The Islamic State Isn’t the Only Threat to Pakistan’s Hazaras

In early January, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) executed 11 Shia coal miners belonging to the minority Hazara community in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. Demanding justice, the community refused to bury the deceased and staged a sit-in with the victims’ bodies for six days. The victims were buried only after Prime Minister Imran Khan promised to visit Quetta to meet the families of the dead.

The issue, which became the focus of Pakistan’s domestic politics for more than a week, highlights the state’s exclusionary policies, namely Sunni-centric Islamization and a troubled regional security policy that continues to make Shias an easy target for Sunni extremists.

A minority group in Sunni-majority Pakistan, the Shia Hazara community has been at the receiving end of violence in Pakistan for decades. Hazara persecution in Pakistan intensified during the 1980s, which marked a rise in violent sectarianism in the country.

The most recent case of Hazara killing by ISKP shows that the group is now trying to project itself as the new face of anti-Shia violence in Pakistan. Since its establishment in Pakistan in 2019, ISKP has claimed 38 attacks in the country and only four of them were against the Shia community. However, during the same period, no other major attacks have taken place against Shias in Pakistan, which highlights a present calm in Pakistan’s sectarian fault lines.

In Pakistan, ISKP has not been able to full exploit the country’s militant landscape. There are two major reasons for that. First, Pakistan’s regional security policy has mainly sponsored Sunni radical groups domestically to either protect the country’s interests in Afghanistan or scale up its Kashmir jihad policy. Second, not many extremist groups that are part of Pakistani’s Sunni and Deobandi militant landscape have deserted to join ISKP’s mission in Pakistan. The groups that reportedly did join ISKP’s anti-Shia mission are those that have already been at loggerheads with the Pakistani state.

In this regard, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) presents an interesting case. LeJ, which has had ties with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has targeted Hazaras for many years. Some TTP leaders, like former spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan, were all members of LeJ in Punjab before they became part of the TTP.

The group, which mainly operated out of Pakistan’s Punjab province, was patronized by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government for many years. In an interview with Dawn in 2013, analyst Hassan Askari Rizvi said that “Organizations like the LeJ and the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jammat (ASWJ) are politically convenient, especially for all the Punjab-based political parties … and they will not go beyond a certain point to enrage them.”

The situation remained much the same into 2020: The leader of LeJ’s political front, ASWJ, criticized Hazara demands for Khan to visit Quetta as a condition of burying the victims. Khan recently appointed Maulana Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi as a special representative on Religious Harmony. Ashrafi is someone who has had close ties with ASWJ’s leadership for decades.

In 2016, LeJ merged with the Islamic State’s Pakistan affiliates and accelerated its campaign of Shia killings in Balochistan province. For their anti-state activities, LeJ, TTP, and ISKP have been the target of Pakistan’s security agencies in Balochistan and elsewhere. However, all these groups appear to operate either independently or in alliance with each other when it suits their individual interests. For instance, the recent merger of different TTP groups denounced reports of the group’s alliance with ISKP. At the same time, TTP has worked closely with LeJ to target the Pakistani state.

The latest attack against the Hazaras shows that ISKP and LeJ may not have been eliminated completely from Balochistan yet. The attack also shows that the infiltration of LeJ and ISKP militants from Afghanistan, where they continue to find shelter, has not been halted. It is possible that the killers crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan to carry out the attacks.

However, this doesn’t mean that prejudice against the Hazara community has disappeared in Pakistan. ISKP’s failure in generating more space for itself in Pakistan may be because other militant groups, including the likes of the Afghan Taliban, have better ties with Sunni militant groups in the country. Arguably, Pakistan’s Sunni and Deobandi extremist groups, with all of their hatred for Shias, do not want to support the similar ideological cause of a competing group like ISKP.

That said, as long as anti-Shia extremism continues to remain intact in Pakistan, Hazaras will remain the target of one militant group or another. A few months ago, thousands of Deobandi factions took to streets in Karachi chanting anti-Shia slogans, referring to the community as “kafir” (non-Muslim). Observing the seriousness of the mounting anti-Shia sentiment in Pakistan, Ayesha Siddiqa notes that “the Barelvis, who are known for greater sympathy with the Shias, also seem to have turned against them now. Although the ideological shift had started to become visible in the early part of 2010, the Barelvi Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) joining the Deobandis against the Shias is even more dramatic.”

Unfortunately, Hazaras are not important for any political party electorally and violence against them often gets blamed on alleged Indian plots to destabilize Pakistan. For instance, responding to the Hazara demand to visit Quetta, Khan said that “No premier of any country should be blackmailed like this.” The opposition quickly criticized Khan over the remarks, saying he lacked sympathy for the grievers.

It’s only a matter of time before another attack against the Hazara community takes place and the government makes another claim of an Indian conspiracy. Pakistan’s Hazara community’s plight will not end even if ISKP is terminated in Pakistan as many other groups with different brand names are willing and prepared to take up the mantle.