A sit-in protest in Quetta, Pakistan ended on Tuesday when the government allegedly met all of the protesters’ demands. The protest was held as a response to the Saturday bombing of a market district, with the protestors rallying around the families of those who were killed in the bomb blast.
The families refused to bury their dead until the government promised to take action to prevent future bombings.
Quetta is the largest city in the Pakistani district of Balochistan, and has a high population of Hazara, who primarily practice Shia Islam. The Hazara are a distinct ethnic group within northern Pakistan and Afghanistan who trace their ancestry back to the Mongols. Their distinct appearance makes them easy targets for Sunni extremists.
Related protests were held throughout Pakistan, with the largest being in Karachi and Lahore, but also in other cities with sizeable populations of Hazara.
On Tuesday, the Pakistani government arrested one hundred and seventy people in relation to the bombing. Among those taken into custody was a former provincial minister, one of the masterminds of the recent bombings. According to the Pakistani information minister, Qamar Zaman Kaira, the arrests are expected to make a significant difference for regional security.
Four suspects were also killed during Tuesday’s operation. They were allegedly responsible for the past murders of high-ranking police officers and a Shia judge.
Saturday’s blast, which killed eighty-nine individuals, was only the latest in a string of bombings which has left more than two hundred and thirty Pakistani Shi’ite Muslims dead since January 10, when the bombing of a billiards hall in Quetta killed ninety-two people. Since then there have been multiple smaller bombings around Pakistan, including the bombings of a Shia mosque and a police checkpoint at the beginning of February. A Sunni Muslim extremist group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), has claimed responsibility for the bombing campaign.
LeJ was formed sometime in 1995/1996 as a violent offshoot of a comparatively peaceful religious-political organization known as “Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan.” LeJ’s stated goals are to forge Pakistan into a Deobandi Sunni state. They are a takfiri group, which means that they consider all of those who hold different religious beliefs to be infidels. LeJ has been responsible for several previous bombings of Shi’ites in Pakistan, as well as being suspected in a 1998 massacre of Hazara in Afghanistan. Besides bombing Shi’ite Muslims, LeJ has demonstrated a proclivity for bombing Barelvi and Ahmadi Muslims; while the latter two are Sunni sects, they do not share common goals with the Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam.
Pakistan is predominantly Sunni, but has seen a significant rise in sectarian violence in recent years. There have been killings between componential sects of Sunni Islam in addition to the far more common violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims. The first two months of this year have already seen almost two hundred and fifty Pakistani Shia killed by their countrymen. 2012, on record as the deadliest year for Pakistani Shi’ites, saw the deaths of four hundred.
For Pakistani nationals, interracial and intra-religious conflict continues to pose as significant a threat as the more publicized geopolitical conflict which plays out in their country.