Asmatyari (president of the Hazara Student Federation): Dig deeper, and much indicates that the security agencies have a strategic reason for closing their eyes to the carnage in Quetta. One, allowing Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to kill with impunity shifts attention away from the security agencies’ atrocities against Baloch nationalists. What looks like sectarian violence (though it is one-sided) is fostered to camouflage the state’s relentless aggression against the province’s ethnic Baloch population. Two, in the run-up to 2014, it makes sense for security agencies to maintain strategic depth in a group like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, because they fall into the category of “good Taliban”–extremists who hold off from attacking the state, though it continues to kill its citizens. The security agencies might not directly condone the killings of Shias, but they have taken a strategic decision to look the other way. There is also an indication that Balochistan has become the battleground for a proxy war. Gwadar port is being handed over to China – a concern for many neighboring countries. And gulf countries could be concerned with Pakistan’s new economic ties with Iran. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi could be the security establishment’s way of maintaining control. All of this indicates that the army is not the solution, but the problem. More here.