A few hours flight away from Pakistan’s Independence morning, a similarly commemorative dawn rose in Manama, the capital city of Bahrain. Like Pakistan, Bahrain also celebrated its independence from British rule on the 14th of August. It was on that day in 1971 that the United Nations denied the Iranian claim to the island and permitted the Kingdom of Bahrain to establish their own state. On this past Independence Day morning, things were particularly tense. On the days leading up to it, there were rumors that the Opposition to the regime that now calls itself the “Tamarrod” or “rebel” movement would be holding protests. In turn, the statements from Bahrain’s regime were also terse. Not satisfied with rounding up at least 1200 people in the past six months, the Bahraini regime planned an even bigger crackdown come Independence Day.
This is where Pakistan enters the picture of oppression in Bahrain. News of Pakistani soldiers beings shipped to Bahrain first came almost two years ago, when the uprising had only just begun. According to a news report from July 2011, Pakistani soldiers were front and center in the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. According to the report, nearly 2500 Pakistani soldiers, including former army drill instructors, military police and riot police were all supplied following several visits to Islamabad by Bahraini and Saudi officials. Recruited into the Special Forces Units of the Bahraini National Guard, the Pakistani soldiers for hire were put in charge of suppressing the country’s majority Shia protesters against the country’s minority Sunni monarchy.
In the years since 2011, Pakistan has seen a dramatic escalation of violence against its own Shia population. Buses halted by firing squads, bombs outside mosques, entire apartment buildings blown up and professors gunned down are all incidents from Pakistan’s own grotesque tapestry of anti-Shia violence. In the wake of the violence, state complicity in promoting violence against Shias and discrimination against their religious beliefs has been roundly denied. Indeed state officials have pointed to the motley of terrorist groups, from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan to Lashkar-e-Taiba and numerous others as responsible for the pogroms. Indeed, the manifestos of the groups openly preach the extermination of Pakistan’s Shia population as a necessary rite of “purifying” the country into their version of Islamic authenticity. This at least is the official narrative. The Pakistani State is not responsible for the violence, does not condone it and tries to prevent it. The Pakistani military has lost thousands of soldiers to fighting the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan forces, who are leading the massacres of the country’s Shia.
This August 14, 2013 local sources from Bahrain confirmed that once again foreign military detachments, including Pakistani soldiers were being deployed in Manama to quell Shia led pro-democracy protests that were expected. This news means that even while anti-Shia violence has escalated in Pakistan and the state has repeatedly asserted its opposition to it, no revision of the policy of supplying troops to another country, to put down their Shia population and pro-democracy rebellion has occurred. This continued supply of military forces suggests an incipient hypocrisy. Either it must be believed that Pakistani soldiers are simply thugs for hire who will kill and quell at the behest of any Arab nation that requests such assistance. Or it can be assumed that the killing of Shia Muslims, whether it occurs in Pakistan or in Bahrain, enjoys a wider degree of support than is being overtly acknowledged.
As a democracy whose Constitution endorses equal rights for all citizens regardless of their religious faith, a polity whose own people continue to struggle to establish representative governance; and a military that actually fights those that promote the killing of Shias it makes absolutely no sense to be supplying soldiers for the anti-Shia, anti-democracy oppressions of others. Bahrain and the rest of the Arab World have their own wars to fight; their own roads to democracy to pave, Pakistanis cannot and must not be the obstacles in their path.