Who is behind the new wave of sectarian killings in Karachi?

A new wave of sectarian killings has been witnessed in the city over the past few months, with investigators suspecting the involvement of banned outfits’ militants released on bail or the remaining sleeper cells of banned outfits.

In the past two months, four incidents of killings mainly on sectarian grounds have occurred in various parts of the city. In the latest attack, unidentified assailants killed Muhammad Nadeem Qadri, a Liaquatabad area leader of the proscribed Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, near the Parking Plaza in the Saddar area on the night of February 4.

On January 22, gunmen riding on a motorcycle killed Mohammad Ali Shah, an official of the Karachi Development Authority, while he was travelling in a car near Shahrah-e-Quaideen. Shah was also the Shia Ulema Council’s vice-president.

Two ASWJ members, who were seminary teachers, were wounded in a firing incident near Al-Asif Square in Sohrab Goth on January 18. Assailants targeted the ASWJ workers when they were returning home after attending a party event organised at Lasbela Chowk, according to ASWJ claims.

On January 3, unknown attackers killed Fida Hussain, a shopkeeper, in Korangi’s Zaman Town. MWM leaders claimed that the victim’s son was an office-bearer of the Imamia Students Organisation, a Shia students’ outfit, in the Korangi area.

Talking to The News, Raja Umar Khattab, incharge of the Transnational Terrorists Intelligence Group (TTIG) of the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) Sindh, said on Tuesday the sectarian killings in Karachi had once again started in the middle of 2018 and from time to time an increase in such murders was seen.

The wave began with one or two killings and suddenly it registered an increase, he said. Then, he added. a big target was hit, i.e. a religious scholar, to create uncertainty in the city.

Khattab added that in Karachi sectarian killings first started during the late 90s after such murders occurred in Punjab. Afterwards, several groups, including the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan later renamed Lashker-e-Jhangvi, Sipah Muhammad, Mehdi Force and Bakituallah, were formed.

At that time, a number of activists and religious scholars were killed. This led to comprehensive action by law enforcement agencies, which brought the situation under control.

Furthermore, these groups have links with various militant organizations, including the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Al-Qaeda. They mostly sent their men to these organisations for training in operating heavy arms, target-killing, and making bombs with mechanical devices. The groups had a vast network in Sindh and usually hired teenage boys from Karachi and send them for training purposes, he added.

Khattab said that before the 2013 Karachi operation, the violence spree had hijacked the city where every day target and sectarian killings were reported, but the targeted operation by the police and Rangers against terrorists and criminals they had brought the city to normalcy.

The law enforcers have also arrested terrorists Asif Chotu and Naeem Bukhari and dismantled the group of Syed Muhammad Askari Abidi, due to which a drastic decrease in crimes has been witnessed.

TTIG chief Khattab said it seemed that terrorists who were either released from jail or those terrorists of sleeper cells were behind the recent killing spree. He said the law enforcement agencies had started focusing on the issue and a recent meeting, attended by intelligence agencies’ officials, decided to arrest the culprits. He said that to overcome the issue of sectarian killings they had to focus on schools of thought and the root causes,for which they had to make a strategy and increase the investigation rate, especially in such killing cases. The law enforcers also had to improve investigations, go after facilitators and sympathizers of criminals, and strictly implement the 4th Schedule, he said.

Khattab was of the view that the investigators should also check and stop sources of income or funding of terrorists and unearth people or circles funding such activities. He said they should also keep an eye on foreign funders and for that purpose they had to amend the law.

On a query, Khattab said they should see the withdrawal of US security forces from Afghanistan in a positive and negative way and what Pakistan had to do was to just secure its borders.

After the Zarb-e-Azab operation within the country, the security officials had destroyed safe havens in which sectarian and Jihadi elements and their financers were killed or arrested. Also, training camps and safe places had been destroyed, due to which such elements fled to Afghanistan, while some of their tentacles were present in Pakistan, but due to continuous operations and extra security measures they had failed to operate.

He emphasised that we have to expand our intelligence network and intelligence-sharing networking within the agencies in Pakistan, and to further secure Pakistan they had to work for five more years to completely wipe out these terrorists groups from the country.

Apart from that, the officials also had to check or focus on those terrorists who were arrested and during their trials who were paying the legal fees and security bonds, he said.

He stated that the important thing witnessed in sectarian terrorists was that the surety for bail was surety bonds or cash, which was deposited to expedite the release of terrorists, fled from the country as soon as they obtained bail.