QUETTA, PAKISTAN – Inside the ruins of a market demolished by a powerful bomb, four tiny white candles — dwarfed by the scale of the destruction — flickered gently in the freezing rain as dazed Shiite Muslim Hazaras wept for the nearly 90 people killed in the blast.
Condemning the Pakistani government for doing little to protect them, the small ethnic group has vowed to set up its own defense force to deal with Sunni extremists they blame for the bombing and a series of other ferocious attacks that have killed nearly 400 ethnic Hazaras in the past 18 months — nearly half this year.
The mid-February attack in the southwestern city of Quetta ripped a swath of devastation that flattened a three-story building and left scores of single-room shops in ruins, exposed to the rain. Blood-soaked rugs were all that was left of one carpet store.
“The ones who did this — they are not human. They are animals,” said Surha, a young woman who goes by one name, a common tradition in the area, as she grieved at the site after the bombing.
Shiite leaders blame inaction by Pakistan’s security service for the rising violence against them in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province. They said recently that they are petitioning the provincial administration of Baluchistan to approve a Hazara-led defense force able to work with local police.
“Of course I blame the government,” Surha said, her voice getting louder.
Wrapped in a large beige shawl to ward off the cold, she recounted how two of her young cousins died in the bombing after returning home from school to help their father in his used clothing shop. Her face was wracked in pain, her voice cracked.
“The government is responsible for this situation because daily it is happening to us and nothing is done to stop it,” she said.
Many Hazaras, who are mostly Shiite Muslims, migrated from neighboring Afghanistan during the past century. They are easily recognized by their distinctive Central Asian facial features, which Hazara leaders say make them easy targets for militant Sunnis.
“We can’t hide who we are. You can see it in our faces. I don’t see it getting better,” said teacher Allama Muhammad Juma Asadi.
His school, Jamia Imam Sadiq, is just a couple blocks from a massive bombing that killed more than 100 people on Jan. 10. Terrified students ran into the street in utter chaos, he said.
When a second explosion leveled the market Feb. 16, Hazara leaders began to talk of self-protection and raising a security force of their own. “Very soon we will have our own people at the checkpoints,” Asadi said. “We have discussed setting up our own protection force with the administration.”
Radicals have attacked non-Hazara Shiites elsewhere in the country, but some of the worst attacks have occurred in Baluchistan — where most Hazaras live. A virulent anti-Shiite group, Lashkar-e-Janghvi, has taken responsibility for all of the attacks. The militant organization is made up of radical Sunni Muslims and reviles Shiites as heretics.
About 20 million of Pakistan’s 180 million people are Shiites, who mostly live in harmony with the majority Sunni population. But extremist groups from both sides have sprung up in the country over the decades, often with suspected financial links to Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, and Iran, a Shiite powerhouse in the region.
“A crumbling state has failed to stop slaughter after slaughter and to provide even basic security to its hapless citizens, leaving them at the mercy of the murderers,” Zahid Hussain, an author and expert on the militant groups, recently wrote in a local newspaper.
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