[In Quetta, where most
Pakistani Hazaras live, the attacks are led by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a
fanatical group that views Shiites as heretics. With their distinctive Central
Asian features and historical links to anti-Taliban forces, the Hazaras make an
appealing target. After a decade of intermittent attacks, bloodshed is suddenly
surging: two Lashkar suicide bombings this year killed almost 200 people, up
from 125 in 2012.]
By Declan Walsh
KARACHI, Pakistan — Stranded in a dingy hotel in the heart of this port city, waiting
for the smuggler’s call, Hussain felt at once trapped and poised for freedom.
Behind lay his hometown,
Quetta, the city in western Pakistan that has become a killing ground for Sunni sectarian death squads that
hunt Shiites. So far this year they have killed almost 200 people,
and Hussain was nearly one of them. Lifting a pants leg, he displayed an
eight-inch scar from a bomb blast in January.
But great danger also
lay ahead. Hussain was headed for Australia, where thousands
of his fellow ethnic Hazaras, Shiites who have borne the brunt of the recent
violence, have sought refuge. The illegal journey — across Southeast Asia by
air, ground and sea at the mercy of unscrupulous human traffickers — would be
long and perilous. Several hundred Hazaras had died on that route in recent
years, most when their rickety boats foundered at sea.
For Hussain, it was
worth the risk.
“I’d rather die in the
boat than in a bomb blast,” he said, twisting a cup of coffee nervously in a
restaurant near the hotel. “At least this way, I get to choose.”
Hussain, 25, is part of
a growing exodus of young Hazara men who are fleeing Pakistan as it has become
apparent that their government and military cannot, or will not, protect them
from violent extremists.
In Quetta, where most
Pakistani Hazaras live, the attacks are led by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a
fanatical group that views Shiites as heretics. With their distinctive Central
Asian features and historical links to anti-Taliban forces, the Hazaras make an
appealing target. After a decade of intermittent attacks, bloodshed is suddenly
surging: two Lashkar suicide bombings this year killed almost 200 people, up
from 125 in 2012.
That toll set off a
long-overdue security crackdown, but the attacks resumed last Tuesday with a
suicide attack on a Hazara politician that killed six people. To young men like
Hussain, whose family runs a clothes shop, the next bomb is only a matter of
time.
“We can live without the
basics of life — gas, electricity and so on,” said Hussain, who asked to be
identified by just part of his name in the hope of avoiding arrest on his
journey. “But we can’t live with the fear.”
Hussain’s older brother
was shot and killed by militants in 2008. His own brush with death came on Jan.
10, after a powerful blast ripped through a snooker hall near his house. As
Hussain rushed to help, he was caught in a second explosion that killed rescue
workers, police officers and journalists. He blacked out.
“I don’t remember the
sound of the blast,” he said. “Just the feeling, like a sort of sonic pulse.”
He awoke in the hospital with 36 stitches in one leg and learned that three of
his closest friends were among the 84 dead.
It was becoming clear
that the Lashkar killers could operate with impunity. “They take their time.
They select. Then they shoot,” he said.
The final straw came on
March 7, when the military summoned Hussain and other Hazara traders to a
meeting in Haideri bazaar, a popular market. As soldiers stood guard outside,
an army colonel offered the merchants some sobering advice: they needed to buy
handguns, he said.
Some people reacted
angrily, and began berating the military officers, demanding better protection,
Hussain recalled. But he went home to make a phone call. Two years earlier, his
younger brother had left for Australia, where he had gotten a job in a fast
food restaurant. Now Hussain needed to hear his voice.
“Just come,” the brother
said.
Three days later,
Hussain had agreed to pay $6,000 to a trafficker and was on a flight to Karachi,
on the first leg of a journey across Asia that would be as emotionally
wrenching as it was sudden.
In the plane, he found
himself comforting a weeping 16-year-old boy, also Hazara, who said he had been
forced to leave by his parents. In the shabby Karachi hotel, he shared a room
with “Master,” a 41-year-old shoe trader from Quetta, also bound for Australia.
With thinning hair and a
quick grin, Master, who would give only his nickname, had an avuncular manner.
But when conversation turned to the three bewildered daughters, aged 7, 9 and
13, he had left behind in Quetta a day earlier, the smile faded and his eyes
welled up.
“I will bring them to
Australia,” he said in a cracking voice. “This country is no longer for us
Hazaras.”
As with many other
Hazaras aiming for Australia — from Afghanistan as well as Pakistan — their
starting point was Karachi. From there, the journey is arduous and uncertain.
