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Pakistani Shia in Syria: Blowback Ahead for a Nuclear State?
Iran is recruiting Pakistani Shia fighters for combat in Syria, according to Beirut’s Daily Star:
For years, websites linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have posted articles eulogizing Shiite fighters who die in Syria. But two men heralded last month for dying to defend a shrine near Damascus were different from most martyrs given such treatment in the past: They were Pakistanis.The men were part of the Zeinabiyoun, a unit of Pakistani fighters named for a granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammad buried in the shrine, the latest contingent in an Iranian drive to recruit Shiites from the region to fight in Syria….
While there has been no official announcement of their total numbers, a regional source familiar with the issue said there were hundreds of Pakistanis fighting in Syria…Although the vast majority of Pakistanis are Sunnis, the country is home to millions of Shiites, making it among the biggest Shiite communities in the world…
According to the State Department, 25 percent of Pakistan’s population is Shia, although other estimates vary. In April, Radio Free Europe reported that an increasing number of Afghans and Pakistanis killed in the fighting in Syria had been buried in Iran in recent months.
Here’s one reason they’re willing to fight:
One recruitment ad posted on Facebook last week said any physically fit man between 18 and 35 should apply to fight in Syria.
The advertisement offered 45 days of initial military training along with six months of further training in Syria, a salary of 120,000 Pakistani rupees (approximately $1,100) per month and 15 days of holiday every three months.
If the recruit is killed in action, his children’s education will be paid for and the family will be given pilgrimage trips to Iran, Iraq and Syria every year.
Pakistan’s estimated per capita GDP is US$ 818.87 per annum. So that’s a pretty big motivator.
How is it going to play out when these Pakistani Shia fighters start coming home? Not well, I fear. According to Human Rights Watch’s 2014 report on Pakistan,
Sunni militant groups such as the ostensibly banned Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LEJ), an Al-Qaeda affiliate, operate with virtual impunity across Pakistan, as law enforcement officials either turn a blind eye or appear helpless to prevent attacks.
In 2013, over 400 members of the Shia Muslim population were killed in targeted attacks that took place across Pakistan. In Balochistan province, at least 200 Shias, mostly from the Hazara community, were killed in and around the provincial capital, Quetta. In January, a suicide bomb killed 96 Hazaras and injured at least 150. In February, at least 84 were killed and over 160 injured when a bomb exploded in a vegetable market in Quetta’s Hazara town. The LEJ claimed responsibility for both attacks. In March, at least 47 Shias were killed and 135 injured in the port city of Karachi when a Shia-majority neighborhood was targeted in a bomb attack. Some 50 apartments and 10 shops were destroyed. Throughout the year, dozens of other Shia across Pakistan were targeted and killed.
The Jinnah Institute, a reputable Islamabad-based think tank, notes the massive rise in anti-Shia violence since 2012:
The sustained campaign of violence against Pakistan’s Shia community continues unabated. The overall number of bomb blasts and targeted attacks have reached unprecedented levels with 1,304 people killed from explosions, and another 601 people falling victim to targeted killings. More worryingly, the scope of the attacks has also widened, according to data gathered by Jinnah Institute. In addition to the long standing sectarian crisis in Karachi and Quetta, there has been an upsurge in anti-Shia violence in Peshawar, Rawalpindi, interior Sindh and southern Punjab. In addition, the number of blasphemy allegations against Shia Pakistanis has increased exponentially. This represents a new and equally troubling reality for the community.
And last year, The Diplomat warned that we were seeing the early warning signs of Shia genocide in Pakistan.
This conflict has been going on for quite some time: In 2007, the Christian Science Monitor estimated that 4,000 people had died in sectarian fighting in Pakistan in the past two decades, 300 in that year alone.
In 2014, Christine Fair, at War on the Rocks, noted that (Sunni) Deobandi militant groups are chiefly responsible for the slaughter, and argued that it would be short-sighted to dismiss this as an internal Pakistani matter:
First, these anti-Shia Deobandi groups have been the organizations to which al-Qaeda has outsourced its attacks in Pakistan, whether against Pakistani or international targets.
Second, these groups have long had a presence in Afghanistan where they have helped erect a Sunni Islamist regime in Afghanistan with Pakistani overt and covert support.
