 Good morning, everyone. Thank you for braving the cold and joining us here at the US Institute of Peace for this discussion on sectarian conflict in Pakistan. My name is Colin Cookman. I'm a senior program specialist here. And with me, we have Michael Kalin, Arfiq, Sarhang Hamasid, and Nilifar Siddiqui speaking on these issues, primarily focusing on the situation in Pakistan, but also looking to draw in some of the regional linkages as well. So just briefly, their bios. Arfiq, to my right, is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and president of Vizier Consulting. Michael is the PhD candidate at Yale, previously worked as an advisor to the government of Canada. To my left, Sarhang is a senior program officer here at USIP, working on our Middle East and North Africa programs. He previously served as Deputy Director General of the Kyrgyzstan Regional Government's Council of Ministers. And further to my left, Nilifar Siddiqui is as well a PhD candidate at Yale, previously working at the International Crisis Group and the International Organization on Migration in Islamabad. So just briefly introducing the program today. We'll all, well, three of our panelists are recent authors of USIP publications, which you can pick up a copy in the back there by the door. They're also available on our website, focusing on the issue of sectarian conflict in Pakistan. Michael and Nilifar's paper is based on survey work done in Punjab and Quetta. And Arif's Peaks is a short summary of a longer forthcoming report that will be published by the Middle East Institute that sort of takes a very detailed historical assessment of the various major points of geographical locations of sectarian conflict in Pakistan and as well some of the major actors in that. So the way we'll try and do this is I'll be posing questions to the panelists for about the first hour or so, and then we'd like to very much open it up to your questions as well, try and have a conversation about this issue. So with that out of the way, I guess we'll start off by Michael and Nilifar. Their paper, as I said, is based on sort of opinion survey work conducted in Pakistan. It's looking specifically at tolerance attitudes. And I was wondering if either of you or both of you could speak a little bit to the major findings that came out of that work, summarizing for those who haven't had a chance to read the paper yet. And particularly maybe what you found the most significant sources of variation were in terms of sectarian tolerance or intolerance. Thanks, Colin. I think I'll take a crack first, and then Nilifar add her thoughts, too. And let me just begin by gratefully acknowledging the financial support of USIP, without which the project would never have been possible. So thank you very much for that. Today I'll be speaking about the survey of about 2,000 Pakistani men that Nilifar and I conducted across the province of Punjab, as well as the city of Quetta in Balochistan earlier this year. We had several objectives for this study, some of which I think will help add some local context to this issue, which has much broader national and international dimensions. With regard to the survey, I'll try to talk about three things. The first is the people who we surveyed, what we asked them, and thirdly, what they told us. One of our objectives was to be among the first surveys in Pakistan to collect data that would allow comparison between the views of Pakistani Shias and Pakistani Sunnis. This is actually exceedingly difficult. Although Shias are thought to comprise somewhere between 10% and 15% of Pakistan's population, there are no official demographic statistics that are collected by the Pakistani government. So this makes it really very difficult to gain a precise sense of the size and location of each community. It can then be used to sample with conventional techniques and popular opinion polling. So for this reason, Nilifar and I developed a strategy in Punjab of sampling around Sunni and Shia houses of worship on the assumption that we were more likely to interview Shias in such vicinity. And then doing this allowed us to paint a representative picture of the population of Shia and Sunni men who live near mosques. In Balochistan, security concerns really restricted our work to Quetta, where we thought it was more appropriate to employ a more straightforward random sample of 800 people, just to give a representative picture of the male population of Balochistan's largest city. So with those caveats on mind on the kinds of people we're speaking about, let me move on to the actual questions we were interested in. So one of the major objectives we had was to understand sectarian relations and predictors of sectarian tolerance along three different dimensions. One was whether respondents, be they Shia or Sunni, would agree with being politically represented by someone across the sectarian divide. It's a political representation. The second was whether respondents would allow their children to potentially marry someone from the other sect, social tolerance and distance and closeness. And finally, whether respondents would support the other community if the respondents' own side had initiated some kind of communal violence. So let me now go to our results and what we found. I think the most, the clearest finding from our survey was that Shia respondents consistently tended to agree with each of our statements at higher rates than Sunnis. This difference was statistically and also substantially meaningful. For example, in Punjab, roughly six in 10 Shia respondents expressed some level of agreement with each of our statements. By contrast, among the Sunnis we interviewed in Punjab, like no more than 40% expressed any level of agreement. Sunni respondents expressed pronounced disagreement, for example, on the question of sectarian intermarriage. The results for Sunni respondents in Quetta were also quite troubling. A majority of Sunni respondents expressed disagreement with all of our statements. So even after accounting for a myriad of socioeconomic and cultural variables, this issue of being Sunni was one of the strongest and most stable predictors for disagreement with each of our statements. Having said that, I'd like to add a note of caution in interpreting what these results are and interpreting it naively because they show correlations rather than causes. And there are many factors that would predispose Shias and Sunnis to answer these questions in ways that are systematically different, which I'm sure my co-panelists are very well placed to comment on. But let me just highlight one factor, which I think is at play here, which is simply that being a religious minority in Pakistan means that for Shias, the perceived pressure of giving socially desirable answers is much greater than that felt by Sunnis. And this is probably one factor that explains why there's such a divergence in the answers between those groups. Looking at religion more closely, some of our results go against the conventional wisdom. For example, in terms of self-reported religiosity, we observe few differences between respondents who tend to pray frequently and go to mosque compared to those who did not. Among respondents from Punjab, those who attended religious seminaries were actually more predisposed to agree with our tolerance statements on issues like intermarriage and communal violence than those who would attend public schools or state-funded schools. Beyond issues of identity and sectarian politics, we found other significant predictors of tolerance, including some surprises. For example, amongst our strongest and most consistent finding is that in our survey, wealthier Pakistanis were less likely to agree as strongly with our statements compared to poor Pakistanis. This is with the exception of the question of intermarriage. In Punjab and Quetta, she and Sunnis who had more frequent daily interactions with each other who also expressed confidence in their leaders tended to agree with our pro-tolerant statements at higher rates, especially on the question of violence. So by way of conclusion, at least for my part, let me just say that I think the key takeaway here is that holding intolerant opinions about another group of people does not necessarily imply a straightforward connection with predisposition to participate in acts of violence. But I think what this does help shed some light on is that popular opinion does often constrain the range of policy interventions that are feasible. And this is often the case in Pakistan on issues of public policy, and particularly on the issue of the reduction of minority groups. So I just want to add two things to what Michael said. The first is that the predictors of tolerance that we found were not consistent between Quetta and Punjab, which may not necessarily be surprising because obviously the context in Quetta is quite distinct from what we've seen in Punjab over the last few years. But one surprising finding in my opinion was that while greater education was a predictor for increased tolerance in Quetta, that wasn't the case in Punjab. We also find that people who have witnessed forms of victimization, either our family or friends or just witnessed individuals being victimized by militant groups, those individuals in Quetta were much more likely to express greater forms of tolerance, which has made me much more like, according to like what we would