ASWJ’s avowal to mend its ways – for real or deception?

Troubled by crackdown on terror and also boosted by electoral success in Jhang and Karachi, banned outfit claims it wants to distance itself from its anti-shia rhetoric of the past and become a national political party

Worried over the ongoing crackdown on terrorism and also encouraged by its recent electoral achievements, banned sectarian outfit Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat has decided to transform itself into a national political party, distancing itself from its anti-Shia rhetoric of the past and focusing on parliamentary politics, The News has learnt.

The central leaders of the ASWJ, which earlier operated as the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and the Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan before it was banned under those names too, have been working on the outfit’s alteration for the past several months.

They assessed both the ongoing crackdown on terrorism and its recent electoral achievements in Jhang and Karachi and started working on the organisation’s future course of action.

“They [ASWJ leaders] are concerned over the rise in ‘men in plainclothes picking up’ the outfit’s active members and in some cases their ‘extra-judicial killing’ in the ongoing crackdown on terrorism in Karachi and other parts of the country,” said a Karachi-based religious leader privy to the development.

“But at the same time, the group has also been boosted by its success in the
recent electoral fights including winning the Punjab Assembly seat, PP-78, in Jhang and local government seats in Karachi, and is turning its focus to electoral politics.”

ASWJ leaders too corroborated the party’s future strategy. Its central chief, Aurangzeb Farooqi, in an informal meeting with a group of journalists in Karachi last week said his party would not allow anyone to use its platform to raise slogans against other sects.

“We have ideological differences with a certain sect, but we denounce killing of its members and raising slogans against it,” Farooqi told The News. He said his party respected the country’s laws and disassociated itself from any violent activities.

Is the U-turn genuine?

A section of security analysts too believe that the sectarian outfit could be changing its strategy to secure survival. Without naming the ASWJ, Muhammad Amir Rana, an Islamabad-based security analyst, in one of his recent articles wrote that a major sectarian group had offered to discard all its sectarian activities and publicly announce that no one would raise slogans against other sects from its platform.

“Without making comprises over killings and violence, the State should devise a comprehensive reintegration strategy to disconnect sect-based groups from militancy,” Rana told The News.

He said the government should take advantage of such offers of reintegration into mainstream politics and weaken the appeal towards militancy in the country.

However, for some analysts and law enforcement officials, it is still early to believe that the ASWJ had actually decided to mend its ways and would distance itself from sectarianism.

A senior intelligence official who monitors sectarian groups in Karachi said sect-based politics was an old phenomenon in Pakistan, and religious parties representing the Deobandi, Barelvi and Shia schools of thought, showed their electoral strength in select constituencies by participating in polls.

“We don’t have any objections over their politics, but we are concerned over sect-based violence and killings,” he told The News.

He added that interrogation reports of most Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorists showed that they were recruited through the ASWJ.

Rapprochement

For reintegration into mainstream politics, the ASWJ has decided to use its political front, the Pakistan Rah-e-Haq Party, a political party registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan, and form an alliance with the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam-Fazl, the most powerful religious party in the parliament.

The JUI-F has never had close ties with the ASWJ and maintained a more realistic approach towards sectarianism. Even in the 2013 general polls, the JUI-F did not bow to pressure from the clerics of key seminaries to withdraw its candidate for the PS-128 in favour of the ASWJ to facilitate the victory of Farooqi, who lost the election with a margin of a mere 202 votes to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

However, the ASWJ broke the ice in December last year by sending its leader Masroor Nawaz Jhangvi, who had won the Jhang PP-78 by-polls, to the JUI-F.

After Jhangvi joined the JUI-F, top ASWJ leaders including Farooqi have met the party’s chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman several times.

Farooqi too is satisfied by the JUI-F’s response. “The alliance between the two parties could help us win seats in Punjab and Sindh, besides keeping the JUI-F’s position stable in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan,” he added.

The ASWJ chief said that he would contest the election for Karachi’s PS-128 constituency and hoped that by forming an alliance his party could win four or five provincial assembly seats in the city.