The recent killing of Malik Ishaq one of the most controversial figureheads of the banned sectarian militant outfit, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LeJ) saw a number of commentaries on the organisation appear in the electronic and print media.

Though most of these analyses correctly focused on the fact that the LeJ was an off-shoot of another sectarian group, the Sipah Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), many commentators failed to point out that the SSP too was an off-shoot.

Formed in 1985 (in Jhang, Punjab), the SSP emerged as a militant anti-Shia outfit that claimed to be working towards stemming the tide of ‘Shia influence’ in Pakistan especially after the formation of a revolutionary ‘Islamic regime’ in the Shia-majority country of Iran (in 1979).

Though it is correct to assume that the reactionary dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq somewhat facilitated the formation of the SSP, the organisation was not entirely the construct of the said regime.

There is substantial political history behind the mushrooming of militant sectarian outfits

In his book, The Militant, author M. Amir Rana traces the emergence of SSP as an outfit that was formed by a splinter group from the mainstream religious party, the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI).

The JUI was formed in the late 1940s by a group of Islamic scholars and clerics belonging to one of India’s main Deobandi Sunni Muslim parties, the Jamiat Ulema Hind (JUH).

The JUH, though a staunch religious outfit, had sided with the Indian Congress party that was opposing the All India Muslim League’s bid to create a separate Muslim homeland in the region.

After Jinnah’s Muslim League succeeded in creating the Muslim-majority country of Pakistan in 1947, these men completely split from JUH and formed the JUI that became one of the largest Deobandi religious parties in Pakistan.

In the late 1960s when leftist sentiments and parties were in the ascendency in Pakistan, JUI became the only right-wing religious party to overtly support the agendas of populist progressive outfits such as the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the National Awami Party (NAP).

JUI refused to support an attempt by other religious parties to denounce the socialist groups as being ‘un-Islamic’. What’s more, the party also launched an aggressive polemical onslaught against Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of the conservative Jamaat-i-Islami.

Professor Philip E. Jones in his detailed study of the historic 1970 election in Pakistan, mentions that at one point the JUI had even exhibited interest in contesting the said election as an ally of the then overtly socialist PPP.

Most religious and conservative parties were routed by the PPP and NAP (in the former West Pakistan) and by the Bengali nationalist party, the Awami League (in former East Pakistan) in the election.

The only religious party to do well in that election was the JUI that then went on to form a coalition government with the left-wing NAP in the NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). The JUI was being headed by Mufti Mehmood.

The JUI finally had a falling out with the PPP when the latter’s government in the centre dismissed the NAP regime in Balochistan and consequently the NAP-JUI coalition in NWFP resigned in protest.

In 1974 the student-wing of JUI took an active part in the JI-led agitation against the Ahmadiyya community, and in late 1976 the party became a senior partner in the large anti-PPP grouping, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA).

JUI also directly participated in PNA’s 1977 movement against the PPP regime. The movement uncannily helped General Ziaul Haq to use the resultant turmoil as a pretext to launch a military coup.

Though JI and some Muslim League factions welcomed the coup, JUI immediately denounced it and (in 1981) joined the PPP-led anti-Zia alliance, the Movement For The Restoration of Democracy (MRD).

In an era when (with the logistical help of the Zia regime and US and Saudi funding), seminaries had rapidly begun to crop up (to indoctrinate fighters against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan), the JUI too was given a free hand to establish madressahs, especially in NWFP and Balochistan.

JUI happily took this opportunity to increase its network of seminaries, but at the same time it continued being an integral part of the anti-Zia MRD!

A senior leader of the party, Maulana Samiul Haq, who wanted the party to join the Zia regime, broke away from party leader, Maulana Fazalul Rehman, and formed his own (pro-Zia) faction of the JUI, the JUI-Sami.

Meanwhile, during the same period, some cadres who were part of JUI’s youth wing in the 1970s formed the SSP. One of them was Haq Nawaz Jhangvi who had been radicalised by 1974’s anti-Ahmadiyya movement and then graduated to become an important member of the JUI in the 1980s.

SSP soon became the most militant expression of anti-Shia politics in Pakistan. It was mainly backed and funded by the Sunni trader classes in the city of Jhang who saw the organisation as a radical anti-feudal outfit because most landowners in Jhang had belonged to the Shia sect.

But according to Amir Mir’s book, ‘From 9/11 to 26/11’, the pro-SSP trader classes were not entirely comfortable with its overtly militant ways. They wanted it to counter the so-called Shia political and economic influence (in Jhang) through the mosque and, more so, from the national and provincial assemblies.

From 1988 onwards, SSP men began to regularly contest polls from Jhang. In 1990, Jhangvi was assassinated (allegedly by Shia gunmen in retaliation for the killing of a prominent religious leader of a Shia group).

Thus began a vicious cycle of killings and retaliatory assassinations between Sunni and Shia militants. In 1996 a group walked out of the SSP and formed the LeJ, after accusing the SSP leadership of deviating from Jhangvi’s philosophy.

In 2002, both SSP and LeJ were banned by the Musharraf regime along with the main Shia sectarian organisation, the Tehreek-i-Jafiria.

SSP remoulded itself and returned as Millat-i-Islamia but was banned again. However it remerged, this time as Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamat (ASWJ), whereas LeJ went entirely rogue and has often been accused of undertaking numerous bombings and assassinations.

Though ASWJ has retained SSP’s firebrand sectarian character, however, it now claims that it pursues its goals through political and legal means.

Last week when Malik Ishaq was killed in a police encounter, with him also went two other top tier leaders of the LeJ. The fourth one is in jail.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 9th, 2015

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