expect the blinding to be. The second thing I want to point out is that there was a great variation across districts in Punjab. So we don't have the sample size to reach definitive conclusions, but it's worth just exploring the numbers lightly. So for example, in a rural area in Punjab district called Pawalpur, 90% of our respondents said that they were against intersectarian marriage. That's not necessarily surprising given our priors about what rural areas in South Punjab are like. But Musafargar, which is quite a similar district in many ways, had much higher numbers who were in favor of intersectarian marriage. Again, like I said, we don't have the numbers to really reach definitive conclusions, but it is interesting to note that preliminary statistical analysis that we did on levels of education across districts and number of violent incidents in districts were not predictors. So there is something else going on, which explains this great variation across districts, and I think that's definitely worthy of future study. Maybe continuing along in a speculative vein, could either of you in your field research or study of other literature sources or to the extent that this came out in your survey itself, is there a sense that these levels of intolerance are changing? Has it been getting worse? Is that something that came out? Yes, maybe I'll start with that. Unfortunately, Foxen isn't a particularly data-rich country, so we don't have adjunct data from the last 10 years on how Sunnis feel towards Shia's or vice versa. So it's really hard to say too much. Even, of course, our survey was done just at one point in time, but I noticed this one data point from a Pew survey that between 2013 and 2014, the number of Pakistanis who described Sunnis-Shia relations as being a very big problem decreased by 20 percentage points. So of course, that's only one year, but that's maybe something to suggest that there's a desensitizing to the types of problems that we see around us, and it'd be interesting to see what the results for next year are if this question is repeated. And if I could just speculate beyond the data, I was just in Pakistan, I returned about 10 days ago, and there are two observations that I'd like to point to. The first is that I feel as if there is far greater anti-Shia propaganda that's permissible in the country than there was previously. So we find that, for example, in Islam while I was there, there was a huge rally held by the ASWJ, which our support talks about. I'm sure we'll talk about it later on. It's an anti-Shia militant group. And right outside the rally, there was a lot of propaganda and material and flags and even clothing being distributed. And the material doesn't really shy away from being pretty explicitly anti-Shia. It does stop from explicitly condoning violence, but its reason of being is being anti-Shia. So that's one point. There's also a mosque in the center of the city. They have a bookshop that hands out this material for not a lot of rupees. I got a few of those. And then the second thing I wanted to mention was that if you speak about Punjab specifically in rural Punjab, we're seeing a situation whereby the old structures of power are breaking down, which allows for local clerics to have greater influence. So I'd say like 20 or 30 years ago, these kinship networks known as Baradri and economic networks of feudalism and big landlords were two of the main power structures. Mosques and clerics in rural areas did not have a lot of influence. They were considered part of this like Kami Baradri, not high in their ordering. But as they've, we can talk about the reason Saudi influence, money, jihad money, et cetera. These clerics have started to gain influence and money. And that's also increased the amount of influence that they have in the areas. And so that's again, I think pointing to words maybe a change in the last few years. Yeah, I think pivoting off of that to Arv's paper, which does look quite closely both in this shorter brief and but particularly the forthcoming Middle East Institute report looks quite closely at how these organizations which perhaps are operating within this broader sort of social discourse regarding tolerance or intolerance, but particularly these organizations, clerical groups or other groups operate and potentially contribute in shape some of these attitudes and certainly many of the actions that we've seen. I was wondering if Arv, if you could sort of give us maybe the concise version of sort of the major groups or major sort of areas, flash points of conflict that you see and where are they recruiting from, where are they getting their base of support from and where are the major threats in terms of active conflict? Thank you, Colin. Before I answer your question, I'd like to thank USIP for their financial support for my research project and also like to as an observer of the region, I'd like to thank them for supporting Neil Furn, Michael's report because it really advances the discourse and brings in a lot of much needed empirical data and data about social attitudes that may or may not impact the violence that was the focus of my report. So what I'd like to do is actually just kind of briefly go through the what, where, why, how of sectarian violence in Pakistan and then get into the so what and the implications, what does it really matter? Now my report focused on the resurgence of sectarian violence in Pakistan specifically Sunni Diobandi Shia. So commonly we refer to the violence as a Sunni Shia violence but in Pakistan there are three major Sunni subsets, the Brelvis who are sort of neo-traditionalists, the Diobandis who are somewhat reformed traditionalists and the Ahle Hadiths who are very similar to what are known as the Wahhabis or the Salafis who are predominant in the Gulf Arab states. And so the conflict between Sunnis and Shias in Pakistan at least as it manifests in the form of violent networks and sectarian entrepreneurs and agitators is really between one Sunni sub sect, the Diobandis and the Shia, mainly the predominant Shia 12er sub sect but also smaller Shia groups such as the various Ismaili groups are also targets of violence but don't really respond in the form of retaliatory violence. So my report investigates the resurgence of sectarian violence or Sunni Diobandi Shia sectarian violence in Pakistan, the causes and the implications. And so between 2007 and 2013, the time period in which my database covers, approximately 2,300 Pakistanis were killed in attacks that are confirmed or suspected, Sunni Diobandi and Shia sectarian attacks. That's in the four major provinces. Now there was also another war in the Quorum Agency which is one of the seven tribal areas and between 2007 and 2011 an estimated 1,500 people were killed in what was a tribal war that led very much into the spreading Taliban insurgency and also had a lot to do with what was going on across the border in Pakistan. So the tendency is to focus on Punjab as the center of sectarianism in Pakistan. But as my data set indicates and other interviews and other anecdotal data indicates, sectarianism has become mainstream to a large degree nationwide. And so we have, from the period of 2007 to 2013, we have four major zones of sectarian violence. They're Balochistan, which is a province that borders Iran and Afghanistan. Karachi, which is Pakistan's largest city. The Quorum Agency and surrounding areas, the Orox Eye Agency and then some neighboring or nearby or adjacent districts in the Khyber Pakhnul Kuala province such as Hengu and then finally Punjab. But by 2013, the most active zones of sectarian or Sunni Diobandi Shia sectarian violence in Pakistan were Balochistan and Karachi. If you look at the data, the amount of casualties as a result of Sunni Diobandi Shia violence in Pakistan largely remained flat in Punjab. So this is the area in which sectarian activism and sectarian violence had really been birthed in Pakistan in the late 1970s in respect to Sunni Diobandis and Shias. This is the area in which the phenomenon of sectarianism had really been born. And yet from this period of 2007 to 2013, violence has largely remained stable in terms of the trend lines in Punjab. And the most active zones of violence were Balochistan and Karachi. And we don't see much violence, significant trends of violence in Gilgit-Baltistan and Interior Sindh, these two other areas that have been sectarian flash points inside Pakistan. And that's for a variety of reasons, but in Gilgit-Baltistan, there was previous flare-up in 2004 and that had kind of been dealt with by local actors, including the political administration. But so the question is, who are the perpetrators of this violence? Who are the networks behind this? And on the Sunni side, it's essentially Sunni Diobandi militant networks that come from a variety of groups. And so there is the Prime Anti-Shia group in Pakistan, which is known as Sipai Sahaba Pakistan. It was founded in 1985. And then after 9-11, it changed its name to Ahl-e-Sunnat-ul-Dimath. So from now I'll call it ASWJ, just a shorthand. So the ASWJ is the prime agitational group. It's also a political party. Its members come on Pakistani talk shows, engage in electoral alliances with Pakistani politicians. And so it's also a band of organizations. So it has its foot in multiple worlds and it's also, especially since 2010 or so, has played a very prominent social role, at