Link to article: https://apnews.com/article/pakistan-sectarian-violence-ceasefire-northwest-shiites-47dc036c70eb20788815ec34d1da5092
Violence in Kurram, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, first began after gunmen attacked a convoy of vehicles carrying mostly Shiites, killing 52 people on November 21st. Some Shiites launched attacks on Sunni Muslims, killing 78 people and wounding 200 others. A ceasefire was reached on November 24, but violence soon began again. Javed Ullah Mehsud, the deputy commissioner of Kurram, said tribal leaders helped negotiate the respite Sunday night and that police have been deployed to ensure peace in the area. Shiite Muslims make up about 15% of the 240 million people in Sunni-majority Pakistan, and dominate parts of the Kurram district. Shiites and Sunnis generally live in peace there, but land disputes have led to an increase in violence in recently.
This is important because it is another example of how religious differences cause a major portion of the violence in southern Asia. Just like the violence between Hindus and Muslims in Bangladesh, religious ideological division causes people to resort to violence in their communities, in order to remove those who have different beliefs than them. It also further illustrates just how messy the partitioning of India in 1947 was and how the different people groups living in the same community still feel the effects from it to this day.
This relates to what we have learned in class because it once again shows the impact of the constructivist theory of how differences in identities prevent peace and cooperation between different people groups. These religious differences cause enough of a divide in southern Asia societies that they end up in a cycle of violence between the warring ideas. While there is no easy solution to this problem, constructivist theory shows us why people act this way when societies have drastically different identities in them.