Source: ET
The June 23 incident at the western base camp of Nanga Parbat, in which nine foreign tourists and their local guide were gratuitously killed, raises many questions.
Reports indicate the area has been cordoned off and search parties are scouring all possible approaches to and away from the base camp. Aerial surveillance is being conducted, local community leaders have been co-opted and suspects have been rounded up. The surviving guide and a Chinese trekker are also being questioned for any clues.
So, who were the people who mounted this attack? Going by the local reaction to the terrible incident, it is difficult to assume they were locals, even as facilitation by some among the local population cannot be discounted. That said, it is clear, given the terrain and the gruelling trek that the attackers were acclimatised to operate in rarefied air conditions.
The area in and around Chilas — also some other parts of Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) — has a history of sectarian violence. Since 2005, there have been at least three incidents of targeted sectarian killings in which Shia passengers were forced out of buses, lined up and killed. The latest attack was only last year, in much the same way as the minibus incident on a cold January evening in Northern Ireland, narrated by Seamus Heaney in his Nobel lecture, Crediting Poetry. Except that there is no Heaney here to narrate the harrowing tales that have become all too common in our beloved land.