planet earth looks blue

Violence heats up in Pakistan as the oil wars spill over the Afghan-Pakistan border.  31 people were killed by a suicide bomber at the funeral of a leader of the Shia community, Sher Zaman.  Zaman was assassinated yesterday, shot in the middle of the day by a man who then sped off on a motorbike.  Sixty people were injured in today’s attack, with more casualties expected.  

A group called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is thought to be behind the violence against the Shia community.  They are supported by the Taliban.  Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was formed in 1996 when a group of Sunni extremists broke from another Sunni radical group, the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, because they felt that Sipah had deviated from the original edicts of the deceased founder, Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi.  The objective of Lashkar is to turn Pakistan into a Sunni state.  The group is responsible for numerous killings of doctors, lawyers, religious scholars, teachers, and activists, as well as the more recent suicide bombing attacks, which kill indiscriminately, since 2000.  The group has also targeted Iranians.  

Although this attack and others like it, from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Pakistan, is Sunni against Shia, why is the rise in violence coinciding with American military presence?  These groups are not killing American soldiers in massive numbers, but their own countrymen. They are pursuing their own agendas according to their religious beliefs.  But would they be so bold and hateful without the oil wars?  Would they have the ability to recruit financing and foot soldiers, without foreign presence?  It is tension.  And without the one force, there wouldn’t be the other.  I don’t think the American military has any idea of how to fight these people, or protect civilians.  The minute they step into a country and start bombing their own targets, more people die.  This is a mess - there is not one enemy, one centralized power to defeat.  When one arm is cut off, this causes another one to grow, with no head to kill the whole body.  I’m afraid this is an unbreakable foe. Then is the only way to destroy it to starve it of the two things that it feeds off of - hate and violence?