THE DIGITAL NEWSPAPER

Protesters try to storm US Consulate as thousands in Pakistan protest Iran strikes

At least 10 died and dozens were injured in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, according to Summaiya Syed Tariq, a police surgeon at the city’s main government hospital. Two more died in Islamabad near the US Embassy, according to a hospital official, and 10 in the northern region of Gilgit-Baltistan, according to a provincial official. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the turmoil publicly. The protests around U.S. diplomatic missions across Pakistan represented the most serious crisis in US-Pakistan relations since 2011, when US forces killed Osama bin Laden, who was in hiding in Pakistan, said Adam Weinstein, deputy director of the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute in Washington. “Pakistan’s military can suppress the protests, but the political cost of bear hugging President Trump is rising fast,” Weinstein said. Pakistan shares a volatile, 560-mile border with Iran, and an estimated 15 percent to 20 percent of its 240 million people are Shiite Muslims, one of the largest Shiite communities outside Iran. Over the weekend, thousands gathered in Karachi and Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to express solidarity. “When Iran is attacked, we feel our faith, our identity, and our very existence are being targeted,” said Asghar Jaffer, a Shiite student activist who joined the demonstrations in Karachi. Pakistan has long walked a diplomatic tightrope among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. On Saturday, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry denounced “unwarranted attacks against the Islamic Republic of Iran” but did not name the United States or Israel. It also condemned Iran’s retaliation against Persian Gulf countries. A spokesperson for the Taliban government, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, said Afghanistan expressed “deep regret” regarding US and Israeli attacks and Iran’s response. Under a defense pact signed between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia last year, any attack on one country would be considered an aggression on the other. Saudi Arabia intercepted Iranian missiles Saturday. Further instability could also have a major impact on much-needed remittances for people in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan’s economy relies heavily on Pakistanis who send about $20 billion in remittances from Persian Gulf countries every year. A Pakistani citizen was killed by an Iranian airstrike in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, according to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry. If countries in the Gulf continue to be targets of Iranian retaliation, Pakistani workers may be reluctant to go there. Remittances sent by Afghans living in Iran have also been crucial to millions of families. Iran expelled nearly 2 million Afghans last year, but a sizable diaspora still lives in the country. Hussain Akhlaqi, a clothing shop owner in Herat, one of Afghanistan’s largest cities and home to a large Shiite population, said his business relied mostly on remittances sent by Iran-based Afghans to their families. “If they don’t send money to their families from Iran, the families don’t buy clothes here,” Akhlaqi said. Nearly all Afghan households that lost their Iranian remittances in the previous year were in debt, according to a study of more than 450 families by World Vision, a humanitarian nonprofit group, and Samuel Hall, a research firm. In Pakistan, security officials fear instability in Iran could create power vacuums along the two countries’ harsh and mountainous borderland, an area known for separatist militancy, jihadi networks and smuggling routes. Pakistan has a long and often violent history of sectarian conflict, frequently inflamed by geopolitical shifts in the Muslim world and tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Last month, a suicide bombing carried out by the Islamic State, a Sunni extremist group, on a Shiite mosque on the outskirts of Islamabad killed 31 people and injured 169. The risks are acute in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan. The province has endured a decades-long separatist insurgency and shares deep ethnic and tribal ties with Iran’s neighboring provinces. Families straddle the border and rely on both legal and illegal trade to survive. But a Pakistani official in Baluchistan, Hamza Shafqaat, said in an interview last month that Pakistan was planning to abolish a decades-old border policy with Iran that has allowed border communities to cross for family visits and small-scale trade. Shafqaat said a strict visa and passport policy would be enforced in an attempt to curb smuggling. “Our livelihoods depend on stability in Iran,” said Khair Baksh, a trader involved in cross-border commerce in the Pakistani border town of Mand. “When conflict grows there, it directly threatens our survival here.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times.