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Pakistani Cities Hit By Riots After Killing Of Muslim Leader
Independent (UK) ^ | 10-8-2003 | Phil Reeves

Posted on 10/07/2003 4:02:46 PM PDT by blam

Pakistani cities hit by riots after killing of Muslim leader

By Phil Reeves, Asia Correspondent
08 October 2003

Violence erupted in two Pakistani cities yesterday, compounding the woes of Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler, just as he is under intensifying pressure from his neighbours and Washington to crush Islamist militancy.

The general's security forces were on alert last night amid fears of an explosion of bloodshed between Sunni and Shia Muslims after the assassination of Azam Tariq, the leader of a banned Sunni group and parliamentarian, on Monday.

Mr Tariq's supporters, many of them religious students, rampaged through the usually quiet capital, Islamabad, smashing cars and shop windows, and setting fire to a Shia shrine and one of the city's few cinemas. They also ran amok in Mr Tariq's stronghold, the city of Jhang in Punjab, where his body was flown by helicopter for burial. They burnt down a Shia mosque and destroyed a petrol station. Some 25,000 people gathered in a sports stadium to mourn his death; Shots rang out in the crowd.

Pursued by police firing shots into the air, rioters in both cities chanted anti-Shia slogans and vowed to avenge the death of the Sunni leader, killed when gunmen opened fire on his car in Islamabad, which also left his driver and three bodyguards dead.

The assassination occurred on the same day that General Musharraf was assuring his latest foreign visitor, Richard Armitage, the US Deputy Secretary of State, that Pakistan was doing everything possible to contain Islamist militancy in the name of what Washington calls its "war on terror".

The Americans want the general to do more to stifle Islamist groups who are dispatching guerrillas from Pakistan's remote western borders to mount attacks in Afghanistan on US troops and against the soldiers and police representing the threadbare US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai.

There is pressure, too, to clamp down on militants infiltrating from north-east Pakistan into Indian-administered Kashmir, where hundreds are dying every month in battles between anti-India Islamists and security forces.

Neither task is easy, given the support enjoyed by the religious parties, particularly in the borderlands, the unpopularity of the Americans, even among Pakistan's powerful intelligence apparatus, and the strong national sentiments over Kashmir.

But the general's problems do not stop there: Sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias has led to many hundreds of deaths in recent years. Worries abound that another bout of bloodletting is imminent.

Tension has been building for weeks. This summer has seen several attacks, including the death of more than 50 worshippers in Quetta when suspected Sunni gunmen sprayed a Shia mosque. On Friday, six Shias were killed in an attack on a bus in Karachi.

By nightfall yesterday, the death toll from the day's unrest stood at four, of whom three were soldiers killed when their vehicle crashed en route to contain the trouble in Jhang.

Mr Tariq was the leader of the Sipah-e-Sahaba (Guardians of the Friends of the Prophets), a group which Pakistan believes is responsible for more than 400 sectarian killings. In an e-mail to journalists yesterday, a previously unknown Shia group claimed responsibility for killing him.

After 11 September, 2001, General Musharraf banned Mr Tariq's organisation, which has ties to the Taliban, and he was thrown in prison. In last year's elections, Mr Tariq contested a seat in Pakistan's largely powerless parliament from his prison cell and was elected.

Shortly afterwards, he was released on the orders of a court in Lahore which ruled that the state did not hold enough evidence to detain him. He became a supporter of Zafarullah Khan Jamali, General Musharraf's prime minister.

The violence in Islamabad day occurred after thousands of his supporters attended prayers where they vowed to take up Mr Tariq's struggle against the minority Shias.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: azamtariq; cities; killing; leader; muslim; pakistani; riots; southasia; tariq

1 posted on 10/07/2003 4:02:54 PM PDT by blam
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To: blam
You sow hate, you reap hate....
At least these lunatics are "eating in".....and destroying one another, rather that Hindus or Christians....

Religion of Peace?
Sure it is...

