Who is behind the Karachi bombing?

Daily Times, April 13, 2006
EDITORIAL: Sunni Tehreek takes a hit

Pakistan reeled under its biggest-ever sectarian blow as a grand Barelvi congregation celebrating the birthday of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) on Eid Milad un Nabi was suicide-bombed on Tuesday. Out of the 1,500 that had gathered, 57 died and over 100 were injured. Witnesses differed over how it happened. The official version was that the suicide-bomber was in the second row from the stage but Sunni Tehreek eyewitnesses said a man bounded on to the stage like a monkey (bandar ki tarah) and let off a device tied to his torso. Who was behind the attack?

Talking to Geo TV, Qazi Hussain Ahmad of the Jamaat-e-Islami referred to a Voice of America broadcast about an earlier accident at a Dawat-e-Islami mosque in Karachi and implied that the blast was plotted by (you guessed it) the United States. He said it was tragic that the government too was aligned with the enemy. On the basis of information from his “sources” he said it was not a suicide-bombing but a device fixed under the stage and triggered through remote control. Of course, he was proved wide of the mark soon enough when it was revealed that a suicide bomber had been involved.

Speaking to the same TV channel, the MQM chief, Altaf Hussain, clearly said that it was a case of suicide-bombing by one “particular” extremist organisation. He didn’t name the organisation but he gave us a hint about the culprits when he referred to the Hangu bombing on the day of ashura this year when 36 Shias were killed. The implication is that some hard line Sunni sectarian outfit is behind this massacre. Earlier, on April 7, Allama Hassan Turabi of Tehreek-e-Islami (Shia), after narrowly escaping a bombing in Karachi, had pointed to the acquittal of Deobandi Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba men at the High Court a day earlier and complained that the same sectarian killers had done the deed. Mr Hussain is right.

The suicide-bomber had one aim: to decapitate the militant Sunni Tehreek. Its current leader Abbas Qadri, deputy chief Akram Qadri and spokesman Iftikhar Bhatti were neatly eliminated. Along with them died others belonging to the moderate Jamaat Ahle Sunnat, like Haji Hanif Billo and Hafiz Muhammad Taqi. (Some Shias were in the namaz, which points to a developing Barelvi-Shia religious coalition.) The Barelvi followers, much aggrieved by “the government’s neglect” in the past, then indulged in widespread vandalism, burning petrol pumps and cars and ambulances. The Edhi Foundation, with 100 ambulances deployed, suffered the loss of eight of them with dead bodies inside. Thank God the vandalism ended after MQM leaders appealed for calm.

The Sunni Tehreek was set up in 1990 to counter the growing Deobandi and Ahle Hadith dominance in Karachi, by Salim Qadri, a member of Dawat-e-Islami (Green Turbans) who was himself shot down in 2001 at Chandni Chowk. The attackers were identified as members of the hardline Sunni sectarian group, Sipah-e-Sahaba, as one of them was killed on the spot. (The Sindh government ended up paying compensation to his family as well!) Salim Qadri left the party to Abbas Qadri (now dead) under whom the organisation continued to flourish because of the ample funds it could access from the rich business community of Karachi, especially the Memons, looking for protection from jihadi-sectarian organisations who are constantly “demanding” money for their “cause”. There was also a strong MQM connection, in the sense that both organisations have common enemies and many of the elements of the Sunni Tehreek were former MQM activists who had crossed over to it after the army’s crackdown on the MQM in the early 1990s.

The MQM coalition government is under challenge from hardline Sunni-Islamic elements. This is clear from the announcement by Mr Hussain that Karachi will close down for three days. (A very buoyant Stock Exchange too shut shop yesterday.) Governor Ishrat ul Ibad announced Rs 300,000 compensation for each bereaved family and promised to take the wounded abroad for surgeries. The chief minister, Arbab Ghulam Raheem, announced his own compensation of Rs 100,000 for each dead person. Everyone down the line from President Pervez Musharraf (except Mr Hussain) has used the tired rhetoric of “no Muslim could have possibly done it” and there is also talk of the usual suspect — “the foreign hand”. But the truth is that it is clearly a “home job”. It is probably the biggest sectarian massacre so far witnessed in the country, not so much in terms of numbers as the fact that it happened on Eid Milad un Nabi. *