Carnage of Christians and Other Minorities in Pakistan

Sushant Sareen, 

Senior Fellow, VIF

On 22^nd September, 2013, two suicide bombers targeted a church in Peshawar, killing over 80 people and injuring nearly 150. Entire families were wiped out. Many Christian households, who in any case barely eke out an existence in a country and society where they are treated as Untermensch (sub-humans, because they are not Muslims) lost their sole bread earner. Teachers, students, newly-weds, about to be married, pregnant women, children (around 20) were blown to bits by the jihadists fighting for the glory of Islam. Of course, this is neither the first time such a carnage of minorities has happened in the ‘Land of the Pure’, nor will it be the last time such a massacre has happened because if truth be told, an open season has been declared on minorities in Pakistan. Muslim minority sects, Shias in particular and within the Shia community, the Hazaras, have routinely come in the cross hairs of jihadist mass murderers. Other non-Muslim communities too have been targeted – Hindu girls are a favourite target, Ahmediyas subjected to the worst kinds of hate crimes, and Christians not only made victims to the infamous and obnoxious blasphemy laws but also pogroms in which entire neighbourhoods are burnt by rampaging mobs. 

Every time an outrage such as the bombing of the All Saints’ Church in Peshawar takes place, there is the standard response in Pakistan: the government wrings its hands helplessly and issues a pro forma condemnation but does absolutely nothing tangible to prevent such an incident from being repeated; most politicians also issue similar pro forma condemnation not because they genuinely feel outraged, but because that is the politically correct thing to do; other politicians – to name just the most notorious of this lot, the Taliban defender and supporter Imran Khan, the flag-bearer of Islamist terror Munawar Hasan of Jamaat Islami and the Maulana who wants to run the Taliban but is currently running scared of them, Maulana Fazlur Rehman of JUI-F – condemn the incident but then make the whole thing sound insincere and disingenuous by adding qualifications which are really short hand for not pointing the finger at the real perpetrators but deflecting the blame to an un-named ‘third force’ or insinuating a ‘foreign hand’ (which though not always specified is often an allusion to the US, Indian and Israeli intelligence agencies).

The ugly reality is however quite different from the spin that the self-serving and scared politicians, analysts and strategists give to gruesome acts of terrorism. A son of Maulana Maudoodi, founder of the Jamaat Islami, the party that serves as the ‘Mother of political Islamism’ and is arguably not only one of the political faces of the Al Qaeda but also partners Imran Khan’s party in running the provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, hit the nail on the head when he said that the bombing of the Peshawar church was a natural outcome of creating a state in the name of religion. But even this is a partial explanation of the blood lust that drives the jihadists. Pakistan's real problem isn’t so much that terrorists are running amok, but that Islamist terrorists are operating with impunity and, to an extent, with the sanction of state. In other words, more than terrorism, the problem is societal extremism and a communalised national mindset.

Much as Pakistanis like to explain away extremism in society as something that was fostered on the country by the Islamisation policies unleashed by the former military dictator, Gen Zia ul Haq, the fact is that this mindset has been present since before independence. If anything, it was this mindset that gave birth to Pakistan, and if there is no course correction, then this very mindset will probably become the reason for the death of the state of Pakistan. Terrorism and radicalism are only the manifestations or symptoms of the deep seated extremist mindset which has been consciously and deliberately fuelled by the State through an education system in which children are taught to hate other communities, rendering most of them incapable of living in peace with not only non-Muslims but also Muslims who adhere to a different sect or school of theology.

A recent example of this climate of intolerance was when a news anchor (infamous for being part of the caretaker setup put in place in 2007 by the then dictator and self-proclaimed ‘enlightened moderate’, Gen Pervez Musharraf) who started a campaign against an elite Lahore school because it was teaching comparative religions to students in order to inculcate tolerance and understanding of other faiths, and the alacrity and zeal with which the Punjab government headed by Shahbaz Sharif came down on the school administration and registered cases against them. In such an environment, bombing of religious places of ‘others’ – Christian churches, Hindu temples, Shia Imambargahs and Ahmediya masjids – is par for the course.

