QUETTA — In a rare challenge, a Shiite Muslim leader publicly criticized Pakistani military chief General Ashfaq Kayani over security in the country on Friday after bombings targeting the minority sect killed 125 people. The criticism of Kayani, arguably the most powerful man in the South Asian state, highlighted Shiite frustrations with Pakistan's failure to contain Sunni militant groups who have vowed to wipe out Shiites. “I ask the army chief: What have you done with these extra three years you got (in office)? What did you give us except more death?” Maulana Amin Shaheedi, who heads a national council of Shiite organizations, told a news conference. Most of Thursday's deaths were caused by twin attacks aimed Shiites in the southwestern city of Quetta, near the Afghan border, where members of the minority have long accused the state of turning a blind eye to Sunni death squads. Shiite leaders were so outraged at the latest bloodshed that they called for the military to take control of Quetta to shield them and said they would not allow the 85 victims of twin bomb attacks to be buried until their demands were met. The burials had been scheduled to take place after Friday prayers but the bodies would remain in place until Shiites had received promises of protection. Shaheedi said scores of bodies were still lying on a road. “They will not be buried until the army comes into Quetta.” Violence against Pakistani Shiite is rising and some communities are living in a state of siege, a human rights group said on Friday. “Last year was the bloodiest year for Shias in living memory,” said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch. “More than 400 were killed and if yesterday's attack is any indication, its just going to get worse.” A suicide bomber first targeted a snooker club in Quetta. A car bomb blew up nearby 10 minutes later after police and rescuers had arrived. In all, 85 people were killed and 121 wounded. Nine police and 20 rescue workers were among the dead. “It was like doomsday. Bodies were lying everywhere,” said police officer Mir Zubair Mehmood. The banned Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jangvi (LeJ) claimed responsibility for the attack in what is a predominantly Shiite neighborhood where the residents are ethnic Hazaras, Shiites who first migrated from Afghanistan in the 19th century. While US intelligence agencies have focused on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Pakistani intelligence officials say LeJ is emerging as a graver threat to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed, strategic ally of the United States. It has stepped up attacks against Shiites across the country but has zeroed in on members of the sect who live in resource-rich Balochistan province, of which Quetta is capital. The paramilitary Frontier Corps is largely responsible for security in Balochistan province but Shiites say it is unable or unwilling to protect them from the LeJ. The LeJ wants to impose a Sunni theocracy by stoking Sunni-Shiite violence. It bombs religious processions and shoots civilians in the type of attacks that pushed countries like Iraq towards civil war. The latest attacks prompted an outpouring of grief, rage and fear among Shiites, many of whom have concluded that the state has left them at the mercy of the LeJ and other extremist groups who believe they are non-Muslims. “The LeJ operates under one front or the other, and its activists go around openly shouting ‘infidel, infidel, Shiite infidel' and ‘death to Shiites' in the streets of Quetta and outside our mosques,” said Syed Dawwod Agha, a top official with the Balochistan Shiite Conference. “We have become a community of grave diggers. We are so used to death now that we always have shrouds ready.” — Reuters
