacks on the Shiite Muslims in Pakistan.
In the latest attack on the Pakistani Shiite community, a bomb blast killed at least 81 people, including women and children, and injured 200 others.
The bomb containing nearly a tonne of explosives, hidden in a water tanker, tore through a crowded market in Hazara town, a Shiite-dominated area on the edge of Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, on Saturday evening.
The death toll has risen to 81 after law enforcement dragged several more bodies from the rubble of the collapsed two-story building.
Several houses and shops were completely destroyed by the blast. Security officials said that an estimated 100 kilograms of explosives was used in the attack.
Following the attack, Iran strongly condemned the bombing, and warned that the terrorist attacks are aimed at sowing discord in the Muslim country.
In a message to his Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani on Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi condoled with the people and government of Pakistan over the death of the country’s citizens in the recent terrorist attack.
He said that such criminal acts are in line with the aliens’ divisive plots against Pakistan’s people and interests, and added that these crimes serve the inauspicious goals of the enemies of Islam.
Salehi also called on the Pakistani officials and religious leaders to take necessary measures to prevent bloodshed in the Muslim state.
Protests erupted across Pakistan Sunday to demand protection for Shiite Muslims.
Up to 4,000 women began a sit-in protest in the city on Sunday evening, blocking a road and refusing to bury victims until the authorities took action against the extremists behind the attack.
More than 1,500 Shiites took to the streets of the eastern city of Lahore to demand action and there were smaller demonstrations in the central city of Multan and Muzaffarabad, the main city of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Baluchistan has increasingly become a flashpoint for surging sectarian bloodshed between Pakistan’s majority Sunni Muslims and Shiites, who account for around a fifth of the country’s 180 million people.
Saturday’s attack takes the death toll in sectarian attacks in Pakistan this year to almost 200, compared with more than 400 in the whole of 2012 — a year which Human Rights Watch described as the deadliest on record for the country’s Shiites.
It was the second major attack on Shiites in Quetta this year, after a double suicide bombing on a snooker club in the city on January 10 killed at least 92 people, the deadliest ever single attack on the community in Pakistan.
No-one has been arrested for the snooker hall attack and Daud Agha, chairman of Shia Conference, said anger was rising in the community.
“Up to 4,000 women have started a sit-in on a main road leading to Hazara town and have refused to bury the bodies,” he said. Police said the protesters numbered up to 3,000.
Police and administration officials held negotiations with the Shiites to end Sunday’s protest and bury the bodies, but community leaders told them that the sit-in would continue until a targeted operation against extremists is launched, he said.
It is customary for Muslims to bury the dead swiftly, and a similar protest after the snooker club bombing prompted Islamabad to sack the provincial government.
The banned militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack — as it did for the snooker hall bombing and a February 1 attack on a Shiite mosque in northwest Pakistan that killed 24.
There is anger and frustration at the apparent inability or unwillingness of the authorities to tackle the LeJ. Activists say the failure of the judiciary to prosecute sectarian killers allows them to operate with impunity.
Baluchistan governor Zulfiqar Magsi pointed the finger at the security forces over the latest atrocity.
“Repeated occurrence of such attacks is a failure of our intelligence agencies,” he told reporters late on Saturday.
“Our security institutions, police, FC (paramilitary Frontier Corps) and others are either scared or cannot take action against them.”
But Baluchistan home secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani said authorities were already taking action against the militants.
“Law enforcement agencies have arrested so many suspects and seized huge cache of arms,” Durrani said.
Witness Zainab Bibi, 38, said the carnage after the blast was “like the day of judgment had come”.
“Initially I could not see anything because of a thick cloud of dust but I could hear loud screaming,” she said.
“As the dust settled, I saw blood everywhere, torn bodies were lying everywhere with no clothes on.”
Pakistan is due to hold a general election in the coming months but there are fears that rising sectarian and Islamist violence could force the postponement of polls.
Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, also suffers Islamist militancy and a regional insurgency demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region’s natural resources.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=57047
ISPR: We deny everything.
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