THEY WERE OASES OF PEACE. BUT NOW THEY ARE THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACES IN THE WORLD

Mali is one of these lost paradises. Another is the Pakistani city of Quetta. Here is a comparison between what they are and what they were, just a few years ago

by Sandro Magister

"Sangue in Pakistan"

ROME, January 21, 2013 – The above is the main title of the front page of "L'Osservatore Romano" from a few days ago, printed with a photo showing the aftermath of an attack in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

The bombs, in multiple places in the city, killed more than one hundred persons, in neighborhoods mainly inhabited by Shiite Muslims. But on other occasions, the victims have also included Christians.

Quetta is the capital of the province of Balochistan. It sits at an altitude of 6,230 feet, at the foot of arid mountains. It is a city of transit toward Kandahar, in Afghanistan. It emerged in the sixth century, was conquered by Islam in the following century, and afterward was disputed by the Persians and by the moguls of India, ultimately entering into the “great game" between the British and Russians in the nineteenth century. It was rebuilt after an earthquake in 1935, and enjoyed a period of peace, becoming a tourist destination for the prosperous Pakistani classes.

But today this peace is no more. Quetta is one of the most dangerous cities in Pakistan. Bloodied by sectarian violence: Sunnis against Shiites, Muslims against Christians. It is startling proof of how some regions of the world have changed for the worse since the jihadist currents of Islam have taken root there.

Another of these Muslim regions plunged into violence is Mali. One must simply compare the oases of peace that these cities and regions were just a few years ago with what they have become today in order to understand how dangerous the offensive of radical Islam is.

But first things first. The following is the account of how peaceful life was in Quetta just twelve years ago, between Muslims and Christians.

The eyewitness is Dr. Riccardo Redaelli, a professor of geopolitics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan and a specialist on the Afro-Asiatic countries.

Redaelli published this memoir on the front page of the newspaper of the Italian episcopal conference, "Avvenire," for which he is an editorialist.

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QUETTA, YESTERDAY AND TODAY

by Riccardo Redaelli

It is just the latest link in a frightening chain of violence. Even as I write, other Christians will already have been killed in some other part of the world, according to the terrible statistics of the victims of religious hatred. But I am struck by the place in which a young Pakistani Christian was killed days ago: Quetta, the capital of Balochistan.

A practically unknown Pakistani city near the border with Afghanistan, Quetta has risen in recent years to a sad notoriety because it is believed to have hosted for some time Mullah Omar, the historic head of the Taliban. A city now almost off-limits for Westerners.

And yet, until a dozen years ago Quetta was one of the most hospitable cities in Pakistan. I remember the long sojourns I spent down there over a whole decade, as a guest of the convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph. The iron gate was often closed, but only to keep the children of their school from running out into the street.

In reality, anyone could enter. An elderly sister frowned as she let in the tardy, men who had arrived late because of the traffic, shrinking as they were reprimanded for bringing their children to school late.

On the other side of the street, past the row of pine trees, the big middle school, coveted by all of the families of Quetta. Not far from there the church. Islands of Christendom in the sea of Islam that lived together in tranquility, without protection, escorts, or threats.

Every day a crowd of Pakistanis shouted and honked in front of the doors of the convent: but it was only the anarchical traffic of the parents who had come to pick up their children from these highly cherished schools.

I remember a colonel of the armed forces who wanted to enroll his daughter at any cost, even if there were no more places left. He placed on the desk of the mother superior an outrageous sum of money, and she refused. He took back the money and said: "This gesture of yours is the reason why my daughter must study with you at all costs."

And how many were the mothers – Muslim, Christian, it doesn't matter – who discreetly asked for and received aid from the religious of Quetta? How many parents who with shame said that they could not pay and, sighing, the sisters crossed out the number on their monthly tuition fee?

Decades ago the first mother superior, with the school on the brink of bankruptcy, went on bicycle to the sumptuous residence of the governor. "I have asked God for help, but while I am waiting for his help, I would not mind receiving yours, governor." And he paid, because those schools – he said – were the boast of the city.

Those were the years during which one could spend the night on the terraced roof of the convent conversing and looking at the stars, so clear and bright. Now we would probably be mistaken for terrorists by the soldiers on patrol.

That world has been struggling for years, with growing fatigue, to remain faithful to its history as an open community. Many Western religious have been repatriated. Blocks of cement and garrisoned streets often mark in Pakistan the presence of churches and Christian schools.

The criminal violence is accompanied by the petty and fearful ambivalence of almost all the political and governmental forces of Islamabad. An entire community is hostage to this violence. The cement that should protect it seems to be the metaphor for a forced separation from a country that is going down the wrong path of sectarian hatred and self-destruction.

Prisoners for offenses they did not commit, like Asia Bibi, in prison since 2009 and condemned to death for blasphemy, who has become, against her will, the symbol of the sufferings of her community. Or like Younis Masih, in prison for seven years, also for the accusation of blasphemy.

Walking one evening through the streets of Quetta, a young Dutchman who worked at one of the refugee camps nearby asked me, "Don't you find this place magnificent?"

I replied that I did. But today I think no, it no longer is, and the fault is not ours.

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The newspaper of the Italian episcopal conference in which the article was published on December 28, 2012:

> Avvenire
http://www.avvenire.it/

The campaign promoted by "Avvenire" for the liberation of Asia Bibi, to which Professor Redaelli makes reference in the last lines of his essay:

> Salviamo Asia
http://www.avvenire.it/Dossier/Cristianofobia/Pagine/appelloAsiaBibi.aspx

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Also in Pakistan, another area in which jihadist violence is wiping out decades of peaceful life is that of the far north, inhabited predominantly by Ismaili, the branch of Shiite Islam that has its religious leader, its imam, in Aga Khan.

It is an area that stretches from the Karakoram to the high valley of Hunza to the Swat. The theater two decades ago of one of the most astonishing advancements in the quality of life, in education, in employment, in the promotion of women, through the work of the Aga Khan Network.

Here is a firsthand account of that miracle, in a report from "L'Espresso" of twenty years ago:

> Aga Khan Network. Reportage dall'alta valle dell'Hunza
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1336266

While today from those regions comes news of almost nothing but violence and sectarian hatred.

*

As for Mali, the north of this sub-Saharan country has become the epicenter of a network of armed jihadist groups that operate from the Maghreb to Nigeria to Somalia, for which even the intervention of the French army is insufficient.

But what was Mali like just a few years ago?

It was what this article from www.chiesa in 2004 said right from the title:

> Worldwide Islam Has an Oasis of Democracy: Mali
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1335853?eng=y

Today of that oasis nothing remains.

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English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.