Extermination of the Hazara community

Our sectarian extremist outfits must pack up from the country and leave, before the citizens are forced to do so.

On February 16, the citizens of Quetta witnessed another bomb explosion, perhaps, one of the biggest ever in Quetta, or in Pakistan. A unique way was adopted to detonate the explosives. The suicide bomber ploughed a water tanker, laden with more than one tonne of explosives, in the midst of a crowded market in Quetta, where schoolchildren were present and women, accompanied by their children, were purchasing fruits and vegetables from hawkers.

The explosion was deafening. Women and children were thrown to great distances because of the impact, with their school bags and personal belongings strewn all around the site. From the magnitude of the blast, we can guess that perhaps, a high explosive of a C-4 type was used. In short, it was a detonation of maximum force, which was used in the killing and maiming of hundreds of women and children. Almost two blocks were on fire following the blast.

Massacres are not a new phenomenon for this resilient community. Ethnically, Quetta’s Hazaras are the Mongols, who migrated from Central Asia to the Banyan District in Afghanistan. They belong to the Shia faction of Islam, speaking Persian as a main language.

In Pakistan, the Hazaras shifted from Afghanistan in 1840 to Quetta, when they enlisted themselves in the Imperial Indian Army. Because they sided with the British in the Afghan wars, the Afghans did not tolerate their presence in Pashtun areas.

They have a long history of one-sided persecution in Afghanistan, starting from the 16^th century. It is reported that during the reign of Emir Abdul Rahman, who reigned from around 1880 to 1901, thousands of Hazaras were killed, expelled and enslaved.

Syed Askar Mousavi, a contemporary Hazara writer, claims that half of the Hazaras’ total population was displaced to neighbouring Balochistan of British India and the Khorasan province in Iran. In 1904, the British raised an infantry unit, the 106^th Hazara Pioneers, comprising Hazara refugees in Quetta.

Demographically, Hazaras are mainly distributed in three countries — Afghanistan, hosting between seven to eight million, Iran, 1.2 million and Pakistan, about 0.7 million. Besides, there are approximately 400,000 to 500,000 Hazaras believed to be residing in Western countries.

Now, the responsibility to protect the Hazaras lies squarely on the broad shoulders of the country’s ideological defenders — the most organised, powerful and resourceful Pakistan Army and its other institutions, to save the country from such militants, whose members were battle-hardened in Kashmir and during the Afghan jihad.

No political force of the country can combat such non-state actors; not even the police or Rangers because they are trained very differently from the existing civilian forces. Our army’s special combat units are trained so that they are the only ones which can respond to the present type of warfare. Besides, the Pakistan Army has had winning experience in Swat, South Waziristan and, to some extent, in North Waziristan. If our army does not intervene this time to stop the decimation of Shias, then we can forget about the presence of the Shia population in Pakistan. They could request for refuge in Iran, Iraq or any western country. This is the last and only chance for Pakistan. It is time for our sectarian extremist outfits to pack up from the country and leave, before the citizens of this country are forced to do so.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 22^nd, 2013.