“We were going after the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Jamaat-al-Ahrar but the attack on Maulana Taqi Usmani moved our attention to this group,” a counterterrorism official told Samaa Digital on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with the media.
The counter-terrorism official said that they don’t know how many more people are active in Karachi with this group. “Even the boys, who are working with this group, don’t know about the other members,” he claimed. “They become active after they are given targets and then they slip away to Iran.”
In his May 6 press conference DIG Amir Farooqui had said that one of the suspects, Syed Imran Haider Zaidi, had visited a neighbouring country in 2015 and 2017 and received 25 days of “militancy training” twice under the supervision of their “national guards”. He said that Zaidi had tasked his group members to recruit media persons belonging to the Shia community and send them to the neighbouring country for training.
In another press conference, on April 15, the counter-terrorism department had said that it had arrested six sectarian target killers, including a police constable, suspected of ties to a neighbouring country.
Counter-Terrorism Department DIG Abdullah Sheikh had told reporters that the arrested men received financial help from a neighbouring country. “The arrested terrorists would hide in a neighboring Islamic country after killing people in Karachi on sectarian grounds,” Shaikh said. “They are highly qualified and are trained in a foreign country from where they would also get financial help.”
They belonged to the Tehrik-e-Jafaria Pakistan and Sipah-e-Muhammad Pakistan, Raja Umar Khattab, another CTD official said. Their names were not on the list of missing persons, a representative of the Shia missing person families added.
A security officer told Samaa Digital that the five arrested men (declared on May 6) had been in contact with “handlers” in Iran and their numbers had been traced. One of the numbers belonged to a non-local recruiter of the Zainebiyoun Brigade, he said.
The Liwa Zainebiyoun (People of Zainab Brigade) is a pro-Iran group that was formed to protect the shrine of Sayyidah Zainab (May Allah be pleased with her) in Syria in what is believed to be 2014 or 2015. “Around 800 to 2,500 Pakistani fighters are in the group,” according to Phillip Smyth, a Soref fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps recruits Pakistani Shias to fight using Shia religious networks.”
He told Samaa Digital that the recruitment is often done through local clerics and other leaders. “Then individuals travel to Iran (often to Tehran or Qom), ostensibly for pilgrimage or for religious education and are then sent to training camps.” Liwa Zainebiyoun has been deployed throughout Syria, particularly in the north and east of the country, he added.
It seems that the authorities in Pakistan had picked up on this early on. In August, 2014, the National Counter Terrorism Authority wrote a letter to all the provincial home secretaries and law enforcement agencies, warning them that, “Iraqi and Iranian missions in Pakistan are actively attracting Shia students desirous of studying in their countries.” The confidential letter said that Shia students were being brainwashed and motivated against other sects and Pakistani government officials over the killings of Shias in Pakistan.
According to Aamir Rana, a security analyst and the director of the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, scores of Pakistani Shias have been to Syria. “Many were arrested from Punjab and Parachinaar after they returned to Pakistan,” Rana said.
The clerics, however, declined to confirm that there were any links between the community and Liwa Zainebiyoun. Hasan Raza Sohail said, however, that members of the Shia community haven’t broken any laws in Pakistan even if they had hypothetically gone to Syria to fight. “We will proudly own them If they go to Syria,” Sohail said, adding that for them it was a religious obligation to protect the holy sites such as the resting place of Bibi Zainab (AS).
Loyalty to Iran is a factor for some Shia clerics in Pakistan, argues Lt Gen (retired) Amjad Shoaib, a defense analyst. “Many of them were educated in Qom and they still get Wazifa from Iran,” he told Samaa Digital. “When we sign any agreement with Saudi Arabia, people here object that Iran would be offended,” the former army official said, pointing to the delicate balances of geopolitics.
It certainly doesn’t help that the Shias have faced countless attacks in Pakistan, he said. “The Hazaras were targeted because they could be recognized [easily].” Iran believes that the Shia community in Pakistan is oppressed and they train their people, he added. Iran has faced terrorism in the past and has suspected Pakistan was behind it.
“They recruited Pakistani Shias when Daesh came to Syria,” he said. “Many people from Parachinar were recruited, trained and sent to Syria.”
He believes that both those who joined Daesh and Zainebiyoun were equally dangerous. “A brainwashed individual is dangerous regardless of his sect,” he said. “No matter what their sect is, they commit acts of terrorism.”
And so the desperate torsion of interlocking local and regional politics continues to exert its pressures on the lives of people. The State grapples with the threat of terrorism, its law-enforcement machinery working overtime. The Shia community in Pakistan continues to find itself at the centre of a widening regional battle. But if the dharna is anything to go by this time, at least some effect was to be had.
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