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India-Pakistan
Epitome of hate
2013-01-14
[Dawn] THE terrorist sectarian outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
(LJ), which has been active in Pakistain since the mid-1990s, has become a strategic asset for many including Al Qaeda, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) and the so-called non-violent religious sectarian parties.

Lately divided into many factions and small terrorist cells, the LJ is once again coming under a unified command, which could be a major reason for the escalated sectarian violence during the last few weeks.

The outfit has undoubtedly become the second most lethal terrorist group in Pakistain after the TTP. A comparison of the geographical spread of incidents of sectarian violence from 2009 to 2012 suggests that Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
, Quetta, Gilgit and Kurram Agency
...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora...
have become regular hotspots of sectarian violence, the areas where the group is largely operational either alone or in collaboration with the TTP and foreign beturbanned goons.

Although the nexus between the beturbanned goon sectarian Sunni groups and the TTP was already well-established it was for the first time that in 2012 the TTP grabbed credit for several attacks on the Shia community in different parts of Pakistain.

The LJ was believed to be involved in 128 terrorist attacks across the country in 2012, largely in Bloody Karachi and Quetta; these attacks ranged from sectarian assaults to strikes on the security forces. LJ and other such terrorist sectarian groups, which had absorbed Al Qaeda and Taliban ideological tendencies, increasingly returned to their primary sectarian agendas.

Once a breakaway faction of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain
...a Sunni Deobandi organization, a formerly registered Pak political party, established in the early 1980s in Jhang by Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi. Its stated goal is to oppose Shia influence in Pakistain. They're not too big on Brelvis, either. Or Christians. Or anybody else who's not them. The organization was banned in 2002 as a terrorist organization, but somehow it keeps ticking along, piling up the corpse counts...
(SSP), now known as Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has an ever more violent anti-Shia agenda.
Although it claims to be a separate entity, whatever it does furthers the cause of the SSP in one way or the other. The group solely depends on the SSP for human resources and justifies the killing of Shias in Pakistain. A recent statement circulated by a faction of LJ led by Asif Chotu declared Shia Mohammedans the major obstacle in the way of enforcement of Sharia in Pakistain. The SSP denies any direct link with the terrorist group, but the LJ is the major source of its vigour that it exploits for political gains. Though a faction within the SSP is against sectarian violence its voice is diminutive in the larger discourse of the organization.

The LJ had lost central command when the police launched an extensive operation against the group in the late 1990s and later when it was proscribed in August 2000.
These steps caused the emergence of internal differences and divisions among the group. Thus many splinter groups emerged.

After 9/11, LJ Islamic fascisti had joined the angry Kashmiri jihadists and tribal Taliban, who were not happy with the sudden change in the state's policy that abandoned jihad in the region. The major terrorist attacks between 2001 and 2007 in the country were launched by this emerging alliance. The nexus was further strengthened when these small groups joined Al Qaeda and the tribal Taliban. Such alliances ideologically transformed the sectarian groups injecting in them global jihadist tendencies.

This was the time when the LJ was losing its sectarian identity and the group was become a tag name for small terrorist cells. Qari Hussain, the trainer of jacket wallahs who was killed in a drone strike in 2010, had infused new life into the group while recruiting Punjab- and Bloody Karachi-based youths and re-initiating sectarian terrorist attacks.

Tariq Afridi, head of the TTP's Darra Adam Khel chapter, was the second person who revitalised the violent sectarian agenda of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and launched deadly terrorist attacks in Fata and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
. The release of Malik Ishaq, founding member of the group who was facing trial in the killings of more than 100 Shia scholars and community leaders, further emboldened the group.

Although these facts injected new life into the agenda and operations of the group, on the organizational level it remained splintered and disconnected until recently. Its Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
chapter, led by Usman Kurd, which targets the Hazara Shia community in Quetta, had little interaction with groups in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Seven other LJ groups are active in Bloody Karachi and Punjab, including the Attaur Rehman alias Naeem Bukhari, Qasim Rasheed, Muhammad Babar, Ghaffar, Muaviya, Akram Lahori and Malik Ishaq groups. These groups have devised their local agendas as well and indulge in local pie fights.

Asif Chotu, once a close aide of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi founder Riaz Basra, is reorganising the group. He had joined the TTP in 2010 and reunited the scattered members of LJ and on behalf of the TTP launched several operations across the country. He has approached other factions as well and now most of the splinter groups have come under one umbrella because of his efforts.

It is a dangerous development, which can lead to an escalation of sectarian violence across the country. The LJ nexus with Al Qaeda and TTP has not only broadened its ideological horizon but also equipped it with lethal operational tactics. It may not be the LJ of the 1990s, which was mostly involved in assassinations, but its new face is extensively lethal in terms of operational capabilities and connections with terrorist groups.

The TTP will not let the group focus only on sectarian killings but could use it to hit other targets as well such as security forces, foreign interests and politicianship.

On the other hand, the state and politicianship seem ignorant of the fact that a new nexus is causing a new, critical threat to loom. A few mainstream parties appeared to have kept links with sectarian organizations for electoral success. Sectarian groups welcome all political parties because they seek political legitimacy through these alliances.

Law-enforcement agencies appear to have no clear countering strategy mainly because of the frail threat perception and lack of inspiration to take action against homegrown terrorist threats.
Posted by:Fred

#1  LONG overdue for Nuclear cleansing.
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2013-01-14 00:46  

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