Why the Ismailis?

Karachi
Al-Qaeda-linked groups have set their eyes on the Shia Ismailis who contribute significantly to the country’s economic growth, in a bid to cause diplomatic tensions for Islamabad with their spiritual leader Prince Shah Karim Al Hussaini Aga Khan, analysts told The News on Wednesday.
At least 44 people were killed when a bus carrying members of the Ismaili community was attacked by gunmen near Safoora Chowrangi.
Prince Karim Aga Khan has been a major source of development funds for the country.
Naimat Khan, a veteran journalist, said the Ismailis, along with the Bohra community, were on the hit-list of al-Qaeda-linked groups in the city.
“The bus attack has international significance because of the community’s spiritual leader,” he noted.
This can be gauged from the fact that Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif cancelled his three-day visit to Sri Lanka following the attack and arrived in Karachi, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif too rushed to the city in the evening after an all-parties conference on the Pak-China Economic Corridor.
The Ismaili community has been targeted in Karachi in the past as well but Wednesday’s attack was the bloodiest of them.
In 2013, the community’s jamatkhanas were attacked in Metroville and Karimabad in which two of its members were killed and many others injured.
Who was responsible?
Although the Jundullah, a terrorist group, has claimed responsibility for the attack, a section of analysts and police officers believe otherwise.
Ahmed Marwat, the spokesperson for the Jundullah, told the media that his group had carried out the attack and would continue targeting Shias, Ismailis, Christians and other communities.
In November last year, the group held talks with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and pledged loyalty to the Middle-Eastern terrorist organisation.
The Jundullah had claimed credit for many terrorist attacks in the past. The most recent one of them was the attack on Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the chief of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam-Fazl, in Quetta in October last year.
It had claimed responsibility for the murder of Samiullah Khan Afridi, the lawyer of Dr Shakil Afridi, who helped the US find Osama bin Laden, and the attacks on a Shia mosque in Rawalpindi and an imambargah in Shikarpur earlier this year.
The group had also said it was responsible for the attack on the Wagah border crossing in Lahore in November last year.
Some ISIS pamphlets were found at the scene of the Safoora Chowrangi bus attack, both in English and Urdu, in which the terrorist group vowed to continue targeting the Shia community.
Security analysts and police officials say that they have witnessed many contradictory claims by different terrorist organisations in the past.
“So claiming responsibility doesn’t necessarily establish that the group did it,” Khan told The News.
On the basis of the pattern and forensic reports, Khan believes that it is the work of al Qaeda or a group associated with it. “It [al Qaeda] mostly doesn’t claim responsibility,” he said. “An ISIS pamphlet was found at the site where American professor Debra Lobo was attacked too. But it later turned out to be carried out by an al Qaeda group comprising educated youths.”
Muhammad Amir Rana, the director of Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), believes that the Jundullah, which is active in Balochistan and rural Sindh, might be behind the attack.
“The group is associated with the ISIS and involved in recent subversive attacks in Balochistan and Sindh,” he observed.
A senior police officer says that it is very hard to identify which group was involved in the attack.
“We are witnessing new styles and new players in such attacks and it is a growing concern for the law enforcement agencies,” he noted.
Targeting a certain community in buses has happened in the past in Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.
In 2004, militants attacked a bus carrying Shia employees of the Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission, the national space agency.

Ongoing operation
Some police officials say that the focus of the operation against in criminals in Karachi has primarily been on political parties involved in violent activities, criminal syndicates and different factions of the TTP.
“It is true that we have shattered the networks of all three factions of Taliban militants by killing or arresting their key leaders in the city,” said the police official. “But the case of sectarian groups is different as they operate under the cover of sect-based religious parties,” he added.
The highest number of sectarian attacks in a region of Pakistan in 2014 took place in Karachi. In 82 attacks, 72 people were killed and 64 others injured, according to the PIPS annual security report.