3000 years ago the Roman capital was set on fire. Without sufficient investigation, emperor blamed Christians for the tragedy. Later it was revealed that the fire was pre-planned by Caesar himself. The idea of suppressing the minorities can be quoted from this historic event. For Caesar “Christians” were the easy target to achieve his desired goals.
Entire historic evidence of Caesar and Christians being forged in this article is to analyse the deadly attack on Bethel Memorial Methodist Church which took place in Quetta last week. Two suicide bombers entered in Church, when Christians were offering their Sunday prayers. One attacker was killed, as he entered the Church by the policeman, whereas the second attacker detonated his explosives-filled vest outside the prayer hall, just after Sunday services began. The Provincial Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti told that the Islamic State has taken claim of this outrageous attack. Furthermore, this attack had left 10 dead and 59 injured, as the explosives were quite heavy and lethal.
Last year on Easter, there was a suicide attack which left 70 dead and dozens injured. The responsibility was claimed by the Taliban, which is affiliated with the Islamic State. Two questions popped after the attack in Quetta, why these minorities are in the line of fire? Second, what is the ideology of the Islamic State regarding these minorities. These minorities are not limited to Christians, in last two months there have been two attacks on minorities, Hazaras were also targeted in those attacks.
The tactics, which these outliers are using are known as semi-communal violence and targeting the religious minorities. The current attacks represent this toxic mix as myriad armed groups pursue hard-line ideological agendas in support of various sectarian political movements to gain attention. Recently in Balochistan, these groups targeted the media groups as they were not publishing their agenda and they were not in the limelight.
Overall whenever there is a less hype of any terrorist organization, the terrorists tend to approach the media and other soft targets, so their agenda may get at the front of the international and national arena. In case of TTP, when they were on the run, they also did the same but eventually failed to pursue their desired goals. Reasons are obvious, disharmony among different ethnicities are converting into harmonization, deprivation is turning into development, the true faces of self-exiled leaders are coming in front of their people. Their indigenous people, who belong to their clans are not even supporting them.
In all these evident circumstances the room for militancy and terrorism is quite low. Only fragile corner for Balochistan is the border it shares with Iran and Afghanistan. If your neighbourhood is disturbed, it’s obvious that you will share the burden. Instability in Afghanistan surrounded Pakistan with a Domino effect. Pakistan must secure its border to avoid such unpleasant attacks in the future.
