Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Frontline Pakistan
reportedly involved in the massacres of Shias and in the battle against
the opposition Northern Alliance forces. The conservative Afghan
regime gave protection to Basra and to some other terrorists wanted
by Islamabad on murder charges. During their stay in Afghanistan, the
fugitives developed close links with al-Qaeda. Basra was the chief of
the Khalid bin Walid training camp in the Sarobi district near Kabul.
Pakistani authorities, who backed the Afghan conservative regime,
remained indifferent or sometimes consciously looked the other way
to this dangerous nexus.
Most of the LeJ cadres were also involved in Pakistan’s proxy war
in Kashmir. The continuing state patronage of Islamic militancy in
return produced an escalation in domestic sectarian conflict. The two
were closely intertwined. Pakistan’s elected civilian governments in
the 1990s had to bear the brunt of sectarian violence and the resultant
insecurity and alienation it generated. Both the Benazir Bhutto and
Nawaz Sharif governments took steps to combat sectarianism but,
given the military’s backing for regional jihad, those efforts failed. The
jihad connection made the sectarian militants more strident and with
easy access to sophisticated weapons they turned more violent.
By the mid 1990s, sectarian violence had spread from traditional
arenas in Punjab and the northern region to urban heartlands. The nature
of the attacks also changed. The initial pattern of targeting leaders,
diplomats and other public figures extended to mosques and religious
processions. Government functionaries, judges, police officers
and doctors were assassinated because of their faith. In 1995, more
than 250 people were killed in targeted attacks on Shia worshipping
places in Karachi and other parts of the country. In 1997, celebrations
of the 50 th year of Pakistan’s creation were accompanied by an unprecedented
wave of sectarian killings. More than 100 people, most
of them Shias, were killed in ten days in the run up to the celebrations
in August that year. Riaz Basra was blamed for the massacre.
The widespread violence forced the government to take tougher
action against sectarian organizations. Dozens of LeJ militants were
killed by the police on orders of Shahbaz Sharif, the Chief Minister
of Punjab, which had become the main centre of sectarian violence.
For the government, extrajudicial killings appeared the only way to
combat the highly motivated and well trained militants. Because of
death threats, the judges of the lower judiciary – and even some of the
superior judiciary – were reluctant to hear cases that involved leaders
of LeJ and other powerful sectarian groups. In 1997, the then Chief