Searching for protection: Pakistan's Shia community

Pakistan's Shia minority continues to face violence across the country.

Is Pakistan’s government unable to provide security for its own citizens? Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a banned Pakistani militant group, continues to target the Shia community in Balochistan province. After three deadly bombings this year claimed hundreds of lives, members of Pakistan’s Shia minority are taking up arms to defend themselves. We examine the ongoing violence against the country’s Shia community. 

It takes its name from the late Sunni Cleric Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, who spearheaded the anti-Shia campaign which began in the country 30 years ago as a counter-movement to the Iranian Islamic revolution.

Mr Jhangvi was a founding member of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), a group blamed by many for introducing sectarian violence to the country.

Researchers say that the Islamisation policy introduced by Pakistan's former military leader, General Zia-ul-Haq, in the 1980s allowed the emergence of SSP in 1985.

Calling themselves "Jhangvi" loyalists, the Lej - or Army of Jhangvi - began allying itself with the Taliban movement which was just taking over in Afghanistan.

Both the Taliban and the LeJ belong to the same orthodox, puritanical Deobandi tradition of Islam associated with the Islamic revivalist movement in the region

Activities

• In March 2002 LJ members bombed a bus, killing 15 people, including 11 French technicians.

• On 17 March 2002 at 11:00 am, two members of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi bombed the International Protestant Church in Islamabadduring a church service. Five people were killed and 40 people were injured, mostly expatriates. In July 2002 Pakistani police killed one of the alleged perpetrators and arrested four Lashkar-e-Jhangvi members in connection with the church attack. The LJ members confessed to the killings and said the attack was in retaliation for the U.S. attack on Afghanistan.

• The Pakistani government Interior Ministry said that the suicide bomber involved in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto,^[15] along with the death of 20 others in Rawalpindi, belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi on 27 December 2007.^[15]

• Authorities believe Mohammed Aqeel, an LJ member, was the mastermind behind the March 2009 attack on the Sri Lanka national cricket team.^[16]

• LJ claimed responsibility for killing 26 Shia pilgrims on 20 September 2011 in the Mastung area of Balochistan. The pilgrims were travelling on a bus to Iran.^[17][18] In addition, 2 others were killed in a follow-up attack on a car on its way to rescue the survivors of the bus attack.

• Afghan President Hamid Karzai blamed LJ for a bombing that killed 59 people at Abu Fazal shrine in the Murad Khane district of Kabul on 6 December 2011. Most of the dead were pilgrims marking Ashoura, the holiest day in the Shia calendar.^[19][20]

• Lashkar-i-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for 13 lives lost in brutal attack on Shia pilgrims.^[21] QUETTA, 28 June: At least 13 people, two women and a policeman among them, were killed and over 20 others injured on Thursday in a bomb attack on a bus mainly carrying Shia pilgrims returning from Iran. Most of the pilgrims belonged to the Hazara community.

• Claimed responsibility for January 2013 Pakistan bombings in Pakistan killing 125 people.^[22]

• Claimed responsibility for February 2013 Quetta bombings in Pakistan killing 81 and wounding 178, mostly Shia people