Yet another example is that of the Blasphemy law. The problem with the blasphemy law isn’t so much that it is a bad law (which it is) but the extremism in society. Many places have bad laws or laws that are anachronistic. For instance, Britain has both an adultery law and even a blasphemy law but it is hardly ever applied because society has moved on. In Pakistan, however, merely accusing a person of blasphemy is enough to practically pronounce the death sentence on the person because if the people don’t kill you even before any court finds you guilty, the judge will be so terrified of acquitting you that he will pronounce the guilty verdict without applying his mind or evaluating the evidence, and if by chance he does acquit you, then waiting to kill you outside the court will be all sorts of people.

There is little doubt that a lot of the terrorism that is affecting Pakistan now is really a blowback of the Pakistani State’s policy of using jihadist terror groups as instruments of state policy. But here again, it was not this policy per se that's the problem. Other countries have also used such cynical and disastrous policies and lived to regret it and then being forced to change course and jettison such policies. But unlike other countries, Pakistan doesn’t have the benefit of the political and social space for pulling back from the disastrous course it took some seven decades ago when it first tried to use jihad to achieve foreign policy and national security objectives. If anything, it appears extremely unlikely that the Pakistani State (as it is currently constituted) will survive the wages of this jihadist policy. The reason is that this policy fits in well and feeds on the national narrative of extremism. It is both a concomitant and a corollary of the conscious spread and tolerance of extremist thought in Pakistani society. It is now part of the culture that the state inculcated in the people.

It is precisely because of this culture of intolerance that neo-jihadists like Imran Khan and old school communalists like members of the ruling PML-Nawaz invariably resort to denial, deflection and obfuscation even in the face of horrific incidents of terrorism. So terrified are these so-called leaders of the Pakistani people that they do not even mention the name of the terrorist group which carries out such attacks, even though the terrorist group openly takes responsibility for the attack. With almost the entire country suffering from a sort of national and civilizational Stockholm Syndrome, how can Pakistan even think of fighting, forget about defeating, the Taliban?

While there are still a lot of right thinking and sensible people in Pakistan, many of whom display great courage and intrepidness to openly criticise, condemn and even challenge the Taliban and other Islamist terror groups and their overground supporters, the sad fact is that these brave people don't count for anything in today’s Pakistan. The main reason for this is that they depend on the state to fight on their side but the state is run by people who are either on the side of the terrorists or are using terrorists for their grandiose, if also delusional, strategic objectives or are just too scared of facing, much less fighting, the terrorists. A prime example is Shahbaz Sharif who publicly pleaded to the Taliban to spare the Punjab from their attacks since the PML-N and the Taliban were fighting for the same cause!

Today, the PML-N is in power not only in Punjab but also in Islamabad, and given the recent resolution passed by the All Parties Conference for opening a dialogue with the Taliban, the ‘fighting for the same cause’ has now been taken to the next level, in which the Taliban have been made ‘stakeholders’ in the system. In such a situation, the massacre of minorities is a small price to pay, especially when the PML-N storm-troopers in Punjab have also participated in pogroms against Christians. Therefore, chances are that in the coming weeks, months and years, there will be many more such incidents, all of which will be followed by the usual meaningless statements of condemnation and bizarre conspiracy theories.  

Gilani’s Conviction: A Soft Constitutional Coup and The Crisis of State

Sushant Sareen

Even before the Supreme Court of Pakistan had pronounced the verdict against Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, the writing on the wall was very clear: the so-called ‘independent’ judiciary was hell bent on gaining the dubious distinction of breaking new constitutional ground by convicting a sitting Prime Minister on the charge of contempt of court, which is really short-hand for a soft constitutional coup. Anyone who has followed the proceedings in the said case knew that the judges had decided to convict Prime Minister Gilani even before the case started.

Only, they had to go through the motions – lawyers call it due process – to keep up the charade of being even-handed so that the charge of one-sided justice and witch-hunt against the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) could be watered down.

On the face of it, sentencing of the Prime Minister till ‘the rising of the court’ i.e. about 30 seconds, appeared to be a bit of an anti-climax because it belied expectations of a spectacle – the PM being taken to jail and/or the court disqualifying him as a Member of Parliament. But even this half-a-minute sentence was enough to do the damage and create an unprecedented constitutional and political crisis which the country can ill-afford at this juncture. With the conviction of a sitting Prime Minister, Pakistan has entered uncharted constitutional waters that hold the potential of sinking the ship of state. As things stand, the Pakistani judiciary has breached the limitations implicit in the constitution – the most appropriate term is the Hindi word ‘maryada’ – and created a situation which the framers of the constitution would have neither imagined, nor catered for.