least in terms of sectarianism in Pakistan. So Ahl-e-Sunnat-ul-Dimath or the ASWJ is the main agitational or political group. And then there's Lashkar-Jungvi, which is a so-called splinter group of the SSP or ASWJ. It was emerged in 1996. And before 9-11 and even more so after 9-11, it has grown increasingly tied to Al-Qaeda and anti-state militant jihadists. And then finally, there's the TTP, the Tariq-e-Taliban Pakistan. And what all these groups have in common is that they are Sunid-e-Obandi. And so somebody might begin as an activist within the Sipai Sahaba Pakistan or SSP or ASWJ and then move within that trajectory into another more radical group such as the TTP and join the anti-state insurgency. Yet that animus towards the Shia will still remain. And so you have Qari Hossein Masood, who was a major commander for the Pakistan-e-Taliban, had formerly been a member of Lashkar-e-Jangvi and then used his same skills for training or recruiting suicide bombers who would target the Pakistani state as well as Shias. So there is this kind of duality to Sunid-e-Obandi militancy. On the Shia side, there has been a reemergence of what is known as Sipai Muhammad Pakistan. It is sort of the Shia version of Lashkar-e-Jangvi but, and we can get into this later, Shia activists, even if they are sectarian, don't necessarily engage in bona fide anti-Sunni rhetoric. And so the SMP, Sipai Muhammad Pakistan, is largely restricted itself to retributional violence. It sometimes goes beyond that parameters, but not too far. But that's the major Shia militant group. It's not as organized as the Sunni militant group, but it exists. And also there are some members of some mainstream Pakistani political parties, such as the Mutahid-e-Qalmi movement or the MQM, which some of their targeted killers are believed to be involved in some of the sectarian violence that takes place in Karachi. So they might work on behalf of the MQM in the day and then at night, if they're Shias, they might engage in some violence that reflects their sectarian tendencies as well. So what we have, these four major zones of violence, they all have their own local reasons for why they've emerged. In the quorum agency, there are tensions, there have been historic tensions between tribes, some of which are Sunni and one is Shia. And that kind of bled into the spreading Taliban insurgency and violence there has waned once that insurgency died down or was contained to some degree by the military. In Karachi, the violence is manifests itself in the form of targeted killings as well as these mass casualty attacks that target Shia processions or even residential communities. And so in Karachi, much of the violence actually kind of blends into the background of the general noise of violent noise that happens in Karachi. There are generally targeted killings that happen on a regular basis there. And so they can happen for all sorts of reasons and kind of lose sight that much of that is sectarian. So there are these local networks that kind of leverage these local tensions. And they also build off of national and transnational trends and icons and symbols. And so for example in Balochistan, the tendency is to kind of believe that, look at it as the violence there has haven't been exported from Punjab and that there are let's say ethnic Punjabis that are involved in this violence against the Shia and the Balochistan province. But if you look at the Lashkar-Jungvi militant group or the terrorist group Lashkar-Jungvi, it's major commanders in Balochistan are all ethnic Baloch. And so this phenomenon of anti-Shia violence or sectarianism has been indigenized in many parts of the country, including in Balochistan. And then just quickly, the so what aspect? Pakistan is unlikely to see a type of Iraq style scenario where the country is bifurcated in a de facto or de jure sense along sectarian lines. The level of sectarian animus has not risen to that level. Also the populations are quite mixed in most of the country except for let's say the quorum agency. And so the country is unlikely to see that type of worst case scenario but there will be the continued loss of the innocent human life. And slowly what we are seeing is also the narrowing of the idea of who is a full citizen in Pakistan. So originally Pakistan was conceived as a homeland for the subcontinents Muslims and a non-sectarian homeland. So the Pakistan Muslim League, which had founded the state of Pakistan or had led the movement for the state of Pakistan had really kind of tried to ignore the intra-Muslim divisions, whether it was between the Sunnis and the Shias or within the Sunnis or between even the Sunnis and Shia Muslims and the Amidis. And as we've seen in Pakistan's history that kind of concept of who is a Muslim and to a large extent who is a Pakistani because the two are kind of correlated has narrowed. And so the Amidis were pushed out of that fold and these anti-Shia activists really tried to leverage that momentum and do the same to the Shias. They've largely been unsuccessful in terms of the law of the land but I think this radicalization that is happening in many of the parts of the country along with the violence pushes the country in that direction in a du jour sense. So I'll wrap up and close up that. I think there's definitely some points that we'd like to come back to later on in the discussion but before we do I'd wanted to bring in Sarhang here to talk a little bit more about the comparative perspective in Iraq and maybe elsewhere in the Great Old Middle East as our notes in his report and mentioned many Pakistani sectarian actors do seem to draw some inspiration from the conflicts that we see going on in the Middle East right now which have their own in some cases quite explicit sectarian tinge in other cases less so but I was wondering, Sarhang, if you could speak to a little bit on those sort of the developments in the Middle East right now, how you see those shaping up along if a sectarian lens is an appropriate means for analysis and then maybe we can talk more about sort of how that's traced back into Pakistan. Thank you. I don't have a research to share but what the insights that I will share is basically coming from living most of its first hand I'm originally from Iraq so growing up I heard so many times if Saddam Hussein is gone then hell's doors will open and the Sunni-Shia fight will start and I'm talking about the early 1980s and the second part of what I'll say is informed by my work working at the Institute on Iraq trying to prevent violence or find nonviolent means to resolve differences in that part of the world, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Today, so today if you look at Iraq and if you look at Syria you have a violent conflict ranging in both countries they have merged pretty much. There were, for many people they were in denial that those conflicts have merged in so many ways until the organization, the so-called Islamic State or as many other people called ISIL or ISIS basically took large swaths of land in Iraq and expanding its territorial control in both Syria and Iraq close to starting close from the Iranian border all the way to the deep heart of Syria and having control over some eight million populations control over oil and all of that. And the question is, is this sectarian violence is this Sunni Shia? And going back to the question of then my childhood question would that be true and growing up there is a difference between what people say and what people do and that's my observation. You ask the Iraqis, everybody will say, you know, we are one people, one nation, we are brothers, sisters and still when you look around you see a lot of killing. So somebody must be doing that killing and must be for a reason. And then as the Syria conflict unfolded then this changed the question of okay, did what we see in Iraq was a result of the US intervention or actually there is a deeper problem there? And as you go further, if you look at Libya and if you look at Egypt where we don't have the issue of Sunni Shia and you still have violence then the larger question becomes why do we see violence? Difference is fine as long as it's resolved non-violently. So as we look into the issue it's important to make those differences and also the question of why does it matter for the rest of the world if this is, is this a 14th century long problem that is localized and it's other people's problem, why should we be part of this? I think it's an important question that many people I get asked a lot, why should we care? It's an internal issue. So as I was reading the reports that other panelists presented in Iraq the violence and the loss of life that you see probably in Pakistan in one year that number of casualties you see in a month in Iraq sometimes in a matter of a couple of weeks. In one attack of the Islamic State on a camp they killed 1,700, on one attack on a prison they killed 600 on one attack on a tribe they killed 250 so the numbers are huge and why this is happening is important. Yes there is a sectarian tone in the violence in Iraq and in Syria but the problem is deeper than that. As I said if you look at Egypt and if you look at Libya the question becomes different. The religious institutions, for example the Grand Ayatollah, Ali Sistani, the Grand Shia Marjaya has been a political player in Iraq but he tried to maintain a distance and tried to keep it calm. But