Daily Times

Afghanistan is a country that has been plagued with war and violence for a long time. News of attacks and blasts in Afghanistan has become so frequent that hardly any attention is paid to them. While this is unfortunate to say the least, it shows how when violence becomes banal it stops eliciting a strong reaction. However, this should not be used as a pretext to not empathise with the Afghan people as they live through these extremely difficult times on a regular basis, and have to endure the insecurity that comes from this uncertainty. The suicide attack in Kabul on Saturday is a shameless example of sectarian targeting on a peaceful group of protestors. Chanting slogans of equal treatment and demanding that a multimillion dollar power line pass through their deprived province, Bamiyan, these Hazara Shias did not know their protest would be met with such an abhorrent act of violence. The suicide attack left 80 and wounded 231 others, and it goes to show the extent to which violence against the Hazara Shias is perpetrated. The responsibility of this ethnic-sectarian attack has been accepted by ISIS, and this is cause for concern as the group is making inroads into the unstable country.

Hazara Shias are an ethnic-religious group that has been facing persecution in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Being the victim of Sunni-Shia violence, Hazaras have been targeted by terrorist groups in Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is indeed unfortunate that acts of violence against Hazaras continue to this day, and they are safe in neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan. The fuel behind this hatred and violence is provided by the dialectic of purification that Islamist extremists espouse. In their drive to supposedly purge their religion from heresy and unorthodox denominations, religious extremists tend to target other Muslims sects. Hence it is no surprise that Muslims are the biggest targets of militant Muslim extremists.

While it is true that it is not just big terrorist organisations such as the Taliban and ISIS who engage in sectarian violence as there is a certain degree of bigotry and intolerance within Muslim communities too, nevertheless, it cannot be denied that these big terrorist organisations engage in sectarian killings on the widest scale, and in the most brutal manner. The immediate goal thus needs to be an effective elimination of these organisations. However, such a measure would be piecemeal if a strong indigenous state structure is not propped in these areas that would restrict the space for these extremists to thrive on. Afghanistan is a case in point as decades of war with ensuing instability and deprivation has made it a hotbed of militant extremist. It is no wonder then that ISIS is then trying to make its presence known in the region.

On a much broader level it needs to be realised that the ideological war between the conservative Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and revolutionary Shia Iran has engendered sectarian tensions throughout the Muslim world. Their patronage for institutions and groups sharing their sectarian beliefs coupled with their penchant for proxy warfare has caused instability and given rise to conflict and instability in certain countries. Hence, while western military interventions are partly to blame for this violence, Muslim countries themselves have also played their role in creating discord and instability. And this is the part where policies have to be revised and restructured so that this flame of sectarian violence can effectively be extinguished.*