Sectarian violence in Pakistan refers to violence directed against people and places in Pakistan motivated by antagonism toward the target's religious sect. As many as 4,000 Shia (a Muslim minority group) were estimated to have been killed in sectarian attacks in Pakistan between 1987 and 2007, and thousands more Shia have been killed by Salafi extremists from 2008 to 2014, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Sunnis (the largest Muslim sect), Sufis and Barelvis have also suffered from some sectarian violence, with attacks on religious shrines killing hundreds of (usually Bareelvi) worshippers by more orthodox Sunnis who believe shrine culture to be idolatrous, and some Deobandi leaders have also been assassinated. Pakistani minority religious groups, including Hindus, Ahmadis, and Christians, had faced "unprecedented insecurity and persecution" from 2011 to 2012, according to Human Rights Watch. One significant aspect of the attacks in Pakistan was that militants/insurgents often target their victims' places of worship during prayers or religious services in order to maximize fatalities and to "emphasize the religious dimensions of their attack".
Among those blamed for the sectarian violence in the country are mainly Deobandi militant groups, such as the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and also the Jundallah (an affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan "has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks" on Shia according to Human Rights Watch. In recent years the Barelvi group Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan has been credited with instigating much violence. Salafi militant groups (such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda) are also blamed for attacks on Shias, Barelvis and Sufis. As of 2022, violent sectarian groups have continued to expand their influence across the country, with less violence from SSP and LeJ, but more from Tehreek-e-Labbaik and the Islamic State, and limited response from the state to counter their large-scale attacks. Sectarian violence killed at least 130 people in the northwest of Pakistan over just ten days in November 2024
Terminology
Sectarian refers to sects or religious groups in this article. Although "Sectarianism" can refer to conflict between ethnic, political and cultural as well as religious groups, and there is sometimes an overlap between religious and ethnic groups and fights (according to the U.S. Library of Congress, violence is often based on "different social, political, and economic statuses that correlate with religion" rather than religious doctrine; the Pakistan military, for example, has allegedly used the Deobandi sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi "as a proxy to counter Baloch separatist militants"), in the context of Pakistan, sectarian usually refers to sects or religious groups. (For ethnic and regional separatist violence in Pakistan, see Separatist movements of Pakistan.)
Sectarian violence is not exclusively non-governmental. In literature on "sectarian groups" in Pakistan, the groups referred to are non-governmental, but governmental actors have been accused of sectarianism and aiding sectarian groups. Police have been accused of refusing to prevent sectarian acts, of refusing "to charge persons who commit them", and government officials have been accused of helping the formation of sectarian terror groups. (For example General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq indirectly helped to create Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan) though this doesn't mean that SSP didn't attempt to kill other government officials (Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab police investigating SSP crimes) some years later. And if sectarian violence includes forced disappearances, then police in Pakistan have also been accused of sectarian violence.
Sectarian violence is often, but not necessarily, terroristic (attacks on unarmed civilians) in Pakistan, but there have also been violence between armed sectarians.
Religions and sects
Muslims
Approximately 97% of Pakistanis are either Sunni or Shia Muslims, the two largest religious groups in Pakistan. In Pakistan as worldwide, Shia Islam constitutes a minority and Sunni a majority of Muslims.
Estimates of the size of these groups vary—adherents of Shi'a Islam in Pakistan are thought to make up between 15 and 20% of the population, (roughly 30 million), and Sunni between 70 and 75%, (according experts such as the Library of Congress, Pew Research Center, Oxford University, the CIA World Factbook). While the overwhelming majority of Shia in Pakistan (and around the world) are "Twelver" Shia (aka Asna-e-Ashari), there are smaller Shi'i sects, such as varieties of Ismaili.
