Devil dance on KKH

Early Tuesday morning, several gunmen donning military fatigues intercepted a motor caravan somewhere halfway through the Karakorum Highway, pulled passengers out of the vehicles, identified their sectarian affiliation, made them stand in a line and cut them down with bursts from automatic weapons. Some 18 of the victims died on the spot and the seven seriously wounded were shifted to a hospital in the vicinity. As expected, this devil dance on the KKH provoked a strong reaction in the Gilgit-Baltistan cities the victims hailed from, causing a serious law and order situation, especially in the region's principal cities Gilgit and Skardu. Given the ongoing sectarian tension in that area the victims were recognised as members of the Shia community, and if there was any doubt about their identity the Jandullah, a Sunni militant group, cleared it by owning the murderous assault. The victims are said to be the Shia pilgrims who had the apprehensions about their safe travel and therefore were moving in a four-vehicle caravan. But as the fate would have it, they had no security cover and were waylaid on way to their homes and killed - as has it happened near Quetta last year. Did they ask for the security cover, or they asked but were denied, is now only an administrative matter. But one thing is very clear: What happened on the KKH has devastated the lives of their near and dear ones; their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, wives and children would never ever be able to recover from the aftermath of this grim tragedy. That such an act of brutality is committed in the name of Islam is mind-boggling. We as Muslims are imploding from what we nurture as interpretations of our faith. Tolerance of others' beliefs and creeds is the hallmark of our religion, but never before was the world of Islam challenged by such a catastrophic threat as tends to evolve in Pakistan. Of course our administrative capacity and capability fall short of its mandate to squarely confront and combat the sectarian-centred violence. On the face of it, it has yet to come up with a strong, matching response in the form of a clear-cut articulated policy or plan and imbibe the will and determination to engage the spawning phenomenon of religious extremism. Every time an incident of sectarian violence takes place there are instant expressions of condemnation; committees and commissions are announced to seek out the culprits and get them punished, even compensations are doled out to the affected families - but beyond there is nothing but the grey area of inaction and oblivion, till another such happening. What we need is a wider, comprehensive view of the menace of sectarian violence. It has many dimensions and requires tackling by a multi-pronged approach. No doubt it has an age-old history and the Sunni-Shia tussle is not entirely new to this part of the world. It is also our history that this part of the world has been a land of peace and harmonious co-existence, with devotees fully sharing each other's feelings and sentiments. Factionalism is not only special to Muslim society; almost all other religions too stand divided and distributed along similar lines. But what we face in Pakistan, a dangerously notched up sectarian intolerance, is thanks to an extremely rigid interpretation of our faith, largely influenced, one would say even funded, by outsiders who have turned Pakistan into a battleground for their proxy wars. Not that Pakistan alone is the target of outside influence, is a known, established fact of international politics. But others have survived because they have developed equally strong immunity against such manoeuvres by putting in place an effective law-enforcement mechanism, a special legal framework to handle cases of sectarian violence to get culprits severely punished. The government should also closely monitor the flow of foreign funds to the sectarian outfits. And, most importantly, it is the responsibility of religious scholars and ulema to help remove misunderstandings that tend to generate sectarian tensions. Copyright Business Recorder, 2012