Third, Pakistan’s sectarian terrorists share overlapping membership with those groups that ostensibly focus upon India (e.g. Jaish-e-Mohammad). It is very likely that [the army headquarters in] Rawalpindi would like to woo some of these sectarian killers to battlefields in Afghanistan or India. A terrorist attack in India or against Indian assets in Afghanistan may well be the precipitant of the next Indo-Pakistan crisis. India’s recent general elections hoisted up the notorious Hindu nationalist, Narendra Modi, as India’s prime minister. Modi may be more assertive in dealing with Pakistan-based terrorism aggressive than was the previous prime minister, Manmohan Singh.
The anti-sectarian groups, with their Punjab base, and their track record of successfully hitting high value military and civilian targets and even infiltrating the military, may well be a bigger concern to Washington than they are to either the civilian government in Islamabad or the army headquartered in Rawalpindi.
I don’t agree with her that they’re a bigger concern, but they should be a big concern. And with the high likelihood of armed and trained Shia militants returning to Pakistan over the next decade, stability in what is (so far) the world’s only declared Islamic nuclear state now looks even more shaky than it already was.
This can’t be good news.
Photo credit: Radio Free Europe. Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani (left) with Afghan Alireza Tavasoli, commander of the Fatemiyoun Brigade, who was killed fighting in Syria.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Islamist Terrorism, Religion & Philosophy
And the plot thickens.
Thank you, Zafar.
No, it is not. Thank you for sharing all of this, Z.
Well we decided to let this tire fire just burn itself out because our policy was to not do “stupid things”. Now the fire has spread to the next block, and the wind is carrying embers all over town, its good to know the gun powder factory isn’t too far away.
Now I though the Pakistanis where mostly Sunni? And I don’t recall hearing much about their stance towards Syria. Do you think they will become more proactive about this now? What are their relations with Iran. I can’t imagine they are too good, but I can’t recall hearing they are too bad either, but then again I don’t know much about either country.
Pakistan is already dangerous, it has been dangerous for quite some time. That is India’s concern not ours.
Pakistani jihadis, Iranian jihadis, Syrian jihadis on a grand strategy level there may be some value to such distinctions. On a tactical level these are simply new targets, the nationality counts for nothing they are simply enemies.
Wiki ambiguous:
The CIA factbook says:
Wrt:
A bit late, don’t you think?
The empowerment of Sunni right wing groups in Pakistan (Lashkar etc.) grew out of the whole “holy war” against the Soviets in Afghanistan after the Iranian Revolution, backed by….anyway, you know the rest.
If you allow the cliche – it’s easier to get on a tiger than to get off one safely.
Mood: sour.
With Zafar’s dispatches and news analysis, who needs Foreign Policy magazine? Another fine job, Z, and thanks.
A new York based advocacy group used to buy full page ads in The New York Times denouncing the Pakistani atomic program with the headlines and subheads taking up most of the page:
A ROGUE ARMY
With Its Finger on
the Nuclear Button!
Of course, the fact that the ad’s sponsor was an Indian-American group did not diminish the truth of the ad.
Zafar, thanks for this. Hope you don’t mind that I edited this a little bit to include other information I’ve noticed about this, and I changed the links so that they’re pointing to the original sources rather Wikipedia and Press TV. (While PressTV seem to have reported this accurately, they’re an Iranian propaganda mouthpiece, so I’d never use them as a source). You may find the links to the original documents very interesting. To anyone confused by the history and complexity of this, they may be helpful.
PS: I think the source for the per-cap GDP figure to which I changed it is more accurate, but if I’m wrong, I defer to you.
And then we agreed to release $100 Billion to the mullahs to finance these recruitment efforts over the next decade, which might be the stupidest decision we’ve made since 2003.
Writing and reading that “we” is difficult, frankly, and sad.
Not at all – it’s improved.
Yes, it is always infinitely surprising how hard it is to trigger a “holy war” amongst the non-infidels, members of that ‘religion of peace’, Islam. Amazing the CIA could pull it off….again…..and again….and again.
PS. Good post, Zafar.
Let’s raise the bar just sliiightly and say we only get a gold star if it doesn’t come back to bite us in the [CoC]. This time.
Thank you.
W.r.t. the photo at the top, there was a post here not too long ago that noted the large number of obituaries that included a photo of the deceased with Gen. Soleimani.
Ditto.
Great job, Zafar. I feel like I should put up a map with special colored pins to indicate where all the strife is in the world. But the map would be impossible to read. It would just be a sea of colored pins.