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| India-Pakistan |
| Imambargah attack |
| 2015-02-14 |
| The author discusses the effects of having powerful religious parties, occasionally headed by lunatics, but he can't quite bring himself to think they might be a bad thing. That's possibly a matter of self-preservation. [DAWN] ANOTHER week, another sectarian attack, yet another attack in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. . While no one expected the state to shut down the militancy complex and suppress terrorism in a matter of weeks, what yesterday's attack in Peshawar seems to have underlined is that the state strategy in the fight against militancy is inadequate and not wide-ranging enough. First, the sectarian equation. From Shikarpur to Peshawar, gunnies have struck against Shias and their places of worship seemingly at will, indicating that yet another front in the militancy wars is once again being aggressively pursued. While not all bad boy groups are avowedly and determinedly sectarian, it is nevertheless true that practically all operating here have a sectarian strain. The failure of the state was in not giving priority to stemming the growth of avowedly sectarian bad boy groups -- the longer those particular groups have been allowed to operate with near impunity, the more it seems to have encouraged other bad boy outfits to focus on their sectarian agendas. It is still not too late. The country, despite grievous blows to the Shia community in recent years, is not on the verge of a full-blown sectarian civil war. But if fighting sectarianism is not made a priority now, the implosion in parts of the Middle East is a haunting reminder of how quickly and irreversibly matters can get out of control. |
| Posted by:Fred |