QUETTA: Crowded into “ghettos” surrounded by armed checkpoints, the Shia Hazara minority say they are being slaughtered by sectarian militants in the provincial capital, with authorities seemingly unable to halt the killings.

For years, hundreds of thousands of the community members have been hemmed into two enclaves cordoned off by numerous checkpoints and hundreds of armed guards designed to protect the minority from militants.

“It’s like a prison here,” said Bostan Ali, a Hazara activist, about conditions inside the enclaves.

“The Hazaras are experiencing mental torture,” he added, complaining the community has been effectively “cut off from the rest of the city” and “confined” to such areas.

The Shia community’s presence is particularly strong in Quetta, which frequently sees sectarian violence, suicide bombings and banditry.

Hazaras are technically free to roam around Quetta at their will, but few do, fearing attacks.

To further protect the group, day traders and market vendors are also given armed escorts when they leave their neighbourhoods, while ongoing military operations are said to be targeting militants in the restive province.

But even these measures have proven inept at stopping major attacks on Hazaras.

The situation across the border in Afghanistan is equally, if not more, dangerous with Hazara mosques, schools, and community events regularly attacked by insurgents.

At the entrance to Hazara town — one of the two enclaves in Quetta — a grim scene plays out every day as Hazara men squeeze into the backs of a long line of trucks headed in the city to buy food from the markets.

Once there, they are flanked by soldiers as they buy supplies before heading back to their homes in a heavily armed convoy.

Authorities insist the measures are a necessity.

In the last five years, 500 Hazaras have been killed and another 627 wounded in Quetta alone, according to a security source familiar with the situation who asked not to be named.

“We know that we are passing through a killing field,” explained Nauroz Ali, about life outside the enclaves. He added: “But we have to earn a living for our families.”

Criticised for their inability to stop the attacks, officials point to their own casualties in the fight against sectarian extremists as proof that they are trying their best.

Over the past six years, in their efforts to protect them “more police officers have died than Hazaras”, says local police officer Abdur Razzak Cheema, adding that many terrorists have been arrested and others eliminated due to their efforts.

He explained: “New groups emerge. We’re trying to track them down and eradicate the threat.”

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2019