If the reactions to the conviction are anything to go by, the portents are not good. The ruling PPP and at least some of its allies are gearing up for a bruising legal and political battle aimed at not only protecting the PM but also making hell of a noise to undermine the judges and their judgments. Prime Minister Gilani has already called the ruling ‘not appropriate’ and is showing no signs of putting in his papers. The leader of the main opposition party, Nawaz Sharif, has sounded the bugle by declaring that he and his party no longer acknowledge Gilani as the Prime Minister and has demanded his resignation and early general elections. The right-wing religious parties like Jamaat Islami and neo-Jamaat/Talibanesque parties like Imran Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaaf have cast their lot with the judiciary and are going hammer and tongs at the Zardari-Gilani combine. In short, the stage is all set for political pandemonium, in the corridors of power, chambers of courts, the streets of the country, and of course, the ubiquitous TV studios. The powerful military establishment is meanwhile watching everything from the sidelines, biding its time but also calculating whether or not it will be required to step into the political slugfest.

The judgment against Gilani has not only sharpened the political polarization in the country but has also politicised the judicial processes. Sample this: on the eve of the judgment those supporting Gilani made it clear that the ruling would decide whether justice would be done (i.e. Gilani would be acquitted) or the PPP would once again be victimised; those baying for Gilani’s blood (actually, the real target is Asif Zardari) were waiting to see if rule of law would be upheld (i.e. Gilani would be sentenced) or if the judges would once again buckle under pressure! In such a deeply polarized environment, it is impossible to expect that judicial verdicts will be accepted ungrudgingly by either side.

In other words, every judicial decision in Pakistan today is something of a political minefield. To a great extent, it is the judges themselves who are responsible for the situation coming to such a pass. Right from the time this government took office in March 2008, the judiciary has been a mill-stone around its neck. The reluctance of Asif Zardari to restore the chief justice was only partly the result of his own personal grudge against Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry – he had humiliated Zardari and consistently denied him any relief during the Musharraf years. Partly, Zardari resisted the restoration because the suspended chief justice spooked the army which leaned on the PPP government to avoid restoring him. But after having been forced to restore the Chief Justice, it would have been ideal if all sides had decided to let bygones be bygones and started with a clean slate. After all, there was no one in Pakistan – not the judges, not the politicians, not the faujis, not the media mujahids and jihadis, no one really – who was not sullied.

While the sins of all others seemed to have been wiped clean, Asif Zardari remained a pet object of hate for the right-wing, Punjabi mafia that runs Pakistan which wanted to punish him for all his sins (more of commission than of omission) despite the fact that he had been jailed for over 11 years without having ever been convicted. Despite Zardari having become President and enjoying complete immunity under the constitution against any prosecution, the judges did not relent in trying to fix him. If only the judges, most of them with an Islamist proclivity – a favourite judge of the chief justice is now the chief legal counsel of the assassin on the former Punjab governor and the chief justice himself has made observations against secularism – had shown the same dogged determination against terrorists like Hafiz Saeed and others of his ilk as they have shown against Asif Zardari and Yusuf Raza Gilani, Pakistan might well have been a happier place.

Forget about Islamist terrorists, these very same judges are very careful when it comes to throwing the book either at the generals or even their favoured politicians like Nawaz Sharif. The zealousness with which Gilani has been convicted is somehow completely absent when it comes to convicting top army generals and ISI officials for flouting court orders (for instance in the missing persons case). Gilani’s supporters also point out how the Supreme Court judges have acted against fellow judges for ignoring an order declaring the emergency imposed by Gen Pervez Musharraf in November 2007 but have refused to act against the officials (including the current army chief) who had also ignored the very same order. Even in the cases involving politicians of a certain persuasion, the judges seem to be very guarded in their approach. For instance, while the chief justice showed remarkable alacrity in taking suo moto notice against an actress who was caught with two bottles of liquor, the somnolence of the judiciary knows no bounds when it comes to a murder case against the former chief minister of Punjab, Dost Khosa, who was a stand-in for Shahbaz Sharif for a few months and is the son of a close associate of the Sharifs and who is believed to have killed his wife.