Refugees first fly to Thailand or Malaysia, often via Sri Lanka, after their
agents bribe immigration officers and Pakistani
border officials. The trek continues by land and sea across Malaysia and
Indonesia, in cars and trains, dodging police patrols, overnighting at
flophouses.
Some migrants are
arrested by police officers and border guards along the way and deported back
to Pakistan; others are extorted or abandoned by the traffickers, or robbed on
the roadside. In many cases, they end up paying thousands of dollars more — in
bribes to crooked border officers or supplemental fees to smugglers — so they
can keep pressing toward Australia.
The last leg is the most
treacherous. In Indonesia, migrants buy tickets aboard small, overcrowded boats
bound for Christmas Island, a small Australian territory about 240 miles off
the Indonesian coast, where they apply for political asylum. There, they join
other boat people — Sri Lankans, Iranians, Afghans, Iraqis.
Safe arrival is by no
means guaranteed. Between late 2001 and last June, 964 asylum seekers and boat
crew members from various countries are known to have lost their lives on this
passage, said Sandi Logan, a spokesman for the Australian government’s
Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
Habibullah, a
22-year-old student from Quetta, was nearly one of them. Last October, he
joined 34 Hazara men on a boat bound for Christmas Island. Within 24 hours, the
boat had sunk in a storm. Mr. Habibullah, who has only one name, says he was
the sole survivor, picked up by an Indonesian fishing boat after three days
clinging to floating debris.
In a harrowing written account of
those events sent by e-mail, and in a phone interview from Indonesia, Mr.
Habibullah described a traumatic ordeal.
He spoke of long hours
in the water, whipped by waves and fearing sharks, desperately calling out to
distant passing ships. But most anguishing, he said, was the sight of fellow
passengers slipping under the waves, some calling out to their wives or
parents.
Mr. Habibullah,
suffering extreme thirst and sharp kidney pain, sustained himself by thinking
of his home in Quetta. “I remembered my past, surrounded by my parents,” he
wrote. “And I realized they were with me.”
It is impossible to
confirm Mr. Habibullah’s account independently. But Hazara community leaders in
Quetta confirmed that several men accompanying Mr. Habibullah had died, and
some of their photographs have been published on blogs.
Mr. Habibullah sounded
despondent. Conditions at the government detention center in Indonesia were
grim, he said, and he was struggling to gain an asylum hearing from the United
Nations refugee agency. Nine months after leaving home, and having spent
$15,000 on bribes, transportation and smuggler’s fees, he had not reached
Australia.
Still, he understood why
other Hazaras wanted to make the journey. “It’s worth it,” he said.
The Australian
government has tried to deter the boat people. Last year, it began transferring
asylum seekers to detention centers on two remote Pacific islands while their
cases are heard. Human rights groups and United Nations officials have
condemned conditions at the camps, and Australian news media have reported
several suicide attempts there in recent months.Responding to the criticism,
Australian officials say they have increased their humanitarian refugee quota
to 20,000 this year, a 40 percent increase. At the same time, in countries like
Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, the Australian government has started an
advertising campaign seeking to persuade potential refugees to stay at home.
Yet still they keep
coming. In the first weeks of April, according to official figures, the
Australian Navy intercepted 10 boats carrying 760 people, most bound for
Christmas Island. The majority of cases from Afghanistan and Pakistan were
ethnic Hazaras, whose numbers have grown to about 25,000 people in Australia,
officials say.
Before leaving Karachi,
Hussain and Master took a stroll along the beach, dipping their toes in the
Arabian Sea and meandering among the young families on the sand.
Hussain stressed that if
not for the extremist threat, he would not be leaving Pakistan. Ten months
earlier he had married his sweetheart, a local teacher, whom he had left
behind. His family made a good living from its clothes business. And patriotism
ran in the family — his grandfather had served in Pakistan’s army.
“This could be the last
time I see Pakistan,” he said, staring out at the waves.
His younger brother had
warned him of a daunting journey ahead — “Expect it to be hell,” were his words
— and so he was relying on the religious items around his neck: a small leather
pouch containing two folded Koranic inscriptions, from his father and his wife,
and a black pendant inscribed with the words “Y’Allah Madaat” — “Oh God, help
me.”
Over the following
weeks, he sent several messages: from Bangkok, where he was staying in a
cramped room with 16 other refugees (“Waiting, waiting, and so on,” he wrote),
then, in late March, from Indonesia.
Master had been arrested
in a car headed for a port in Malaysia, Hussain said. But he had managed to
escape, and had arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, where he would seek a
boat to Australia.
This month, a boat
carrying about 90 people, most of them Hazaras, sunk en
route to Australia. Hussain was depressed, but undeterred. “I’m looking
forward,” he wrote. Then he added: “May God help me.”