there are others like if Shia militias and you have Sunni militias that are fighting and the conflict in Syria today, the Islamic State Chapat al-Nusrah are predominantly actually Sunni extremists who are fighting in those countries. The declared and if you have heard the recent statement from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the self proclaimed caliphate of the Islamic State and others from Abu Mus'ab al-Zarkawi when he was leading al-Qaeda in Iraq in the mid 2000s. They directed their violence toward the Shia to a large extent before they directed to the state or before they directed to the Americans. And the term Rafidah, those who reject the Shia or sorry, the term that they use for the Shia is increasing among them and that's what the image that they promote. So it is understandable for a violent terrorist organization to do this because violence is their means but it gets more complicated when politicians for political electoral gains feed into the sectarian narrative. When you have the former prime minister of Iraq, prime minister of Maliki come on TV and say today the battle that is being fought in Iraq and in Syria is the same battle between Hussein and Yazid that has a battle of Karbala. That is bringing and infusing history back into that conversation. I don't think most of the Iraqi politicians in private conversation they keep saying that we are not sectarian. We don't believe in sectarianism. Yet when you see those that's much killing you hear their statements, you see the opposite of that. Whether they are sectarian or not, they are definitely playing into the sectarian identities. They are trying to use that for political gains. And today, pretty much most of the Sunni people populations are either displaced about some two million of them or they are under the control of the Islamic State and this applies too much of Syria as well. Those people, some sided with the Islamic State because they believe in their ideology, those are the minority in minority and the vast majority because they disagreed with the policies of the Iraqi government that they called it a Shia-led government and Iranian backed government. So this brings the question of the regional dimensions into this. Iraq and Syria today, you have a proxy war between militias on both side and the Sunni side and the Shia side supported by different regional countries. Even if you, so now this confluence and this entanglement of these problems, the way you deal about it, there's somewhat of an international paralysis about it. Yes, there's a declared international strategy to deal with it and I understand there's a section that you're coming back to it and I'll probably say more about it there. But today, the violence in Iraq is very much driven by governance issues that politicians put a sectarian cover over it. Religious leaders, the Shia religious leadership has been strong in Grand Ayatollah of Sistani, but in the past few years he has seen others challenge that authority gradually on the street level. When you had the Muqtada al-Sadr formed the militia of Jais al-Mahdi, when you had Asaib al-Haqq forming another and others that you've heard probably about, then this is where the dilemma comes for the Grand Ayatollah that tried to stay out of politics. After June, the takeover of the Islamic State of many parts of Iraq, it was Grand Ayatollah Sistani who actually called the Shia to take up arms and go fight the Islamic State. And that was a surprise for many, many people because that was contrary to the role he played. He tried not to take sides of who's a prime minister, who's in government, but actually he sided this time against Prime Minister Maliki because he felt that he pursued the wrong policies. That changing role, we don't know where it will end. Probably a few years ago the Grand Ayatollah did not see himself one day calling people to take up arms to defend something. But remembering, and I followed up on this, remembering the 2006 blowing up the Askariyah Mosque that reports also cited, it triggered, there are triggers, there's a point even for a community that doesn't see itself in a conflict. What are the triggers that could take you to levels that you did not think it was possible? So as you look at the Pakistan example, I think identifying what could be that is a good and preventative thing. To this time, Sistani ordered the Shi'a to go on so that he will prevent another Askariyah incident. So if the shrines of Al-Hussain or Imam Ali were blown up or reached in Karbala and Najaf, then there would have been no ending to, if we have a manageable crisis or conflict today, that would have taken into a level that there was no comeback from. That was a painful decision, I'm sure for him, but this is a situation that is no one actor controls. And that is a problem that collectively we need to think about, about how do we address those? And I'll pause here. Sure, I guess, I mean, certainly so one parallel between the experience in Iraq or elsewhere and Pakistan then seems to be this more openly sectarian political discourse and actors more openly identifying, at least the situation in Iraq seems to be further along than Pakistan, but more actively identifying their, or at least publicly identifying along sectarian lines. And as you mentioned, the case of religious actors previously not perhaps at the forefront of politics taking a more active role, which certainly you see in Pakistan, as Arif mentioned. I was wondering if all of you I think could speak a little bit more to the role of politics in this and whether, in the case, as Arif mentioned, ASWJ in Pakistan at least despite being banned, despite the links it has with militant sectarian, violent sectarian actors is actively involved in politics and fielding candidates, forging alliances with other parties. Is this necessary to diffuse violent competition to bring these actors into a political process of sorts? Or is this sort of the first step towards the more explicitly sectarian political conflict that bleeds into active, all-out conflict as maybe the case elsewhere? Any of you want to take on that? So I've heard this argument being used before when in 2002, the Coalition of Islamist Parties, the MMA was brought into power in Kheber-Bakhtunkhwa province. A lot of people were worried and then a lot of other people said that perhaps there'll be a normalization of their politics if we bring them into the political mainstream. And so some people saw that their tenure in KP was an indication of the latter. So we didn't see really, you know, increase of thought urbanization per se in KP. There were a few cosmetic changes like billboards, women's pictures weren't allowed in, but a lot of people would say that life in KP under the secular Pristun Party, the ANP and the Islamist Coalition MMA was not perhaps that different after all. I think that the case with the ASWJ is completely different. I think it's really important that we not confuse what the ASWJ is and what political parties that are right of the political mainstream are. The ASWJ is, as I've pointed out, at the fall under the symbol of the Sipaya Sahaba SSP, they have very clear linkages to the LEJ, which has very clear linkages to the TTP, which is responsible for all the violence that we see in Pakistan or the vast majority of it. And I think it's really difficult to disentangle this. We never really know who the perpetrators are just because the linkages are so clear. And so I think that even though the ASWJ did contest elections and it doesn't itself propagate violence, its mandate is very clearly against what's supposed to be the constitution of Pakistan, right? So it doesn't want shias in public office. It says that very clearly. It doesn't mince words about what it thinks the role of shias in Pakistan is. And this is, again, I'm not a proponent of the Jama'at-e-Islami or the J-U-I-F, but it is different from the Jama'at-e-Islami and the J-U-I-F. And I think it's clear that we make these demarcations because I think the political mainstream in Pakistan should allow for certain actors who fall on either side of the ideological spectrum, but it needs to also have a dividing line. And I think ASWJ falls on the other side of the dividing line. Is it fair to say that ASWJ or Lashkar-e-Jangvi's goals are state takeover or are they looking to... Is it possible for them to work within the state or is their goal ultimately just reshaping the state entirely? Well, what Lashkar-e-Jangvi and Ahl-e-Sunat-e-Bul-Jama'at or ASWJ share is an animus towards the shia. So the ASWJ would, at the very least, like to curtail shia public activity and reduce their religious processions or confine them to private space. They'd also like to, some forces within the ASWJ also advocate declaring shia as an non-Muslim minority. And so that would disenfranchise them in many different ways. And the LEJ shares those goals, but it's a primary method of achieving that is through violence. So the violence is used to intimidate shia populations, subdue them, force them to either flee the country or to live in predominantly shia areas. ASWJ has no aspirations for state takeover, it's impossible. But they do say that if Iran can be a shia state, why can't Pakistan be a Sunni state? So in some ways they do comment on the broader state identity and do want it to conform to a view that is consistent with their own. Lashkar-e-Jangvi or elements within