Last week, on Friday, February 6, a deadly blast ripped through a Shia Mosque in Pakistan, killing 30 and leaving 160 injured. While terror groups have claimed responsibility for the attack, this pattern of continuous attacks on minorities in the country raises some questions about the intent behind these attacks.
This attack came following the decision by Pakistan’s military leadership to deploy Pakistani military forces to Gaza. A number of prominent Shia scholars in Pakistan؛ including Allama Syed Nazir Abbas Naqvi, a leader of the Shia Ulema Council of Pakistan، have taken a strong and explicit stance against this decision.
According to available information, the attack was carried out by a jihadist organization affiliated with Pakistan’s ISI, known as Harakat-ul-Mujahideen, which is led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, and was executed through the ISI’s “hidden hands.” In the published image, Maulana Khalil’s close relationship with Abdullah Gul, the son of former ISI chief General Hamid Gul, can clearly be observed.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil is the leader and founder of Harakat-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan; a jihadist figure who entered militant networks in the 1980s during the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. He had links with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and signed the 1998 fatwa declaring war against the United States; as a result, he was placed under sanctions by the United States and the United Nations. Despite this background, Khalil has for years continued to operate and move freely inside Pakistan with support, becoming a clear example of the intersection between jihadist groups, dual security policies, and organized religion in South Asia.
Have you ever wondered why the enemies of Pakistan only target minorities in that country? Why are Punjabis never attacked? Whether it was the APS attack in Peshawar that claimed the lives of innocent children, the attack on the Quetta Bar Association that killed dozens of Pashtun lawyers, or now the attack on a Shia mosque in Islamabad, the pattern is always the same.
The answer is simple: these are false-flag attacks carried out by the ISI. This horrific attack against a vulnerable minority group that is already facing discrimination in Pakistan needs to be strongly condemned.
