Terror in Peshawar: On attack on Shia mosque

Suicide attack on a Shia mosque in Peshawar, killing at least 62 people, is a grim reminder of Pakistan’s growing security challenges and continued persecution of Shia minorities in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region following the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan. It was the deadliest attack in Pakistan since the Quetta bombing in 2018, in which 149 people were killed. The Islamic State terrorist organization, which has carried out several suicide attacks in Afghanistan since the capture of Kabul by the Taliban in August 2021, has claimed responsibility for the bombing. The sectarian animosity of IS towards Shias is well known. In Iraq and Syria, IS has conducted systematic attacks against Shias, whom they call “rejectors” of Islam, because they belong to a different branch of the faith. In Afghanistan, IS-Khorasan has targeted religious minorities such as Shias and Sikhs. He uses sectarian attacks to support his murderous ideology among Sunni fundamentalists. Earlier, IS-K in Afghanistan was confined to the eastern province of Nangarhar. But a complete breakdown of security in the final stages of the Taliban insurgency and the fall of President Ashraf Ghani of the Islamic Republic last year have given IS a new lease of life. The Peshawar attack shows that the threat of IS is now spreading across Pakistan’s porous border.

Shias, who make up about 20% of Pakistan’s population, face increasing sectarian violence by extremist groups and state crackdown under notorious blasphemy laws. Ahl-e-Sunnat-Wal-Jamaat and Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, two hardline Sunni groups, have been at the forefront of the anti-Shia campaign in the country. In July 2020, the Punjab Assembly passed a bill (Tahfuz-e-Banyad-e-Islam), which supported only the Sunni interpretation of Islam. Terrorist organizations like IS are trying to take advantage of these existing sectarian enmities by attacking Shia mosques. What they want in Pakistan and Afghanistan is what they want in Iraq and Syria – a Shia-Sunni sectarian civil war. The danger this time around is political change in Afghanistan. As the Taliban became the ruler of Afghanistan, IS emerged as the main armed opposition to the Taliban. The Taliban’s relationship with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, also known as the Pakistan Taliban) also complicates the security situation for Pakistan. Islamabad supported the Afghan Taliban to seize power in Kabul. The Afghan Taliban support their ideological brothers TTP, who are fighting the Pakistani army. As the security situation in the Af-Pak region remains critical, groups like IS are increasingly pursuing their terror agenda. The Peshawar attack should serve as a warning to Pakistan, which sees the wheel of jihad returning. If it does not check the wider anti-Shia narrative and find a way to deal with the security challenges posed by both the TTP and IS-K, its borders could once again turn into anarchy and communal bloodshed.