Insight: Pakistani death squads spur desperate voyage to Australia

Wed, Oct 24 21:30 PM EDT 2 of 22 By Matthew Bigg, Matthew Green and James Grubel QUETTA, Pakistan/PUNCAK,Indonesia (Reuters) - It was 3 a.m. when Abid Warasi and his friend clambered into an Indonesian fishing boat, joining 300 other migrants packed into the hold. Only a few days away by sea, Australia seemed tantalizingly close. Six hours into the voyage, the craft overturned. The two teenagers clung to the upturned hull. One by one, survivors lost purchase and drifted away, their dreams swallowed by the warm waters of the Java Sea. "When the boat capsized, the dead bodies came floating above the water," Warasi said, recounting his ordeal in the Indonesian hill town of Puncak, just south of Jakarta. "Our hearts were so sad for them and we were waiting for our own time when we would die." The heroism that would ensure the pair survived 48 hours in the water is not merely testament to the bond of friendship that has united Warasi and Muhammad Muntaziri since their childhoods in the Pakistani city of Quetta. Their determination is also a reflection of the ferocity of the persecution unleashed upon their ethnic Hazara community, who are almost all members of Pakistan's Shi'ite minority. In the past year, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni extremist group, has turned Quetta into a hunting ground. Gunmen shoot Hazaras every few days while leaflets shoved under doorways warn they are infidels deserving of death. Thousands choose to face the ocean's terrors rather than risk an encounter with the death squads stalking their city's streets. "Mothers are selling their jewelry so that their sons can leave Quetta for abroad," said Khaliq Hazara, chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party, a Quetta-based political party. "We are under siege." DETENTION CAMPS The 10,000-km (6,000 miles) route from Quetta to established Hazara communities in the more genteel environs of Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney is just one strand in an ever-shifting web of global migration. But there are few starker examples of the impact troubles in faraway lands can have on domestic politics than Australia, where a growing influx of refugee boats has reignited a polarizing debate over immigration. The government passed a law in August to revive a scheme to send asylum seekers rescued at sea to detention centers on far-flung Pacific islands. Human rights groups condemned the move, saying people could be left languishing in malarial camps for years, isolated from relatives and unable to work. Warasi and Muntaziri's sheer desperation raises questions over how far the measures will discourage men and women whose quest for a new life has echoes of the voyages of European settlers to Australia in the late 18th century. "Every day there were killings," said Warasi, recalling life in Quetta. "We got chicken-hearted, like we were in a cage." A CITY DIVIDED Overshadowed by the forbidding hills that define the wild geography of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, Quetta was once a town where ethnic groups and sects mingled freely. Today, LeJ is offering Hazaras a choice: leave or die. In the neatly swept lanes of the Hazara enclave of Mehrabad, the fear is palpable. LeJ has turned swathes of Quetta into virtual no-go zones for Hazaras, who number perhaps 500,000 of the city's population of about two million. As members of both an ethnic minority and Shi'ites, Hazaras make particularly attractive targets for extremists. "If you went out in the morning you cannot be sure that you'd come back home," said Muhammad Mehdi, who closed his children's' clothing shop in an ethnically mixed market after gunmen went on a shooting spree in April. Like many Hazaras, he is now reluctant to set foot outside Mehrabad. In the cheerfully decorated classrooms of the district's Ummat Public School, ambitious teenage girls fear their terrified parents will not allow them to venture into the city to attend college. "We can be like Mark Zuckerberg, we can be like Bill Gates," said Farheen, 15. "We can show the world that we are talented." A few minutes' drive away, grave-diggers have had to open a new section in the century-old Hazara cemetery to accommodate the rapidly growing number of gunshot and blast victims. Activists say at least 800-1,000 Hazaras have been killed since 1999 and the pace is quickening. More than one hundred have been murdered in and around Quetta since January, according to Human Rights Watch. The state's failure to protect them has fuelled Hazaras's suspicions that elements within the security forces still support LeJ, which was nurtured by intelligence agencies in the 1990s as a proxy force. There are no official figures for the number of Hazaras who have left for Australia, but community leaders say thousands of people like Warasi and Muntaziri have paid people smugglers $10,000-$15,000 to attempt the do-or-die trip. STRUGGLE AT SEA Following the traffickers' instructions, the friends caught buses to Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi, then flights to Jakarta via Malaysia. On the night of Dec 18, 2011, they boarded the fishing boat in the port of Surabaya. Like other migrant ships, it was bound for Christmas Island, a speck of Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. When the boat capsized, Muntaziri held his breath, wriggled through a porthole and broke the surface before finding his friend. After six hours, a fishing boat arrived and 34 people managed to swim to it. When he thought that Muntaziri would not make it, Warasi swam back to the wreck, ready to drown with his friend. "Till we both die, we will help each other," Warasi said. Several boats passed, saw them but did not stop, Muntaziri said. They kept up their spirits by reminiscing about growing up in Quetta, but gradually passengers began to lose their grip on the capsized boat. By