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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

PAKISTAN: Hazaras call for more security

ISLAMABAD, 17 July 2003 (IRIN) - Hazara Shia community leaders have called for increased security, despite life returning to normal following a Sunni militant attack on a mosque in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on 4 July. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi organisation claimed responsibility for the attack in which 60 people died.

"We are not satisfied with the security arrangements, because now the military is on the street but as soon as they leave definitely we are going to have a law and order situation here," Sardar Sadat Ali, a Hazara politician told IRIN from Quetta on Thursday.

He added that the militants had vowed to launch more attacks against Shias in letters and video tapes sent to media outlets on Wednesday. "The organisations doing this are so motivated that they can go to any length to kill Shias," he said.

Thousands of Sunni and Shia Muslims have been killed in Pakistan over the past two decades in sectarian violence fuelled by extremist outfits of the two Muslim sects. Such violence was mostly limited to the eastern Punjab and the southern Sindh Provinces.

However, in recent months, Hazaras living in Quetta, capital of the mostly tribal southwestern Balochistan Province, have become a target. Before the carnage on 4 July, 13 trainee Pakistani police officers were shot dead. On 6 June, two men on a motorbike sprayed bullets at Shia activist Syed Niaz Hussain Shah, aged 50, as he was returning home from his office in the city. A week earlier, a Shia trader was also killed.

Quetta has some 400,000 Hazaras among its 1.5 million population of mostly ethnic Pashtuns, Balochis and Punjabis. These are the descedents of thousands of Hazara families who migrated from Afghanistan in the late 19th century to escape the harsh rule of Afghan King Amir Abul Rahman.

"The situation here is very fragile and we are afraid that there will be more violence," Ali said. "The government should pursue a hard crackdown of sectarian militants and that is the only real solution," he added.

Such views are widely shared. "We demand from the government that our mosques, lives and properties should be protected," Syed Ashraf Zaidi, leader of the Balochistan Shia party, told IRIN. "This incident has forced us to really think hard about our security and we will do our best to ensure that in future," he said.

Police officials remain optimistic about improving security. "It's all right and there is no serious law and order problem," Chuadhry Muhammad Anwar, a deputy inspector general of police in Quetta, told IRIN. Although the curfew imposed after 4 June was lifted a few days ago, heavy security arrangements in the city remain in place.

Anwar said that police were examining the details of information sent to media organisations and pushing hard to catch the perpetrators of the crime. "We are trying to prevent such things in future," he said.

Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2003