Barelvi and Deobandi Sunni Muslims
There are two major Sunni sects in Pakistan, the Barelvi movement and Deobandi movement. Statistics regarding Pakistan's sects and sub-sects have been called "tenuous", but estimates of the sizes of the two groups give a slight majority of Pakistan's population to followers of the Barelvi school, while 15–25% are thought to follow the Deobandi school of jurisprudence.
Smaller Muslim sects
Ahmadis
Somewhere between 0.22% (official figure) and 2.2% (highest estimate) of Pakistan's population follow the Ahmadiyya sect,
who, though they consider themselves Muslims, were officially designated 'non-Muslims' by a 1974 constitutional amendment, due to pressure from Sunni revivalist and extremist groups.
Zikris
Like Ahmadis, and unlike orthodox Muslims, Zikris believe the Mahdi of Islam has already arrived. Zikris, an Islamic sect of less than one million, originally from the sparsely populated and poor region of Balochistan in western Pakistan, have been described as "a minority Muslim group", but also a "Muslim offshoot sect", or a "semi-Muslim". Like orthodox Muslims, Zikri revere the Quran, but unlike them they believe the Mahdi has already arrived and do not follow the same ritual prayer practices.
Non-Muslim groups
Hinduism is the second largest religion in Pakistan after Islam, according to the 1998 census. Non-Muslim religions also include Christianity, which has 2,800,000 (1.6%) adherents as of 2005. The Bahá'í Faith claims 30,000, followed by Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis, each claiming 20,000 adherents, and a very small community of Jains.
History and general causes
Causes
Some of the general reasons offered for sectarian violence in Pakistan, include
- Socio-economic causes of general instability:
- socio-economic pressure from having one of the world's highest birthrates, but a scarcity of both water and energy supplies;
- a multitude of ethnolinguistic groups – "Pashtun, Baloch, Punjabi, Sindhi, Seraiki and Muhajir" – with disputes over the sharing of scarce resources, leading to increased ethnic/regional tensions as "groups began to assert their cultural and nationalist agendas", (an example being the concentration of power and resources in the northeastern part of the country and domination of the military by Punjabis and Pashtuns, while the poor but energy-rich southwestern Baluchistan province has a strong separatist movement). which spilled over into religious disputes (it's been suggested, for example, that "a religious or sect-based conflict" is a way of keeping the Balochis politically divided).
- A crisis of "legitimisation" among successive governments brought on by their failure to achieve "stated developmental agendas" or significant economic growth, making governments "more dependent on Islam as a binding force for society and polity". This was particularly extreme in the case with General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who failed to restore democracy as promised after overthrowing and executing an elected prime minister.
- General Zia's Islamisation policies from 1977 to 1988 where, he attempted to "gain legitimacy" and create an "Islamic polity and society", were based not on some consensus of Pakistani Muslims interpretation of Islam, or even the most popular Sunni school (Barelvi), but on a "more codified and strict" form of Islam from Saudi Arabia (Wahhabi Islam). Zia's Islamic penal code and the "Islamic" textbooks in state schools and colleges were "derived entirely" from one set of sources, the orthodox "classical Sunni-Hanafi" school. "Minor theological debates and cultural differences" among Pakistanis metastasized into "unbridgeable, volatile sectarian divisions".
- Other causes are Pakistan's involvement in the Jihad against Soviets and their allied Marxists in Afghanistan (1979 to 1989) which led to
- The easy and abundant availability of weapons imported to fight the Marxist Afghan government and Soviets; Billions of dollars of US arms and Saudi funds poured into the jihad in Afghanistan and the availability of money, arms and trained fighters overflowing from the jihad in Afghanistan. "Central and southern Punjab, served as a base for ‘mujahideen’ recruits. Most of these ‘mujahideen’ returned to Pakistan after the Russian forces pulled out in the late 1980s, and brought with them a sizeable supply of arms, ammunition and a proclivity for violence. They joined the extremist sectarian outfits and since then, sectarian rivalry was largely expressed through extreme violence."