the time a coal ferry picked them up, only 13 remained alive. They had spent 48 hours in the water. The pair have since sought shelter at a guest house run by UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. For now, their lives are in limbo as they wait for an immigration process that seems designed to frustrate them. The possibility of risking all on another boat is almost too traumatic to contemplate - but so is the prospect of returning home. Muntaziri, a knowledge-hungry 17-year-old who speaks five languages, said all he wanted was to be safe. "I am the one who has to take care of my family," he said. "That is why I am going to Australia to start a new peaceful life away from the terror." Despite the risks, growing numbers of Pakistanis, Afghans, Sri Lankans and others are attempting the journey. Australia recorded 5,175 boat arrivals in the fiscal year to July 2011, compared with 690 two years earlier. More than 6,000 people have arrived by boat just in the first three months of the fiscal year that began July 1. The passage exacts a heavy toll. About 1,000 people have died en route from Indonesia to Christmas Island since 2001, according to an independent report. In the disaster survived by Warasi and Muntaziri, more than 270 were feared drowned. "PACIFIC SOLUTION" Battling accusations it is soft on immigration, Prime Minister Julia Gillard's Labor government has reactivated a plan to process boat arrivals on Pacific islands, reneging on its earlier opposition to it. The "Pacific Solution" was adopted by Gillard's Conservative predecessor John Howard, whose tough stance helped him win elections in 2001 and 2004. People rescued at sea are sent to detention on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, or the Pacific nation of Nauru. They could spend up to five years in camps with no guarantee of final settlement in Australia. Those granted protection will no longer be able to sponsor their families to join them. The first group of asylum seekers were sent to a tent city in Nauru in mid-September. When fully operating, Nauru will house around 1,500 people, and Manus Island about 600. The policy aims to deter people smugglers by ensuring those who board boats will have no better chance of living in Australia than those who apply through official channels. Survivors argue that many have resorted to the perilous journey precisely because it can take many years to apply for asylum legally, often with scant chance of success. The debate in Australia has largely steered clear of the sort of inflammatory rhetoric seen in the late 1990s, when one lawmaker warned the country risked being swamped by Asians. But not always: The host of a morning television show, Paul Henry, suggested the government whip asylum seekers arriving in Nauru. He later apologized. Early signs suggest the "Pacific Solution" may be having an impact. Two groups of Sri Lankans returned home rather than risk being sent to an offshore camp and Hazaras in Karachi say some are reconsidering plans to start the voyage. "They can't imagine four years in a detention center," said Eltaf Hussain, a student. "Why not commit a crime in Quetta and just be locked in jail?" (James Grubel reported from Canberra; writing by Matthew Green; editing by Bill Tarrant) =============== Pakistan Reels With Violence Against Shiites Declan Walsh/The New York Times Many members of the Hazara Shiite community killed by Sunni extremists are buried in a graveyard in Quetta, Pakistan. By DECLAN WALSH Published: December 3, 2012 110 Comments QUETTA, Pakistan — Calligraphers linger at the gates of an ancient graveyard in this brooding city in western Pakistan, charged with a macabre and increasingly in-demand task: inscribing the tombstones of the latest victims of the sectarian death squads that openly roam these streets. Pakistan’s Sectarian Death Squads Times Topic: Pakistan Student Killed in Melee at Afghan University (November 25, 2012) Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors . Readers’ Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. Read All Comments (110) » For at least a year now, Sunni extremist gunmen have been methodically attacking members of the Hazara community, a Persian-speaking Shiite minority that emigrated here from Afghanistan more than a century ago. The killers strike with chilling abandon, apparently fearless of the law: shop owners are gunned down at their counters, students as they play cricket, pilgrims dragged from buses and executed on the roadside. The latest victim, a mechanic named Hussain Ali, was killed Wednesday, shot inside his workshop. He joined the list of more than 100 Hazaras who have been killed this year, many in broad daylight. As often as not, the gunmen do not even bother to cover their faces. The bloodshed is part of a wider surge in sectarian violence across Pakistan in which at least 375 Shiites have died this year — the worst toll since the 1990s, human rights workers say. But as their graveyard fills, Hazaras say the mystery lies not in the identity of their attackers, who are well known, but in a simpler question: why the Pakistani state cannot — or will not — protect them. “After every killing, there are no arrests,” said Muzaffar Ali Changezi, a retired Hazara engineer. “So if the government is not supporting these killers, it must be at least protecting them. That’s the only way to explain how they operate so openly.” The government, already battling Taliban insurgents, insists it is taking the threat seriously. During the recent Mourning of Muhurram, when Shiites parade through the streets over 10 days, the Interior Ministry imposed stringent security measures such as blocking cellphone signals for up to 12 hours — to try to prevent remote bomb detonations — and banning doubled-up motorcycle riding. Even so, Sunni bombers struck at least five times, killing at least 50 Shiites and wounding several hundred. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the biggest attacks, highlighting an emerging link between that group and traditional sectarian militants that has worried many. Yet the unchecked killings have also raised wider questions about Pakistani society: about the spread of a cancerous sectarian ideology in a public that even just a decade ago seemed more tolerant, and about what might be spurring the growing audacity of the killers, some of whom are believed to have links to the country’s security services. The murders in Quetta, for instance, involve remarkably little mystery. By wide consensus, the gunmen are based in Mastung, a dusty agricultural village 18 miles to the south that is the bustling local hub of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the country’s most notorious sectarian militant group. Like so many Pakistani groups that combine guns with zealotry, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi thrives in a wink-and-nod netherworld: it is officially banned, but its leader, Malik Ishaq, was released from jail last year amid showers of rose petals thrown by supporters. Now Mr. Malik lives openly in southern Punjab Province, protected by armed men who loiter outside his door, allowing him to deliver hate-laced statements to visitors. Shiites are “the greatest infidels on earth,” he told a Reuters reporter last month. In Quetta, his followers are similarly unfettered. In targeting the Hazara — who, with their distinctive Central Asian features, are easy to pick out — Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants block busy highways as they search vehicles for Hazaras and daub walls with hate slogans. “The face is the target,” said Major Nadir Ali, a senior Hazara leader and retired army officer. “They see the face, then they shoot.” In the worst killing this year, militants dragged 26 Hazara men from a bus headed for a religious pilgrimage site in Iran, and executed them in front of their wives. The episode occurred near Mastung. Student Killed in Melee at Afghan University (November 25, 2012) There is a growing sense of siege in the Hazara community here. Shards of glass are still lodged in the head of Waqar Husain, an engineering student who survived a bomb attack on a crowded university bus last June. Four students died in the attack, and four lost their sight. “It changed my view of life in Quetta,” he said. Now largely confined to home, Mr. Hussain is still not safe. Threats come via Facebook and Twitter, he said, through taunting messages about the “Shia kaffir” — infidels. The campaign of fear has forced the Hazara to retreat into ethnic enclaves on the edge of the city. Businesses have moved from the city center to Alamgir Road, a Hazara quarter where discreetly armed men stand watch on street corners. Even the ambulance drivers are armed. One driver cocked his pistol before leading the way to the site of a recent attack. Across the street, the flag of a banned Sunni group fluttered from a shop with graffiti that read: “There is one treatment for Shiites — it is called jihad.” The rattle of attacks is just one of several conflicts plaguing Quetta, a once quiet provincial capital now riven by a range of ethnic fissures and violent intrigues, lending it an air of power-keg tension. Most famously, the city is, or was, home to the “Quetta Shura,” the secretive Afghan Taliban leadership council. But for the Pakistan Army, the main enemy are ethnic Baluch separatists, who killed three soldiers in a bomb attack in central Quetta on Nov. 21. Foreigners are no longer safe, either treated as Western spies by suspicious officials or abducted as part of a soaring trade in kidnapping. Last April the decapitated body of Khalil Dale, a British Red Cross doctor, was found near Quetta, three months after suspected militants abducted him for ransom. With such a dizzy array of threats, it is perhaps unsurprising that the security forces have failed to stem sectarian violence. But many analysts see a more disturbing cause: a fatal ambivalence inside the police and military toward jihadi groups. While the military ostensibly severed its relationship with Islamist groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi after 2001, some activists suspect that, at a local level, ties linger. “The authorities are turning a blind eye,” said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch. “The most charitable explanation is that they are incompetent. The alternative is that the military enjoys an informal alliance with Sunni extremists.” A senior official with the Frontier Corps, the paramilitary force in charge of securing Quetta, denied accusations of collusion. The situation is “challenging,” he admitted, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “But there is no problem with the Hazara. We pursue all criminals, irrespective of sect, caste or religion.” Regional politics also plays a role. Iran and Saudi Arabia financed rival Shiite and Sunni militant groups in the 1990s, as part of a proxy war for influence. Experts say that, while the Iranian financing has slowed dramatically, private Saudi funds continue to pour in. In a State Department cable dated December 2009 and published by WikiLeaks, Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton noted that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” The sense of siege has turned to flight for many younger Hazaras, who are leaving their homes in Quetta for Australia, 6,000 miles distant and the largest center of the Hazara diaspora. It is an expensive, dangerous journey: after paying up to $15,000 per head to people smugglers, many are forced to brave perilous journeys in rickety boats across the Indian Ocean. Too often, the boats sink en route, taking hundreds of lives. Muhammad Hussain, a 39-year-old teacher, said two of his brothers had left for Australia in the past four years — one had almost certainly drowned, he believed; the other, who left four months ago, had still not sent news.