It is against such a backdrop that the judiciary is being judged by supporters of the PPP who also question the constitutionality of the judgment not just because the constitution provides immunity to the Prime Minister under article 248(1) for any action he takes (or as in this case, doesn’t take) in the discharge of his responsibilities but also because according to the Attorney General of Pakistan there is currently no law on contempt of court and the ordinance under which that the Supreme Court is prosecuting the Prime Minister had lapsed as a result of the judgment of this very Court. The game-plan of the PPP is going to be two-fold. At the political level, there is a slim possibility that the party decides to ask Yusuf Raza Gilani to resign and selects his replacement in the next couple of days, in which case the crisis over a convicted PM will be resolved but the issue of the controversial letter will remain open. Alternatively, and perhaps more likely is the possibility that the PPP will ask Gilani to continue in office and at the same time will use this conviction to play the victim and use the ‘political martyrdom’ card to try and cement its core support base in South Punjab and Sindh. The only problem is that given the rather poor performance of the government, it is unlikely if this ploy will find too much traction. Although the PPP might win sympathy from some quarters, whether it will also receive the votes, especially in the next general elections, cannot be said with any degree of certainty. At best what the PPP can hope for is that the political martyrdom at the hands of a vindictive judiciary might help it to reclaim lost ground after the next elections.

On the legal plane, chances are that the PPP will use every trick in the book to drag the matter and prevent the disqualification of the PM. But how long they can drag this case is again a matter of speculation: the PPP supporters believe that they can pull this thing for around four to six months and then if matters reach a head elect another PM and repeat the whole drama all over again; the PPP detractors are of the view that at best the ruling party can drag this for a two to three months after which it will have to choose another PM. As the latter see it, the appeal against the conviction could be set aside in a matter of weeks after which the disqualification reference will be moved before the Speaker who has to decide on the matter within 30 days. After this period, the case will automatically go before the Election Commission which is currently headed by a serving Supreme Court judge in a temporary capacity. He is unlikely to take too much time before disqualifying Gilani. This ruling will then be challenged before the High Court and then appealed before the Supreme Court. Given the mood of the Supreme Court, the odds are that this entire process could be decided without too much delay.

While the legal processes will follow their own course, the issue of writing the controversial letter to the Swiss authorities to reopen the cases against Asif Zardari will continue to hang like a sword over the head of the government. If the government continues to defy the Supreme Court, there is a possibility that the court might ask the army to intervene. This would pretty much mean an end of the democratic order for the foreseeable future. If however the army refuses to follow the ‘illegal’ orders of the Supreme Court, then the Court will become a lame-duck. There is a possibility that the Court might not push very hard on the letter issue and wait for the next government (likely in March 2013) to write the letter against the President whose term expires in August 2013. But even before this happens, a caretaker government is likely to be in place by around November/December this year and this government could also write the controversial letter. In other words, the letter will ultimately be written and written even while Zardari is in office. Therefore, the question is what the PPP and Zardari hope to gain by holding out on the letter for another few months.

There is of course another possibility: the government might plead immunity for the president, something that the Supreme Court has already asked it to do. This is however a risky strategy because if the immunity plea is rejected then the government will have to write the letter. On the other hand, if the court accepts the immunity plea, then questions will be raised and fingers will be pointed against the judiciary for creating such a massive constitutional and political crisis for the last two and half years even though it was clearly laid down in the constitution that the President enjoyed immunity. After all, if the case against Zardari hasn’t been decided in the last 16 years, heavens would not fall if it continues to remain undecided for another year or so.

The big problem for the Pakistani state is that all this political and constitutional tumult is taking place at a time of monumental, even existential, challenges and threats. The economy is on the verge of collapse and requires some very tough decisions if it has to survive; at the strategic level, relations with the US and the West are very precariously placed and need bold decisions from the government; the situation in Afghanistan is threatening to go out of control and the Taliban, both the Afghan and Pakistani, could wreck havoc in the region; the internal security situation is abysmal with an insurgency in Balochistan and deep disaffection in Sindh (exacerbated by the alleged murder of the Sindhi nationalist leader Bashir Qureshi), rising sectarian violence and what have you. The spectre of serious instability that was already hanging over the country has only become more ominous after the Supreme Court judgment and cemented the impression of the state sliding towards failure because how can a government that is only engaged in unending fire-fighting to survive and is being constantly hauled over the coals, provide even a modicum of governance. Ultimately, in the name of rule of law the Pakistani judiciary has ensured that there is neither any law nor any rule in Pakistan.

Author is Senior Fellow at Vivekananda International Foundation