Semper Fi
2 posted on 10/07/2003 5:10:33 PM PDT by river rat (War works......It brings Peace... Give war a chance to destroy Jihadists...)
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To: All
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3 posted on 10/07/2003 5:10:41 PM PDT by Support Free Republic (Your support keeps Free Republic going strong!)
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To: blam
"Mr Tariq's supporters, many of them religious students, rampaged through the usually quiet capital,
Islamabad, smashing cars and shop windows, and setting fire to a Shia shrine and one of the city's few
cinemas. They also ran amok in Mr Tariq's stronghold, the city of Jhang in Punjab, where his body was
flown by helicopter for burial. They burnt down a Shia mosque and destroyed a petrol station. Some
25,000 people gathered in a sports stadium to mourn his death; Shots rang out in the crowd."

Hey, just keep burning those mosques down boys.
You're off to a good start.

4 posted on 10/07/2003 5:45:59 PM PDT by StormEye
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To: blam
We'd better hope Musharraf's successful, otherwise things are going to get very...interesting.


And no that's not a good thing.
5 posted on 10/07/2003 9:51:55 PM PDT by Valin (I have my own little world, but it's okay - they know me here.)
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To: blam
Another potential split in Pak, in addition to the much ballyhooed secular/jihadi kabuki dance so successfully proogated by Musharaff and swallowed whole by America is the Sunni/Shia split.

Osama ethnically cleansed out Northern Pakistan of Shias to help out the Pakistani militay and create an nice enclave for himself.
~SNIP~
2. Because they have not forgotten what happened in 1988. Faced with a revolt by the Shias of the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), under occupation by the Pakistan Army, for a separate Shia State called the Karakoram State, the Pakistan Army transported Osama bin Laden's tribal hordes into Gilgit and let them loose on the Shias. They went around massacring hundreds of Shias--innocent men, women and children.

They have many grounds for anger against Azam Tariq--- for the role of the SSP in the massacre of hundreds of Hazara Shias of Afghanistan before 9/11 because they were sympathetic to the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan; for its proximity to bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF); for its targetted killing of dozens of Shia doctors and other intellectuals in Karachi since Musharraf came to power in October,1999; and for its massacre of the Gilgitis of Karachi and the Hazara and other Shias of Balochistan since the beginning of this year.


Paksitan - The Shia Anger

http://www.saag.org/papers9/paper810.html

The guy murdered was a real scumbag; chief of a group SiphaSabha "banned" by Musharraf.

Let's see how long this putz hangs on.

The US has all its eggs in Musharraf's basket.

6 posted on 10/08/2003 11:10:06 AM PDT by swarthyguy
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To: river rat
Pakistan denies visa to Indian Hindu pilgrims
Saurabh Shukla
New Delhi, October 7

The Indo-Pak diplomatic tussle continues to plague people-to-people contacts between the two countries.

After having blocked the entry of an Indian business delegation, General Pervez Musharraf's military regime has stalled the visit by a group of Hindu pilgrims to Pakistan. The move comes in the wake of the recent spat between the two countries at the UN General Assembly session in New York.

Sources said Islamabad has not cleared the visas of 53 Indian pilgrims from Shadani Durbar in Indore, who wanted to go for annual pilgrimage to Hyat Pitafay shrine in Sindh province of Pakistan. The group was informed that the visa clearance has not been received from Islamabad. The group was to depart from Delhi on Monday.

Same ole Chicken-s**t s**t

7 posted on 10/08/2003 11:12:22 AM PDT by swarthyguy
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To: blam
Musharref is a dead man walking. His corpse will eventually be dragged through the streets of Islamabad by Tariq's thugs. India will probably make a pre-emptive move to throw Pakistan back on its nuclear butt and we will be compelled to sweep into Northwestern Pakistan to do some cleanup(and should).
8 posted on 10/08/2003 11:16:31 AM PDT by TADSLOS (Right Wing Infidel since 1954)
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