Pakistan had a disastrous year in 2011, with increasing attacks on civilians by militant groups, skyrocketing food and fuel prices, and the assumption of near-total control of foreign and security policy by a military that operated with complete impunity. Religious minorities faced unprecedented insecurity and persecution. Freedom of belief and expression came under severe threat as Islamist militant groups murdered Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer and Federal Minorities’ Minister Shahbaz Bhatti over their public support for amending the country’s often abused blasphemy laws. Pakistan’s elected government notably failed to provide protection to those threatened by extremists, or to hold the extremists accountable.
In August and September the southern province of Sindh experienced massive flooding for the second year running, displacing some 700,000 people. Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, suffered from hundreds of targeted killings perpetrated by armed groups who are patronized by political parties.
Security continued to deteriorate in 2011, with militant and sectarian groups carrying out suicide bombings and targeted killings across the country. The Taliban and affiliated groups targeted civilians and public spaces, including marketplaces and religious processions. Ongoing rights concerns include the breakdown of law enforcement in the face of terror attacks, a dramatic increase in killings across the southwestern province of Balochistan, continuing torture and ill-treatment of criminal suspects, and unresolved enforced disappearances of terrorism suspects and opponents of the military. Abuses by Pakistani police, including extrajudicial killings, also continued to be reported throughout the country in 2011.
Relations between Pakistan and the United States—Pakistan’s most significant ally and its largest donor of civilian and military aid—deteriorated markedly in 2011, fueled by a diplomatic crisis over a CIA contractor killing two men at a Lahore traffic junction and the US’s killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2012/world-report-2012-pakistan
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