Fundamentalist fury has roiled Pakistan yet again, indeed twice in a span of 72 hours. Three days after the outrage near the Punjab provincial assembly in Lahore, it is the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria that has perpetrated Thursday's butchery at the shrine of the Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan, a town in Sindh province.
More accurately, ISIS has buttressed its presence within Pakistan and the conflict within a religion has assumed mortal proportions, pre-eminently the culture of tolerance propagated by the Sufi philosophy. It was an attack by radical fundamentalists on a mystical and generally moderate form of Islam. Sindh is a long way from Lahore, and not merely in terms of distance; both are far removed from the Af-Pak frontier, the nerve-centre of extremist activity. Whether it is a Taliban affiliate (as in Lahore) or ISIS, the butchery in a Sufi shrine ~ killing 70 devotees ~ would suggest that the Caliphate has buttressed its position in Pakistan, thus far relatively unscathed.
And it has buttressed its mortal fundamentalism by carrying out one of the deadliest attacks in Pakistan, including one on peaceful protesters in the heart of Lahore, a bombing in Quetta that killed two police officers and an explosion in Peshawar. Small wonder that the Rawalpindi GHQ has emitted an immediate signal to the civilian dispensation, with the Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, calling for an end to “restraint”, a pregnant expression given the context ~ “Each drop of the nation's blood shall be revenged, and revenged immediately. No more restraint for anyone.” The military's robust response is in stark contrast to the Prime Minister's somewhat emotive allusion to history ~ “The attack on the Sufis is a direct threat to Jinnah's Pakistan, an attack on the progressive and inclusive future of Pakistan.”
Theoretically, Nawaz Sharif may be right; but the narrative has changed dramatically over the past 70 years, almost relegating to the footnotes the philosophy that shaped its foundation.
As yet, mercifully there has been no major surgical strike on the Shias, but the Sunnis of the ISIS variety have targeted a decidedly liberal sect of the religion. The triangular conflict can turn out to be hideous if the Sunnis of Pakistan ~ under the aegis of ISIS ~ are intent on confronting the Shias and the Sufis. Markedly, there is an indication of retaliation from the military, but not from Pakistan's traditionally dithering civilian administration.
In the midst of the bedlam and butchery in a remote corner of Sindh, the military has been remarkably prompt in identifying the Afghan factor, stressing the point that the “acts of terrorism were being carried out by hostile powers and from sanctuaries in Afghanistan”. The fundamentalist plot thickens in South Asia.