Lashkar-e-Jangvi have consistently gone into that anti-state trajectory and have joined forces with Al-Qaeda, with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the TTP, and have joined this anti-state jihad. And so they very much, many elements within Lashkar-e-Jangvi very much do are keen on takeover of the state, but that is part of a joint effort in which the TTP and now possibly Al-Qaeda's new affiliate in South Asia would be at the front lines. If I might, I think there are two dynamics here that I think we should sort of appreciate in thinking about how politics interacts with sectarianism in Pakistan. I think one is clearly within Pakistan, the political institutions and how various parties and organizations feed off of each other. And there is also this sort of broader regional element which I think Sahang was mentioning. If I can just add to some of those points. I mean, she and Sunnis have lived in Pakistan for centuries and have not had chronic endemic violence. So there are things that have happened we can actually point to and think about what are the conditions under which this happens. And I think one of them historically at least in the 70s was a challenge to the state's legitimacy in Pakistan and the Iranian revolution which politicized Shia identity across the Middle East and more broadly. I think that sets one regional component that has fed into much more localized struggles in Pakistan. And the second one I think sort of in a very concrete sense if we're trying to understand the regional dimension to sectarianism in Pakistan is to appreciate the intimacy of Pakistan's foreign relationship with Saudi Arabia, particularly during the 10 year of Namaz Sharif. This is a, I think I would call it a very strategic relationship between these two countries. Each uses their own, Pakistan has its military and population to offset the, to use, there's a sort of synergy between the financial capacity of Saudi Arabia and the military prowess of Pakistan. And they've cooperated very closely for 30 years. And apart from just issues of military and on several different bases, they work very closely together. And this has also led to, I think, the sectarian issue being sort of a proxy for many other interests. So at times it is between the regional, it brings friendship between Saudi Arabia and Iran which at times extends into Pakistan. So just to say that I think there are very local issues at play here that obey very local forms of politics and interests that also overlap at times with a much broader regional dimension. And it's really trying to figure out how these two intersect that I think would help us understand the future of this issue. So Hong, do you have a sense of, from the perspective of these other sectarian groups, like maybe ISIS or other groups operating in the Greater Middle East, is Pakistan on their radar? Is there a risk that active sectarian combatants in other parts of the Islamic world will eventually shift their attention to Pakistan or is it more a poll coming from the other direction? I think we need to look at this from the perspective of not only today, but long term. In 2000, it was the first probably Islamic terrorist organization that popped up on the border of the Kurdistan region of Iraq which has stayed away for the most part from the sectarian Sunni Shia tensions. As regards an ethnic group, they're mostly Sunni Muslim but they stayed out of this tension. And this you had this called, the begins called Jundal Islam then changed its name to Ansar Islam. And then gradually became the leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Some of them are now the top leaders of the Islamic state. When some of those people were captured or that organization was studied, they found out that they got their Islamic education in Pakistan, they acquired their fighting experience in Afghanistan and they brought that to the Kurdistan region from which continued to Iraq. Today we see it go to Syria, we don't know where they will go. We've seen Chechnya today and in the ranks of the Islamic state you have Chechens coming and fighting there. So there is mobility here for these fighters. So the issue of sectarianism is an issue that goes up and down depending and it intersects with other issues. So I think looking at beyond just the new cycle of these issues, just beyond the political cycles of elections at the long term, how does this change? We have the experience of the Taliban, we have the experience of al-Qaeda, we have the experience of the Islamic state. I think we need to take a look at a longer term. Many countries felt that these are issues that are far away until you had 9-11. Again, then people felt that it has been contained until you had the Islamic state actually pulling fighters not only from Muslim countries but actually from Western countries and that is where I see a lot of surprise from the decision makers of these countries how did this happen, how do we deal with this? So this is a problem, it's not necessarily, it has changed, it has a pull that it pulls fighters from elsewhere but it also has the factor that it can either export fighters to other places. These people could go back to those countries and this is the biggest worry for a lot of policy makers in many countries and you have at least some 60 countries who have representations in the ranks of the, or a representative is a bad word, but it has fighters in the ranks of the Islamic state. Today we see ideas of the Islamic state migrating using technology, using modern day with communication so it is not only the fact, the fighters that may go back to Pakistan but an idea. When you have the, I think it was the Pakistan Taliban that says okay, they did not pledge allegiance to the Islamic state but they have expressed support. When you have in Libya, it's not the Islamic state that went to Libya but actually it was a local network of terrorism that actually pledged allegiance to the Islamic state. So it is tough, it could take many forms and the migration of the idea is more dangerous than the migration of the fighters but in this interconnected, intermingled, intermarried, inter-whatever terms you can continue, this is a bigger problem and there's an interest to look at this more broadly. I do wanna get to questions from the audience pretty soon but I guess maybe just following up a little bit on, before we do, on sort of government responses to this threat since as Sarong says it's a concern for many nations, Pakistan among them. I guess, to what extent, and this sort of, to all the panelists, to what extent does the Pakistani state recognize sectarianism or sectarian conflict as a significant challenge given all the other challenges that they face? What is their response been and what is needed in terms of a response to prevent an escalation of this conflict? So I think that this question kind of fits broadly into the flawed narrative of the good Taliban versus the bad Taliban in Pakistan which is the idea that some groups are looking to overthrow the Pakistan state and so we don't like them and so we're gonna tackle them. The other groups, if they're either fighting proxy wars with neighbors or doing things that might be a nuisance but don't directly challenge the Pakistan state then we're okay with them and I think unfortunately there hasn't been a recognition of this inner linkage that Arif was referring to earlier in that I mentioned so there's this idea that okay, it's not great that they're targeting Shias but it's not directly challenging our presence as the Pakistan state and so we're not going to treat this as as a bigger problem as some of the other groups in society so that's the first point. The second point is that at the local level there are linkages between political parties such as the Pakistan Muslim League and the ASWJ as it operates in Punjab and this is because I think like very local level dynamics about how the power structures in rural Punjab are evolving so that in order to get votes from certain districts the PMLN needs to have seat adjustments with these various actors or allow them quote unquote free passage in order to carry out their activities and so I agree with Arif's earlier point that Punjab isn't really where sectarian violence is happening anymore. You look at the numbers, it's happening in Balochistan, it's happening in Karachi, et cetera but the reason that Punjab keeps coming up in the discussion is because this is where their groups are operating and this is where to some extent their groups are being allowed to operate with the freedom that they are given. Well I agree with Neela for and I think if you look at the response of the Pakistani state I think it'd be a mistake to refer to it as a singular entity. So you have the civilian government at the federation at the federal level, the military within the military you have the ISI and military intelligence and then you have the provincial governments. So there has been to some extent a devolution of power and so there are these varying responses to sectarian militant actors inside the country. So as Neela for a reference there is effectively a deal between the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz and the Ahlasunatwal Jamaat Organization. So that began in about 2010 or so and some people who are associated with the party claim that it's not a hard deal but what we've seen then since then is that this group