Pakistan military intelligence under fire for failing to prevent Quetta bombing
Inter-Services Intelligence agency too 'scared' to tackle growing terror campaign against Hazara minority, governor says
Jon Boone in Karachi
Shia Muslims in Lahore take to the streets to protest against Saturday's bombing in Quetta, which killed 85 people. Photograph: Rahat Dar/EPA
Pakistan's all-powerful military intelligence services have been on the receiving end of unusually harsh public criticism for being "scared to take action" against militant groups in the wake of a bomb attack that killed 85 members of the Hazara ethnic minority.
A senior politician and the country's highest-profile television journalist have lashed out at the military Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency (ISI) after Saturday's mass killings in the troubled city of Quetta, which sparked countrywide protests.
Hamid Mir, who present's Pakistan's most popular news show, said the ISI had ignored a tide of sectarian bloodshed after deliberately creating "private death squads" to fight a war against separatists in the country's troubled Baluchistan province.
Mir's remarks came after the governor of Baluchistan said the huge blast in a crowded market showed a "failure of our intelligence agencies".
The security forces are either "scared or cannot take action against" militant groups, governor Zulfiqar Magsi said.
Human rights groups that have previously dared to make similar claims – usually couched in far more diplomatic language – have been vilified by the army.
Mir spoke out, both to the Guardian and in a column in the country's biggest Urdu language newspaper, amid continued outrage over the bombing, which used nearly a tonne of explosives hidden in a water tanker.
Demonstrations took place across the country on Monday in protest at the attack, which was claimed by the banned Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Karachi was almost completely shut down by a one-day strike.
Nadeem Paracha, a columnist for the Dawn newspaper, said a "sense of horror and tragedy is being felt by all Pakistanis … It's very noticeable that this is the first time the people are not just blaming the government, but asking what exactly the intelligence agencies that are paid millions of rupees up to?"
Quetta's Hazara community, which is overwhelmingly drawn from the minority Shia sect of Islam, mounted a powerful protest by ignoring the Islamic burial custom of quickly burying the dead. Community leaders vowed the bodies of 71 victims would remain on public display in a prayer hall until their demands for action were met.
"We want concrete actions," said Abdul Khaliq Hazara, the president of the Hazara Democratic party said. "They are killing our women, our young people and even young children aged three to five."
It was the second time in five weeks that the Hazaras had taken the drastic step. In January, nearly 100 victims of a vicious double bombing at a snooker hall were laid out on the streets. The prime minister responded by flying to Quetta and sacking the provincial government.
But rule by a governor directly appointed by Islamabad has not been able to stop what has been termed a "Shia genocide" in Pakistan. Many Shias are demanding the army take direct control of Baluchistan, something critics of military policy in the province say misses the point.
"The fact is that the military and paramilitary forces have been in control of the province all the time," said Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director of Human Rights Watch.
"When protesters demand army rule in Quetta in effect what they are doing is calling the army's bluff, asking it to take responsibility for what it has in fact been in charge of all along."
But it is criticism from popular journalists like Mir, who was once thought to be close to the army, that will most sting the ISI.
"Some of these people who go by the name of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi are part of the same private death squads created by the security agencies against Baluch militants," Mir told the Guardian hours before he prepared to repeat his claims on his hugely popular programme Capital Talk.
"Yes, sometimes they oblige the security agencies by taking action against the Baluch militants, but on the other hand they quietly organise their own actions against the Shia community.
"Every Pakistani is aware that this is a complete failure by the intelligence agencies. Now we want to know, what action has the governor of the province, or the president, or the army chief, taken against these failed intelligence operators?"
Violence by Sunni fundamentalists against Shias, who they regard as apostates, is a growing problem in Pakistan. There have been attacks in every major city and murderous ambushes of buses carrying Shia passengers in the mountainous north.
The outlook for Quetta's 500,000 Hazaras is especially bleak. As an ethnic group, they have distinctive features that make them easy to target and also speak a dialect of Persian.
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