{Day after deadly ISIL attack, more than 100 gather to wash blood-soaked floors of the shrine and continue ritual.}<\/p>\n
Islamabad and Karachi – Sufi devotees have returned to their shrine in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province less than a day after it was targeted in a suicide attack, in defiance of ISIL which claimed the bombing.<\/p>\n
Thursday’s blast, which killed at least 88 people and wounded hundreds as they performed a ritual, was the worst attack on Pakistani soil since a 2014 school attack in the northwestern city of Peshawar, which killed at least 154, mostly children.<\/p>\n
On Friday evening, about 150 residents of the southern town of Sehwan returned to the shrine of Syed Muhammad Usman Marwandi, better known as Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, a revered 13th-century Sufi philosopher and poet who is venerated by millions across South Asia.<\/p>\n
Caretakers washed and cleaned the white marble floors, which were streaked with blood and scattered debris, as others prepared for the evening ritual of the dhamaal – a form of devotional percussion and dance.<\/p>\n
As the drums began, the faithful raised their arms and began the ritual, moving rhythmically to the quickening beat.<\/p>\n
“This is Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, any terrorist, any number of terrorist attacks will not scare us. The dhamaal will continue, and must continue,” said Ali Otho, a worshipper.<\/p>\n
Devotees said they would not allow anyone, attackers nor police seeking to secure the location, to stop them from praying at the grave of their patron saint.<\/p>\n
“This is no place for the police,” said Haja Shah, one of the shrine’s caretakers, with tears in his eyes. “This is our place.”<\/p>\n
Security forces, meanwhile, launched a series of raids following the attack, killing at least 100 people, all identified as “terrorists”.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify that figure, which was cited in a military in a statement on Friday.<\/p>\n
The raids followed the closure of Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, where the government says Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other armed groups enjoy safe havens.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Pakistan handed Afghanistan a list with the names of 76 “terrorists”, demanding immediate action be taken against them.<\/p>\n
The “terrorists” in hiding were planning, directing and supporting fighters across the border, the statement explained.<\/p>\n
In a call to the commander of the US-led NATO force in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, Pakistani army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa hinted at the possibility of pursuing operations within Afghan territory if action was not taken.<\/p>\n
“Such terrorist activities and inaction against them are testing our current policy of cross-border restraint,” Bajwa said, according to a statement.<\/p>\n
{{Wave of attacks}}<\/p>\n
Armed groups such as the Pakistani Taliban and others have often targeted shrines for not conforming to their strict, literalist interpretation of Islam.<\/p>\n
In November, ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a shrine in a Balochistan town, killing at least 52 people.<\/p>\n
Thursday’s attack was the latest in a wave of violence this week that has claimed more than 100 lives.<\/p>\n
On Monday, at least 13 people were killed when a suicide attacker targeted police at a protest in Lahore, the country’s second-largest city.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, two police officers were killed while trying to defuse a bomb in the southwestern city of Quetta.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, two suicide attacks in the northwestern city of Peshawar and the Mohmand tribal area claimed at least six lives.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, in addition to the 88 killed at the shrine, at least seven security forces personnel were killed in two separate attacks in Dera Ismail Khan and Awaran.<\/p>\n
{{Roots of violence}}<\/p>\n
Much of that violence, with the exception of Thursday’s attack on the Sufi minority, was claimed by the Pakistan Taliban’s Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction, which has worked with ISIL, also known as ISIS, in the past but remains separate from it.<\/p>\n
“Pakistan has underestimated the potential for ISIL here,” Zahid Hussain, a veteran Pakistan journalist and security analyst, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
“Authorities always said that ISIL could not create an organisation here, but there are already organisations operating in Pakistan that agree with their ideology, like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and others.”<\/p>\n
Pakistan has repeatedly blamed Afghanistan for giving safe haven to fighters on its side of the border, and vice versa.<\/p>\n
However, analysts say that trading blame is proving counterproductive.<\/p>\n
“The real issue is that the attacks are happening here. The networks are here, the facilitators are here \u2026 it is a flawed view that all of these attackers are coming from Afghanistan,” said Hussain.<\/p>\n
{{“The people are here.”}}<\/p>\n
Mosharraf Zaidi, former adviser to Pakistan’s foreign ministry, told Al Jazeera: “It doesn’t help anybody to fixate on the problem of Afghanistan as being the only problem that we face.<\/p>\n
While there are groups that use safe havens in Afghanistan, the “core of problem Pakistan faces today is inside Pakistan”.<\/p>\n
The “network of terrorists exists in this country”, he explained, and the “solution is also inside Pakistan”.<\/p>\n
Hussain said while a Pakistani military operation has succeeded in dislodging the Pakistani Taliban from its headquarters, the group’s networks with other armed groups – including those targeting minorities and Indian security forces in Kashmir – remain intact.<\/p>\n
“This is not unexpected because half-hearted measures always lead to these situations,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The real issue was the network of militants in the heartland, in the main cities. They were intact, and even though we have been hearing reports of thousands arrested … what happens to them?”<\/p>\n
Hussain’s views were echoed by Ijaz Khan, a professor at Peshawar University and security analyst.<\/p>\n
“What happened when [the military operation] started: terrorists of different organisations felt the pressure and some of their safe havens were destroyed,” he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
Sounding a warning of further attacks, he said: “They were dislocated, but not finished. Now, they have regrouped themselves.”<\/p>\n
Source:Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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