has operated with great freedom publicly and so they engage in hate speech through their sermons and also in their public rallies and the Pakistani state has the capacity to prohibit this type of speech and arrest individuals who engage in such behavior but in Punjab it has decided to allow them to act publicly or be active publicly for these political goals. So there are these localized electoral alliances between the ASWJ and the PMLN but also between the ASWJ and other political parties in Pakistan. So members of the ASWJ have met with senior officials of the PPP, they met with some members of the MQM and so this is Pakistani politics in terms of the pragmatism and these localized single district alliances that are made by let's say an individual within a party. That can sort of graduate to what is effectively a sort of a larger level partnership between the ASWJ and the PMLN that exists right now. It might not exist in five years from now. It's not something that has indications that it is necessarily lasting. If you flash back about to 1999, members of Lashkar-Jungvi tried to kill Nawaz Sharif who was prime minister then and his brother who was chief minister of Punjab launched a very heavy crackdown on the L.E.J. But the Pakistani state elements of the Pakistani state are quite permissive towards sectarian actors whether they are simply political actors or rise to militant activity and that has kind of emboldened anti-Shiya militants in Punjab and at a national level as well. I mean, I'll be brief. I think one has to look at as for why the state has developed this culture of permissibility. The reliance on these kind of militant groups pursue foreign policy objectives through unconventional means to deal with their conventionally symmetry vis-a-vis the more powerful neighbor. So I think we can look to that as one of the reasons why the state has often looked at a scans or a skew where these groups have operated at times they turn inward when issues of legitimacy are at stake. But I think one of the fundamental drivers has to do with how decision makers in the Pakistani state see their national interests more broadly and how best to achieve them. And usually that's or not usually but sometimes in the absence of a conventional parody. This is what happens. Okay, with that, we'd like to open it up to questions from the audience. You all have mics for the most part. So, but if you could please raise your hand and identify yourself and please give us a question. Thanks. Thanks. I think it's actually just a brief question which is I'm curious to know the degree that there's co-incidence between anti-Shiya, groups that espouse anti-Shiya views that prosecute anti-Shiya violence and those that have anti-Sufi views or prosecute anti-Sufi violence. People that kill Shia in Pakistan? Are they the same people that kill Sufis in Pakistan? Are they different people? The anti, there was a wave of anti-barrelty violence that had began in around 2007-ish in Pakistan and has subsided since around 2011-2012 and that was largely a part of the Talibanization process inside the country. So as the Taliban spread from Fatah, from the federal-administered tribal areas through KP and approach Punjab and as cells within the TDP network gained a presence in Karachi, parts of Punjab and parts of interior Sindh, they engaged in anti-barrelty activity. It subsided since and I think it's as a result of the Taliban being pushed back into a quarter of Fatah in terms of their hard physical presence but I also think that they had realized there was a recognition of some elements within the TDP that the cost of targeting fellow Sunnis even if they were misguided and had impure beliefs and practices that the cost outweighed the benefits and so I think they made a decision to pull away from that and if you look at some of the documents that were seized from Bin Laden's house in Abbottabad there is some communication between elements in Al Qaeda I think including Bin Laden and maybe Adam Gadan are writing to members of the TDP and telling them that tax on mosques and these other type of places are not to our benefit, you're exceeding your balance and so on and so forth. So I think it's the TDP networks that were largely behind it and not necessarily these expressly anti-shia groups but the lines are often quite blurred. Thank you for the information. I see that's not from Afghanistan so I have two questions from Araf. I grew up in a Shia context so I'm familiar with this sub-sector that you said but mostly it is said I was thinking that I suppose Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jangevi is related to Wahhabi Salafi people. This is what most Shia in Afghanistan and Iran think but you said they are related to Dewbendi. Would explain more this for me. This is the first question. The second one is that is there any connection between Dewbendi of Pakistan and Dewbendi of India because it seems Dewbendi of India is more peaceful idea, have more peaceful ideology than Dewbendi of Pakistan. Thank you. Those are two good questions. I think in respect to the first one when we look at the public discourse, the shorthand or the slang, the tendency is to use the term Wahhabi to paint all sort of extremist actors as Wahhabi reflexively. But if you look at the doctrine, Sipai Sahaba is a Dewbendi organization and it is from that school of thought and they're very much distinct from the Wahhabis or the Salafis as they prefer to be called. And so the Dewbendi's or the Sipai Sahaba, people who are affiliated with the SSP or ASWJ follow at Madhab. So they are Hanifi. The Wahhabis or the Salafis don't, some might be Hanbani, but they tend to not follow a Madhab and if they're in Pakistan in particular. There are other sort of indicators that show that Dewbendi's or Madrasa they graduated from what clerics they acknowledge. And so all these different indicators and we can talk about in detail later point to them being Dewbendi. And so there is enough radical space within the Dewbendi community in Pakistan for them to be part of this, be among the Dewbendi's. And there's diversity within the Dewbendi community, but if you look at most militant groups in Pakistan they do come from that sub-sect. In respect to the divide or the differences between the Dewbendi's in Pakistan and India, the Dewbendi's in India had supported the unity of India. So they were against the Pakistan movement. So they sided with the Congress party, which was the Indian nationalist movement. And those that remained in India were individuals who did not believe in the bifurcation of India. And they've largely remained committed to the idea of India as a secular pluralist government and society. And their linkages to militant groups are quite minimal. So they often make public statements that are very much at odds with that of Dewbendi's in Pakistan. And we have is, there is a greater, there's a conception of sort of, pan-Dewbendiism and Dewbendi unity. And you have some Dewbendi scholars who visit Pakistan and some Pakistani Dewbendi scholars who visit India. And in fact, many of the leading Dewbendi's in Pakistan had actually sided with the Congress and opposed the country's formation, but because of pragmatic politics that assimilated in the country. But when we look at militancy and extremism within the Dewbendi's in Pakistan, it's very distinct. There aren't these strong network collections to Dewbendi's in India. Thank you very much. My name is Khaled Naderi. I have a question about kind of the response of the Pakistani state that Arif talked about and everyone actually talked about. We know that there are Shia in the armed forces as well as parts of the police across Pakistan. Do you think that that's shaped or kind of modulated the behavior of the state to sectarian violence in Pakistan? And then also a second question. If I could invite Michael and Nilfata to talk about this. In many ways, Afghanistan is a very, is a most different case from Pakistan. But nonetheless, a lot of the same treatments that have been applied to Pakistan over the past 30 years have applied to Afghanistan. But there's of course, we know that there's very high levels of social consociation in Afghanistan despite those treatments. So I was wondering if one could talk about why Pakistan is different, why sectarianism has increased in Pakistan over time but has, despite political conflict in Afghanistan, has social consociation remains more or less the norm? I could speak to the second question more than the first one. That's a great question and a very interesting point, Khalid. I think I would challenge you a little bit that they're the most different or that Hazaras and the Shia in Afghanistan haven't really enjoyed full consociational inter-harmony. At times it's true, but I mean, there's also been cases in the 90s during the Civil War the Taliban committed all kinds of atrocious acts of ethnic cleansing. The Hazara party mobilized along Shia lines. So I'm not really sure we can find in Afghanistan the counterfactual for Pakistan, so to speak. So I mean, that's my short answer to you, actually. Just to answer that, I saw this interesting statistic the other day. So according to Pew data, I think from 2012, only half of Pakistanis Sunnis say that they believe that Shias are Muslim, 41% say they don't believe this. This is, Afghanistan is very different. 