Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

Foreign aid agencies and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) have suspended their work in Balochistan after receiving warnings from Afghanistan that Taliban/Al Qaeda agents might target them in the coming days. The foreigners were particularly asked to mount additional security to avoid being killed in a suicide-bombing incident. The UNHCR was in the process of repatriating a hundred families of Afghan refugees across the Chaman border but it will now await clearance from above before going ahead. A health-rescue organisation called 'Medecin Sans Frontieres', that had already given up its mission in Afghanistan after being attacked by the Taliban, is said to be rethinking its next strategy in Balochistan. The Balochistan government says it has tightened security for the foreigners but quite obviously there are limits to what the government can do. Taken together with disorder in the rest of the country, the signals from Balochistan are ominous.
When someone gives you a warning in Balochistan you had better pay heed to it. Last year the extremists killed members of the Hazara Shia community twice in the midst of a lot of preparation by the local administration to combat terrorism. In fact the second time around when the Shias were attacked with rockets and automatic weapons during an ashura procession they found the police firing at them rather than at the terrorists! The international press reported that in and around Quetta a whole population of Afghan refugees contained Taliban elements that could spell trouble for peace in the province. But no one has paid much heed because since 2002 the government in Quetta features the MMA in the ruling alliance, which not only opposes the arrival of the ISAF forces in Afghanistan but is vowed ideologically to bring about an order in Pakistan inspired by the spirit of Islamic revolution first demonstrated by the Taliban.

As we write, all the foreigners working with the various humanitarian NGOs are cooped up in the Quetta Serena Hotel. Ironically this may not be the safest of places because it is owned by an Ismaili enterprise. This takes us to the process of shutting up to the outside world and squaring off among ourselves in a sectarian war. The MMA has also expressed its opposition to the Aga Khan Foundation because of its educational uplift programmes in the northern areas. Unfortunately, too, the top MMA leader Qazi Hussain Ahmad has gone ahead and delivered threats to the Ismaili community by unfairly condemning the Aga Khan Foundation. On May 25, he told a gathering in Karachi that the government had given rights to the Aga Khan Foundation for the preparation of a new educational system in the country. He warned the Ismaili community and the Aga Khan Foundation that if they tried to impose a secular system of education in Pakistan the people of Pakistan would move against them. Qazi Sahib has been going around Pakistan