- One of the outlets for mujahideen after the Soviet forces began to leave Afghanistan (May 1988-February 1989) was Kashmir, where a wave of civil disobedience and protests by the Muslim majority in Kashmir was erupting just as the Soviet forces were leaving Afghanistan (May 1988-February 1989). Committed to help Muslims (which Pakistan believed should have been part of Pakistan to begin with), Pakistan sent in the Jihadis that had trained for Afghan Jihad. New organisations, like Hizbul Mujahideen, were set up, their members were drawn from the ideological spheres of Deobandi seminaries and Jamaat-e-islami.
- The establishment of "a powerful network of militant madarssas", that "combined weapons training with a fundamentalist and violent interpretation of Islam". These were originally set up to train volunteer 'students' - Taliban - for the war in Afghanistan. Now that the Taliban in Afghanistan are victorious, a substantial numbers of these 'students' (as well as their motivators and mentors) are free to turn "their attention to other areas of conflict, including Pakistan itself". and provide sectarian groups with "an endless stream of recruits". Zia's "goals subsequently coalesced with the national security goal of building close linkages with the Afghan Mujahideen after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979".
- Institutions that in theory should keep violence and sectarian in check have been hamstrung.
- judiciary lack independence,
- police were subject to political interference and "inefficient" and "incapable".
- "moderate, secular and democratic" political forces were deprived of "an even playing field".
- International Crisis Group credits continued violence to naive attempts to manipulate and/or co-opt sects.
- After the 9/11 terror attacks, "foreign donors" hoped to "counter Deobandi militants" such as the Taliban, by strengthening what they believed to be peace-loving rival Barelvi and Sufi sects, as an "antidote" to hard-line, anti-Shia, anti-Western Deobandi and Wahhabi Sunni sects. Barelvis and Barelvi leaders had been victims of sectarian violence, but that did not stop the Barelvi groups Labaik and Sunni Ittehad Council from inciting and using violence as they became more powerful. This included supporting the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer by his police bodyguard (a Barelvi) for Taseer's criticism of blasphemy laws and efforts to obtain a pardon for a woman sentenced to death for blasphemy.
- Allowing sectarian groups to contest elections and thereby change their direction away from killing people, towards pleasing constituents and getting reelected, appears to "embolden rather than moderate them". In particular, the Labaik group was allowed by the Election Commission of Pakistan to contest the July 2018 national elections, despite its espousing a hardline sectarianism and acts of inciting violence. During the campaign, a Labaik youth leader shot and wounded Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, an act defended by the head of Labaik. The group also threatened Supreme Court judges with a "horrible end" if they overruled a blasphemy death sentence being appealed, and declared army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa a non-Muslim, calling for mutiny against him.
History
As mentioned above, Islamisation policies of General Zia (from 1977 to 1988) strengthened a strict form of Sunni Islam in Pakistan.
Pakistan aided the Afghan resistance movement (especially starting in the mid-1980s) with weapons through the Pakistani intelligence services, in a program called Operation Cyclone. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the weapons (particularly Kalashnikov assault rifles) did not disappear but were often smuggled into Pakistan by Afghan soldiers in need of money.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the problem of violence was worst was in Karachi and in the province of Sindh.
In the 1990s, the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir sponsored by the Pakistan military, allowed groups such as the SSP and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to "consolidate".
Sectarian strife has evolved over the decades. From approximately 1990 to 2011 Sunni and Shia extremists from their respective groups attacked each other. By 2005, observers complained "administrative and legal action" had "failed to dismantle a well-entrenched and widely spread terror infrastructure". Among other techniques, when an extremist group was banned, it gave itself a new name. Police action, however, decimated the leadership of at least the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi so that by the mid-2010s its sectarian attacks against the Shia declined.
Following this period of "relative peace" a new era of sectarian conflict emerged, with Sunni militants "inspired by al-Qaeda's ideology" (principally followers of the Islamic State) became the main instigators of violence.