77 or 80% of Sunnis believe that Shias are Muslim. And I think the report said that for countries that have at least 6% Shia, that Pakistan has by far the lowest rate of acceptance of Shias as Muslim by Sunnis. So this is really striking to me, particularly because we're talking about the comparative perspective. So while I do agree with Michael's caveat that perhaps things aren't all roses in Afghanistan, there is something particular about Pakistan right now which seems to be like driving these statistics. Right, right. Actually, if I could just follow up. I think there are a couple of things. I mean, in Pakistan there are Shia who are Hazara and those who are not. And I think the dynamics of conflict are different. One thing I think that is worth remembering when we talk about this particular issue, Shias Sunni relations in Pakistan is the estimates, the demographic balance, which is very different from Iraq, for example, and quite different from Afghanistan, where, I mean, the Shia really are largely a minority. I think the dynamics of inter-communal relations are very different when that minority actually has very little political power in most contexts. There are times when in Afghanistan, the Hazara community by didn't of being mobilized and unified can play the role of king-makers sometimes. So I think in Iraq where the Shia were discriminated majority that contained within itself the seeds of disaster. So I think, I mean, barring everything I just told you earlier, I think that this issue of the demographic balance is a real key driver of inter-sectarian relations. Yes, the issue of the military and representation in the military in a context where you have different communities. In Iraq before 2003, that was not an issue because everybody felt that the military was used against them to kill them. Well, if you were a Sunni, if you were a Kurd, if you were a Shia, or if you were an Arab, when after 2003 when the army and the other security forces were rebuilt, it opened the question of, okay, how many from this component of the Iraqi society do you have represented? And to date, that is not working because everybody felt that they are either underrepresented. They do not have enough representation or they distrusted the others. They said, well, I cannot trust you. And there is evidence where, for example, the Islamic State or other Sunni groups had access to databases of the Iraqi army and the police where they identified security personnel on the way going home for leave in civilian uniform, taking them out of a taxi, ID them, and kill them. So when the structure of state falls apart and you're rebuilt in mixed societies, that is an issue that we see in Iraq. It will be definitely an issue in Syria. It is also an issue in Libya, but not for sectarian reason. It's just the legitimacy of representation. Why do you want representation is an issue, is an important question. This is where it ties to the larger question. Why do you want that representation? And this is a problem I see in Iraq is that there is too much focus on the institution or military institutions. And because this drives from a militaristic and security view to addressing some of the sectarian and governance issues. This is not a response to any of them. It's just an addition to the conversation that today, as the questions of democracy, equality, and representation increases, certain things were not a question yesterday. They may be a question today, or they may become a question tomorrow. So orienting the solutions towards the root causes of this, if it's ignorance, people thinking actually that the Shia are not non-Muslims, then the solution is not a military solution. If it is actually just denial and treating them not as equal, then the solution becomes something else. Just looking at issues from a perspective of what the two sides think of each other, and increasingly, the dealing with the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda for many years, it was militaristic for the most part. Today, the leadership in Iraq deals with the grievances of the people from a militaristic approach. And that is a problem that I see across the board when it comes to the issue of sectarianism. How do we contain this? How do we make sure that this country will not have more influence? And not from the local challenges that I have also talked about, how do you make sure that they're all equal before the law? You are protected regardless of who is in the state, who is in the security forces. Obviously, this is not a one-day solution. This is an ideal state that you do not probably reach easily, but unless we build those into the programming that we do on peacebuilding and governance, we'll be missing an important point. If I could follow up a little bit. We talked about the attitude of the state. Let's ask about that great institution, the ISI. Do we have evidence that the ISI sees some utility in any of the sectarian groups? I mean, we all know it has a long history of backing militant groups when they thought it was to their interest. I'll just stop there. I think if you look at it, it's hard to find any indication that the ISI or the Pakistani military intelligence establishment finds a strategic utility in cooperating or enabling specifically anti-Shia actors to be active publicly and engage in violence. The ASWJ, the political element of the anti-Shia movement, serves a political utility for a wide variety of political actors inside the country. The LEJ mainly performs two functions. It kills Shias either through targeted killings or mass casualty attacks. And it also partners with Al-Qaeda and the TTP, two leading organizations that are combating the Pakistani state. So there isn't really much overlap in terms of shared interests. There has been some suggestion that elements of the Pakistani state or the intelligence services have worked with so-called death squad leaders in Balochistan and elsewhere that also have dual hats and may also, on their own side, engage sectarian actors. So there might be a degree or two of separation that separates them in terms of this murky world that exists in some of these hot spots like Balochistan. But I don't see much any anecdotal evidence. Or if you look at things from a strategic perspective, anything really tying the Pakistani military with these anti-Shia forces. And if you look at how the Pakistani military kind of approaches the idea of Pakistan, they see themselves as the guardians of Pakistan's physical and ideological frontiers. And there is this idea of the Nazaree of Pakistan or the ideology of Pakistan. And it's really something that is non-sectarian in terms of the Muslim community itself. And so the founder of Pakistan was also a Shia. And so I think in terms of ideology as well, there's not really anything pulling the organization as a whole into that sort of anti-Shia orbit. The Zia era was somewhat of an anomaly, I think. Brad Hansen, I'd like to go back to the situation of the Afghan, Hazar, and Pakistan. There's a significantly large community of them that remains in Quetta. And this year and last year, there have been a number of horrific attacks against them in Quetta. I think Mr. Kallen had mentioned that the dynamics are a little different regarding attacks against them, against maybe other Shia in Baluchistan. The Taliban of Afghanistan, of course, the Quetta sure is famous. It's based in Quetta. I'd be interested in your comments on these different dynamics and what the motivation and who are the perpetrators and why are the Afghan, Hazar, and Quetta so targeted. Well, I think it's important to first note that the Hazar population inside Quetta and adjacent districts in Baluchistan are actually some are Afghan, some are Pakistani. In terms of the Pakistani segment of that population, they've existed in the area. They lived in the area since the late 1890s or so. So when there was some violence and tensions in Afghanistan, they fled to those areas and have kind of made that home for quite some time. And so if you look, they joined the British Indian Army. They were some of the leading commanders of the Pakistan Army at some point in time up till the 1970s were from that community. So they were kind of well integrated into Pakistan. The specific targeting of the Hazaras inside Pakistan began. There was one incident in 1999 in which an MPA or a Ministry of Provincial Assembly member was targeted by anti-Shia militants by Lashkar-e-Junkbee. That was an anomaly. Structural or organized violence against Hazaras as really began in 2003. It continued into 2006. But when members of that Lashkar-e-Junkbee cell were arrested, violence basically fell down to zero. Those three individuals that basically led that cell escaped from prison in 2007. From that period on, violence has resurged. It's because there are militant networks that are led by locals, ethnic Baloch, who share the ideology of Lashkar-e-Junkbee and SSP, the same organization that exists across the country. So there is that ideological element that has become indigenized in Balochistan. The Hazaras are very easy to target. Physically, they stand out. They look different. And there is the legacy of the conflict in Afghanistan in which the Hazaras resisted the spread of the Taliban, who are also the Obandis, come from that same sect as these anti-Shia groups. And that kind of, I think, incited some of the violence against them. But also, there is an ethnic factor as well. I spoke with a senior