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Pakistan's Low-Grade War Civil

By Sadanand Dhume s Sunni-majorityPakistanin I the midst of a low-gradewar I against its minority Shiite popu-lation?Scarcely .a month goes by without word of a new atrocity: a car bomb outside a Shiite mosquein Quetta during Ramadan, suicidebombingof a a Shiite procession Lahore,Shiite in doctors mysteriously shot in Karachi. In Ju1y, after prosecutors failed to find evidenceof his allegedinvolvementin the murders of scores of Shiites. Parkistan's Supreme Court released Malik Ishaq leaderofthe bannedSunni sectarian group Lashkar-eJhangvi.He promptly receiveda hero's welcome from his followers.The Pakistanigovernmenthas allowed Sunni-ruled Bahrain to openly recruit Pakistanimercenariesto put dolm a restive Shiite majority dernandingdemocratic rights in the oil-rich kingdom. The country's Shiites are worried. In July, hundredstook to the streets of Quetta to protest the killings. In private, some Shiites wonder whether over time they will meet the same fate as the heterodoxAhmadiyyacommunity, stripped of their recognition as Muslims and hustledtoward the margins of national life. To be sure, comparedto Ahmadis,Christiansand Hindus,the Shiiteshaveso far facedno battery of discriminatory laws, and their exposure violenceis both to relatively recent and somewhat f limited. But this position of comparativeprivilege is preciselywhy the Shiites matter so much to Pakistan'sfuture. the 36-million-strongcommunity is a bulwark against the violent Sunni fundamentalism of lence has spread from southern long to recount. Only in the 1980s,under the Punjaband (sporadically)Karachi fundamentalistSuruf dictatorship to Quetta in Balochistan,and the of Gen.Zia ul-Haq, did the com- FederallyAdmhistered Tribal Arpact between Sunnis and Shiites eason Pakistan's troubled border begin to fray. Partly to protect with Afghanistan. their distinct identity, ShiitesproSecond, spaceto be pubthe tested the general'sclumsy at- licly Shiite in Pakistanhas shrunk tempt in 1980 to impose a uni- dramatically.This is most obvious form alms tax on all Muslims. in the tale of the Bhutto family. Around the same time, Paki- Thoughnot overtly pious,Zulfiqar stan was suckedinto a shadowy Ali Bhutto,who ruled from 1971 to proxy war for influence between 1977, described Vali Nasr of is by two rival strains of radical Islam: Tufts University as marking "the the messianicShiite variety prop- pinnacleof Shiite power in Pakiagated by Iran's Ayatollah stan." Khomeini, and Wahhabism, an But by the late 1980s,Bhutto's form of daug]rterBenazi4who herselfbeaustere, back-to-basics SunniIslam championed Saudi came prime minister, had begun by Arabia. to call herself a Sunni.Her husThe explicitly anti-Shiite band, current PresidentAsif Ali (Soldiers of the Zardari, maintains a studied siSipah-e-Sahaba Prophet'sCompanions), born in lenceon the subject,an apparent southernPunjabin 1985, took up attemptto attract Shiite support in the causeof Sunnipeasants a without tempting fundamentalist region dominated by large Shiite Sunniire. For Pakistan, founded as a landowners. Over the years, a clutch of Shiite rivals, including homelandfor all Indian Muslims, the banned Sipah-e-Muhammad the Sunni-Shiitedivide is an awk(Soldiersof Muhammad), haveat- ward subject that many would rather ignore.But the rest ofthe temptedto fight back. Over the past three decades, world needsto pay more attenviolencebetweenSunnisand Shi- tion to this conflict. If Pakistan ites has ebbed and flowed, but can't even protect its numerous two things are clear.First, despite and well-connected Shiites,then prevailing spar,vning banned violent sectar- the oddsof moderates ian outfits of their own, the Shi- over extremistsin an ongoingbatites havelargely been on the re- tle for the countryS future look ceivingend ofviolence.In a 2005 exceedingly slim. report, the International Crisis Mr. Dhumeis a residentfellow Group estimated that Shiite victims accounted,for of sectar- at the AmericanEnterpise Insti7oo/o ian deaths over the previous 20 tute in Washington and a columyears. In recent yea-rs, the vio- nist for WSJ.com.

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groups such as the Lashkar-eJhangviand Punjab-based SipahAnd reverencefor Ise-Sahaba. lamic shrines and other practices consideredimpure by Sunni extremists make them among the fiercest opponentsof the intolerant Taliban. The country's founding father, Mohammed Jinnah,belonged Ali to a Shiite sect,the Khoj4 whose followers are famous in the subcontinentfor their business acumen. Many of Jinnaht top lieutenantsin the Pakistanmovement were also Shiites. Unlike much of the Arab world-where Shiiteshavetraditionally constituted an underclass-the community in Pakistan beganwith a seatat the headtable of power.In the early decades of independence,Pakistan had two Shiite presidentsand at least one Shiite prime minister.The list of prominent generals, businessme4 ambassadors newspaper and editors from the communitvis too