Osama and his Shi'ite nemesis(U.S.'s unlikely ally)

CHENNAI - The Shi'ites of Pakistan and Afghanistan have a long memory for the insults and brutalities inflicted against them. It now appears they're on the hunt for their sworn enemies, and Osama bin Laden is among them.

That might be because they haven't forgotten what he did to them in 1988. It was then that hundreds of Shi'ites of the Northern Areas (NA - Gilgit and Baltistan) of Pakistan, known before 1947 as the Northern Areas of Jammu and Kashmir, were massacred after a demand raised by them for the creation of an autonomous Shi'ite state called Karakoram, consisting of the Shi'ite majority areas of the NA, Punjab and the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). Military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq called in bin Laden, then living in Peshawar, and his Sunni tribal hordes to carry out the massacre.

To avenge these deaths, a Shi'ite airman is believed to have caused an explosion on board the aircraft in which Zia was travelling from Bahawalpur to Islamabad in August 1988. This was followed in 1991 by the assassination in Peshawar of Lieutenant-General Fazle Haq, a retired army officer, close to Zia and hated by the Shi'ites because of his suspected role in the assassination of a respected Shi'ite leader.

The Taliban rule in Afghanistan from 1994 to October 2001, particularly after it captured Kabul in September 1996, saw the large-scale massacre of Shi'ites belonging to the Hazara tribe. These strikes were carried out by al-Qaeda as well as Pakistan's Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and its militant wing, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ).

Angered over this, the Shi'ite community refrained from participating in large numbers in the anti-US demonstrations that were organized in different parts of Pakistan by the Sunni religious organizations to protest the US military strikes against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001.

Since the beginning of 2003, there have been indications that sections of the Shi'ite community have been doing their own hunt for bin Laden and his No 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri. It was reported that the arrest at Rawalpindi, Pakistan in March 2003 of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who had allegedly orchestrated the September 11 terrorist strikes in the United States, was made possible by intelligence provided by some Shi'ites in Quetta, Balochistan province, where Khalid was living before fleeing to Rawalpindi.

After hearing these reports, the SSP and the LEJ, both members of bin Laden's International Islamic Front, retaliated by massacring a large number of Hazara Shi'ites in the Quetta area in July 2003. This was followed by many anti-Shi'ite incidents in Karachi and other parts of Pakistan.

The Shi'ites struck back by helping the Pakistani authorities arrest Massob Arooshi, described as Khalid's nephew, on June 13 this year following an unsuccessful attempt to kill the corps commander of Karachi on June 10. Arooshi was arrested at the house of one Abbas Khan, a former divisional engineer of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited, and reportedly the father of Javed Abbas, a serving deputy superintendent of police of Sindh.

According to the Daily Times, the prestigious Lahore daily, a Shi'ite cleric from Gilgit working in Karachi tipped off the police about Arooshi's presence in the house of Abbas Khan. The paper said it was another Shi'ite cleric who had tipped off the police in March last year about Khalid's presence in Rawalpindi.

Arooshi's arrest led to the arrest on July 12 of 25-year-old Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a Pakistani national described as an al-Qaeda computer expert; the arrest on July 25 at the home of an LEJ member in Punjab of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian national born in Zanzibar and wanted by the US's Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with the explosions near the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998, and his Uzbeck wife; the arrest on August 6 of Qari Saifullah Akhtar, the amir of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and his subsequent deportation to Pakistan; and the death in an alleged encounter at Nawabshah in Sindh on September 26 of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, alias Mansur Hasnain, who, according to Pakistani authorities, was the mastermind behind two abortive attempts to kill President General Pervez Musharraf last December and in the kidnapping and murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.

The SSP and the LEJ once again sought revenge against the Shi'ites through a suicide bombing at a Shi'ite place of worship in Punjab on October 1, resulting in the death of 30 Shi'ites. The Shi'ites retaliated on October 7 with a cab-bomb attack that killed 40 Sunnis near a religious function organized in Punjab by Sunni members of the SSP and the LEJ. The function marked the first anniversary of the death of Azam Tariq, the former head of the SSP, who was assassinated last year allegedly by a Shi'ite gunman in Islamabad.

Azam Tariq was close to Musharraf, who had the cases pending against him under the Anti-Terrorism Act withdrawn, enabling him to contest and win the October 2002 National Assembly elections. The SSP retaliated against the October 7 attack by causing an explosion in a Shi'ite place of worship at Lahore on October 10, killing four Shi'ites.

And so it goes; attack and revenge. And so it will go on, until the Shi'ites of Pakistan and Afghanistan have smoked out bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and Mullah Mohammad Omar, the amir of the Taliban, and dispatched them to their maker or, worse still, to the Americans at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The Shi'ites have a long memory for the insults and brutalities inflicted against them, as Zia, Fazle Haq, Khalid, Amjad Farooqi and many others have learned, at great cost. They hunt relentlessly for their suppressors and for those who massacred their near and dear ones - no matter the price.

They have not forgotten what bin Laden, at Zia's insistence, did to them in Gilgit in 1988. They have not forgotten what bin Laden, the Taliban and al-Zawahiri did to them in Central Afghanistan. They have not forgotten the role of the SSP and the LEJ in the massacre of the Shi'ites in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

They are on the hunt for their sworn enemies. They are unlikely to rest until they get them. They are doing this not because of any love for the US or Musharraf, but to avenge the deaths of their near and dear ones at the hands of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Unlike Iran, which is allegedly not cooperating with the United States in its hunt for the dregs of al-Qaeda, the Shi'ites of Pakistan have mounted their own hunt for bin Laden and his cohorts. It is not a coordinated operation with the US or Pakistan. It is an independent operation in parallel, whose objective is not to make the world safe for the Americans, but to avenge the deaths of their brothers and sisters and to make the world safe for the Shi'ites. No amount of brutality and retaliatory killings by the SSP and the LEJ will deter them from this.

If bin Laden is still alive, don't be surprised if his greatest nemesis proves to be the Shi'ites of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

B Raman is a retired additional secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, government of India, New Delhi, and currently director of the Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai and distinguished fellow and convenor at the Chennai chapter of the Observer Research Foundation. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com.

OK, I can't resist, so I am sorry in Advance...

Sounds like UBL may be standing knee deep in Shiite.

An article like this, while interesting, kind of rings hollow after he's been allegedly wandering the countryside as the world's most wanted man for three years.

You may read about the Shia fight against the Sunnis here http://www.shianews.com/hi/articles/education/0000216.php

"Some beliefs of the Sipah e Sahaba and Lashkar e Jhangavi

By Fayaz Ahmad

Mullah Azam Tariq, chief of Wahabi terrorist group Sipah e Sahaba
Sipah e Sahab (better known as Sipah e Yazeed)and Lashkar e Jhangavi are two Deobandi (Wahabi) terrorist groups who have been killing Shia and Sunni Muslims in Pakistan as they find their beliefs to be 'unislamic'. Here are a few basic beliefs of these terrorists. Now you decide if the Deobandi beliefs of these filthy offsprings of Hinda have anything to do with Islam."

Check as well the other pages at the site http://www.shianews.com/

8	“If bin Laden is still alive, don't be surprised if his greatest nemesis proves to be the Shi'ites of Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

This theory runs counter to the intelligence reports that point to the Iranian Shi'ites who provide shelter, sanctuary and protection (and probably much more) to al-Qa'ida and Osama bin Laden's own family.

--Boot Hill

I guess that it is just a subset of the Iranian Shia, i.e. some of those connected to the ruling Mullahs, that are giving these Sunnis support.

The average Shia follower detest the Wahhabis. This is true in Iran as well.

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