Target killing: Gray areas

We tend to divide victims of target killing into neat categories: X was killed due to his ethnicity, Y was killed due to his sect. However, reality tends to be a lot more complicated.

Emerging trends in target killings in Karachi point towards an increasing overlap in political and sectarian violence. The city’s biggest and most powerful political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement(MQM-A), says it is being targeted not only by militias with links to its rival mainstream political parties, but also by anti-Shia militant groups. On the other hand, proscribed organisations like the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) claim that their workers are being targeted in Karachi in record numbers by groups backed by some individuals with links to mainstream political parties.

A common misperception about target killings is that they are all political in nature. For example, when a Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM-A) man gets killed, the Awami National Party (ANP) or the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM-H) almost always gets blamed and vice versa. Many a time, this does indeed hold true.

But reality is seldom black and white and recent target killings have only gone to show how blurred the dividing lines have become.

MQM leader Wasay Jalil says his party is under constant threat from extremists since the MQM has been vocal against terrorism and extremism in the country. He said that the daylight murder of MPA Raza Haider in 2010 and the recent slaying of the party’s joint sector in-charge in Nazimabad were among dozens of other cases where an anti-Shia militant group targeted their members just because they belonged to a particular religious sect.

“Many of our senior leaders and workers continue to receive death threats from these groups and we have advised them to be cautious in their movements,” says Jalil, before going on to request me not to name the individuals who were being threatened.

When Raza Haider was murdered at a mosque in Nazimabad in Aug 2010, more than 50 people, mostly Pashtuns, were killed in the aftermath even though Interior minister Rehman Malik had clearly pointed out that the senior MQM leader had been receiving threats from extremist groups, specifically the anti-Shia SSP and its splinter group, the notorious Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ).

A notorious group of LeJ militants led by Waseem Barodi were eventually nabbed by the authorities from Orangi town last year, and were was charged with Haider’s murder. Haider was himself elected to the Sindh Assembly seat from Orangi. Wasay says the party is satisfied with the arrests made by the authorities and believes that the right people were caught.

But why would militant groups such as the SSP and LeJ specifically target Shia members of only the MQM, given that other mainstream political parties like the PPP and ANP also have many workers who belong to that sect?

In response to that question, Wasay repeated his stance that unlike other parties, the MQM as the only one that truly spoke out about extremism in the country and was therefore being singled out.

Meanwhile, the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) chief Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi has a long list of his own grievances. (ASWJ is the new name for the SSP) Ludhianvi claims that over 100 ASWJ workers were murdered in target killing incidents in Karachi last year. (According to police records, a total of 39 ASWJ have been killed compared with MQM-A’s 122 zorkers since 2008.)

“I want to ask Rehman Malik that if he blames us for Raza Haider’s murder, then who is responsible for the killing of a hundred of our workers last year?” asks Ludhianvi, before going on to answer his own question. “There is no doubt that the murderers belong to the Shia sect and have taken refuge in the Muttahida Qaumi movement,” he said.

The ASWJ chief said that his organisation was on a war path with Shia militant groups and Shia religious thought itself.

Referring to the recent busting of the ‘Mehdi force’ militant group, which operated under the banned Sipah-e-Mohammad, Ludhianvi said that the authorities in Karachi recently nabbed nine suspects involved in the murder of his workers. “Why don’t you ask the authorities where these men get their support from?” he asked, adding that that the labeling of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan as a terrorist organisation was mere propaganda.

A spokesperson for the ASWJ in Karachi sought to downplay the comments by his chief. “There are no issues with the MQM. There may be some individual acts, but that doesn’t mean that it is the official policy of any mainstream political party to target our workers,” he said.

Counterterrorism officials in the police and intelligence community say they are well aware of the alarming situation. A senior official, who did not wish to be named, said that he felt that the waters were being tested for another bloody round of confrontation this year since neither side was ready to step back.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, April 17^th,  2011.