Among the Allies
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THE JAMIAT ULEMA-E-ISLAM (JUI) is one of Pakistan's most radical and powerful religious parties, seeking to purify Islam of Western influences. The JUI spawned the Taliban, and supported it both before and after it took over the Afghan government.
Walking to the JUI offices in the old section of Quetta, I passed by a group of children tossing a tennis ball. The ball would bounce into the open sewage canals on both sides of the street and one of the kids would reach in and fish it out, squeezing it between his hands to drain the sewage water out. The party office was adorned with the JUI's black-and-white-striped flag and images of machine guns. Posters showed blood and an American hand holding Musharraf's hand while plunging a knife into Pakistan. Another poster showed an armed mujahid. It read, "Wherever Muslims are killed, America is responsible." Nur Muhamad, who led the JUI in Balochistan, was seated outside on a mat. A member of the National Assembly, he wore a white turban with a white shalwar kameez and a long white beard. His eyes were gentle and sad, his fingers thin and manicured. I was led into a separate room where we sat down on thin mattresses, leaning against stale pillows. We were served sweet tea in short bowls.
"We want an Islami Nizam," or Islamic system, he told me. "A Muslim country needs a Muslim government." The Koran would be the law, and every decision would be made in accordance with its teachings. The government would be composed of Islamic scholars. There had never been a government like this, he said. Had the Taliban not been one? I asked. No, he said. "The government in Afghanistan came to power by jihad, and we want to elect the government." Nur Muhamad's party was attempting to pass a Shariah bill instituting Koranic law through the provincial assembly. They controlled the North West Frontier Province and, in what some Pakistanis called "Talibanization," had implemented such a bill there. Already in Balochistan, stores selling American and Indian movies were being attacked and movie posters torn down. People playing music in public were harassed. "Our people are very angry at the U.S. government," Muhamad said. "Musharraf is following Bush. He is an agent of the U.S. government." During the crackdown on madrasas, he told me, "the government arrested girls and boys and injured them. The Bush government has a plan to arrest all students of Islam so that people will be scared to follow Islam."
The next day, a large swath of Quetta shut down as the town's Shia residents buried a shopkeeper named Anwar Abidi, who had been shot by a man on a motorcycle as he was walking home. Hundreds of police guarded the streets and stood atop the mosque walls. All the shops were closed.
The imam of the mosque where the funeral was held, Alama Maqsud Ali Domki, wore a white turban and a black cloak over a brown robe. He said sectarian killings had become commonplace over the past 25 years. Sunni scholars "give orders to kill Shias," he said, adding that in this they were supported by the Pakistani right wing and Al Qaeda, "as well as colonial powers like Israel." He said the courts never convict the attackers and complained that there were still many Taliban living in Quetta's Pushtun areas. Most people, including the police, seemed to agree that extremist Sunni parties banned by Musharraf were responsible for the killings.
When I returned to my hotel for lunch, a well-dressed man was standing alone in the restaurant entrance. He asked the waiter to take several pictures as he stood stiffly and without expression. The background was me. After lunch, when our car pulled out, I saw the same man hop on a motorcycle and follow us around town from a distance. Whenever our car stopped, the motorcycle would continue on a bit and wait, pulling back into traffic when we passed.
That day I visited Tahir Muhammad Khan, the former chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and a government minister in the 1970s. He was a lawyer by profession as well as an amateur historian. I mentioned that I had just returned from the Shia funeral. There had been three sectarian killings in the last three months, he said, and I asked to what he attributed them. "The system is responsible," he said. "You, the Americans, you created these problems for us. You gave us the money, the weapons, the Arabs." Khan blamed the sectarian killings on the culture that had resulted from the Afghan jihad, which had drawn thousands of young radicals from the Gulf to the region. "People from petrodollar countries encouraged Afghans to become more conservative," he said. "They wanted to make them as primitive as possible. The British, America, and Israel also did this. Mullah rule came to Iran, so the United States wanted to use the Arabs against Iran." Khan, himself a secular Sunni, explained that Shia Islam tended to be more democratic than other forms of Islam, and that the autocratic Sunni regimes feared this—"the idea was that if Shia rule spreads, many crowns will fall"—and so they promoted anti-Shiism. "Today you are reaping what you have been sowing. Pakistan was a liberal society. We had openness, music, a culture of dance." All this changed in 1979, he said, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the jihad began. Now, Pakistani culture was ruined. "We have 18 religious television channels," he complained. "We have been preaching jihad for 30 years."
Musharraf's government was only making cosmetic changes, he said. "Musharraf is a good stooge for you. He wants to preserve the status quo. The army thinks it can finish the mullahs and nationalists." Yet, he noted, the military had helped arm the sectarian groups to begin with, to use them as proxies in Kashmir and Afghanistan and against the domestic opposition. Khan blamed the local culture for not respecting the individual. "Going back to the Mughal era," he said, "the citizen was reduced to the size of an ant. We are flies, small flies. Whoever has a gun is a warlord, and the army is the most organized warlord in Pakistan. Islamabad is ruling strictly by the gun, and this is the reaction to it." Wasn't he scared of being so vocal in his criticism? I asked. "It can happen at any time," he shrugged. "When you live in a primitive society, death can come at any time."
That night at dinner, the man from the newspaper stands and clothing shop was sitting in my hotel's lobby with his driver. I walked up and invited them to dinner. The well-dressed man laughed in nervous denial while the driver glared at me. I told them I would not be leaving the hotel until 10 the following morning and wished them a good night. In the morning I was awakened by a phone call. "Mr. Rosen Nir," said a man in good English but with a strong accent. "I'm calling to inform you that people are after you. We know exactly what you are doing, and if you do not leave the area, the consequences will be like Daniel Pearl."