police official in Kuwaita. And he had said that he doesn't get any leads from members of other ethnic groups when Hazaras-Shias are targeted in sectarian violence. So there is a resentment of the Hazaras because they are, to some extent, upwardly mobile. They're very united. They take advantage of opportunities when they're joining the police forces or the military. Their women are active participants in society and aren't held back, let's say, in a comparative perspective compared to other communities. So there is that ethnic factor as well. But ultimately, they're being targeted because they're Shia. And the same Lashkar-Jungbe group that exists elsewhere in the country has a branch inside Balochistan that is composed of locals but shares this ideology that involves animus towards the Shia and they're being targeted, mainly because of their religious affiliation. But a few observations. I think it is quite central to look at the role of the state in the last 30 years and how it has actually created a whole environment, legal and social institutions, which allow for the kind of hatred that is spewed against the Shias and Hazara. And I think that can't be overlooked. I mean, it is fundamental to that. I mean, these attitudes do not germinate in a vacuum. And if you look at the 1970s and the 80s, particularly the Zia regime and General Zia himself, or the Sohtsudni supremacist, he even tried to impose the laws which the Shias and others sort of protested against like the first imposition of Zakat in 1980. And within a year, it had to be taken away. So and then the revision of curricula and textbooks, the Islamic Studies curriculum, which is taught to Pakistani kids for the last three generations, is the Sohtsudni version of Islam. Even Shias have to read that. Even Amidis have to read that. Even other minority groups have to read that. And I think the third is that the security nexus of these groups cannot be overlooked. I think the question that was raised by the gentleman in that corner is central to this. Because first of all, the evidence that we have is that when the GHQ was attacked, Malika Saq was flown in to negotiate with the terrorists. Secondly, we also see that in Balochistan, the Halaras are being killed because the Baloch nationalist resistance is being countered by a proxy Islamist version. So there is a national security dimension. And sadly, in the Punjab, why this proliferates, why there's impunity, why no civilian or military government can actually crack down on these groups is because they are meshed into the whole jihad infrastructure. And so unless there's a jihad policy revision underway, you cannot really do much with these groups. And the electoral alliances that have come about in the last few years are actually just a kind of a symptom of the larger malaise, which is that these groups are far more powerful than political candidates. I mean, if you have five or 10,000 people armed, militia in a particular constituency, a politician has to be a pragmatist and make peace with them. No politician can actually fight them unless the state backs them. And the state does include the police and the intelligence outfits that operate both at the federal and provincial level. So I just wanted to add this to. OK, I think we'll take that as a moment to close. If any of you would like to make any final remarks, and that would be the time. I just, I mean, a very brief one just to applaud you and I support those statements. And just to elaborate a little bit, I think it's very interesting that you mention how the potential of offsetting the Beloch nationalist movement with mobilizing Beloch along religious lines. And I think that there's a broad history for the last three decades of the state having an interest in using religion to undercuts ethnic separatism. And I think it's very easy to draw the connection with the loss of East Pakistan and Bengali ethnic separatism. There are all kinds of potential ethnic separatisms in Pakistan that unifying factor is a nominal Islamic identity. Some people have taken it upon themselves to promote a particularly militant version of Islamic identity so as to undercut. I think in the case of Belochistan, it's a nice example where the nationalist movement is fairly secular at times even Marxist. So I think it's worth noting and thinking about that in particular and I think if you're raising that point. Can I just, just one quick point just to complicate the issue. Not to push it one in one direction but to demonstrate that the situation is quite blurry. So without contesting what was said, there are also indications that Lashkar-Jangbir elements within Lashkar-Jangbir and Belochistan have linkages to the Belochistan Liberation Army, so an anti-state ethnic supposedly secular militant group. So for example, on these three occasions of the past two years, when there was a mass casualty attack targeting the Shias, those attacks were preceded by smaller attacks that were claimed by the BLA or the Beloch Republican Army, the BRA. So when I spoke with this police official in Kuwait he had said that the objective was to, this first small attack pulls the police in one direction and that increases the possibility for the big attack to take place because police forces are former reduced in other areas of the city. So that doesn't mean that this is a simple binary that we either have elements of the state that are connected to these groups and anti-state forces are not. But what it demonstrates is that these groups, like Lashkar-Jangbir, very much have a solid presence in all these parts of the country. They're not like, let's say, ethnic Punjabis who are in Fatah. They're not sort of a fish out of their own water. These are ethnic Beloch who are based there and there are these kind of tactical alliances that occur between networks within one, cells within one network and seemingly conflicting alliances within that same network. I think I agree with what has been said, but I would like to also complicate this a little bit further. When you have the so-called Islamic State carving large territory and doing its own schools and its own education in physical territory that the rest of the world cannot access where it creates its space through social media and other alternatives to spread its ideology and things of this nature, it complicates the issue further. And these organizations, the Islamic State and others, they are networks of networks. They connect with each other very fast and they work and operate at the local level and they ally with each other very fast. But the forces that try to counter such ideology and such action is slower in response. And this is an issue that there are issues of centuries of myths and misinformation and demonize the ascension of the others. There comes out Fatwas and religious leaders from this corner of the world from that country but translating those into actually a common effort for those like Ayatollah, Al-Sistani and the Azhar and the others come in some form, they may come together, maybe their representation, but translating that into the ground, into action, this is still very much lacking in every corner of the world that struggles with this issue. There was a documentary, I think it was by PBS where they interview former Ambassador Ryan Crocker who served in Afghanistan and Iraq where he says the Islamic State is Al-Qaeda 6.0 and I tweeted about that, I said, but the world reaction to this and dealing with it is still at best 3.0. So changing education system, yes, this is something it's a must but we also need to look ahead of the curve and see where this is going with this much technology, with this transformation of ISIS, yes, came out of governance failure in Iraq and Syria but where this is going so that we can not be three steps behind the next time. Okay, so I'll have the last word then. I just wanted to say that I agree with Reza, I'm really glad you raised those points, I think they're really important because we have mentioned the role of the political parties in these alliances and that's my personal research interest, that's what I'm doing in my dissertation as well but I think it's very important not to remove this from the context of Pakistan, which is that the army and the ISI are very, very important when we talk when the word jihad comes up, jihadist networks, you can't not talk about the army. I think the role of Malik Ashok, the example that Reza cited, Newsweek has done wonderful articles on this topic and there's a reason he's not always been in jail, there's a reason he's been coming in and out and the reason is not the PMLN, they just don't have the power structure existing in Pakistan for this to be the case and you see in Karachi as well, when they were trying to target the MQM, Karachi police officials say that they would go and capture certain individuals and then they'd be asked by elements of the state to release them again and the same thing with the Punjab police, there's no consistent motivation for the Punjab police to target these elements because of orders that are being given and that's not evidence per se but it's certainly a narrative that exists and it's worth keeping in mind. Okay with that, thank you everyone again for joining us today and again if you're interested in any of the publications that were mentioned today there are copies in the back and they're on our website, usip.org, thanks. Thank you.