The attack on the bus in Safoora Goth was not just about the killing of the 45 Ismailis gunned down, but about many other things, and not just the arrival of the Islamic State, but the place of the Ismaili community in the Pakistani polity.
It was not the first attack on the Ismaili community in Pakistan, but it served to show them as a minority within a minority, at least in Pakistan. The Ismailis are also called Agha Khanis, because they are followers of the Agha Khan, whom they believe is the Haazir Imam, the 50th in line, the first being Hazrat Ali, who is accepted even by the Sunnis as one of the four Rightly Guided CalIiphs. The Ismailis are a minority within the Shia, the majority of whom in Pakistan are Ithna Asharis, or Twelvers. The difference is the Ismailis, or Seveners, believe that the Imamate, which started with Hazrat Ali, was held by Ismail ibn Jafar, whom the count as the seventh Imam. The Twelvers, on the other hand, believe that the Imamate continued, with Musa Kazim the seventh Imam, until Al-Muntazir, the 12th, went into occultation, and who will return to establish godly rule.
Ismailis hold the son of Ismail ibn Jafar, Muhammad ibn Ismail, as the 8th Imam, and it is from him that the Fatimid Caliphs of Egypt descended. One of them, the 11th Imam, founded the dynasty, but when the seventh Caliph and 18th Imam, Mustansir Billah, died in 1094, the younger son, Al-Mustali ascended the throne, to the exclusion of Al-Nizar, the elder son. Nizars descendants claim the Imamate, with the Agha Khan saying he is the 49th Imam. However, though they lost the Caliphate in 1130, so did the decendants of Al-Mustali, with the 21st Imam going into occultation, and the leadership passing to the Dai, with Syedna Burhanuddin, the 53 rd Dai, leader of the Dawoodi Bohras, being the latest. There was an earlier split in 1591, when the 26th Syedna died. That resulted in the division into Dawoodi and Suleimani Bohras.
That covers the Ismailis who came to the Subcontinent, mostly focusing on the Malabar Coast and the city of Bombay (now Mumbai). They naturally came to Karachi when it was developed as a port, and were so well integrated into the Muslim community that no one thought to object to the placing of Sir Agha Khan, the 48th Imam, as the first President of the All-India Muslim League back in 1906, even though the founding meeting took place at the residence of the orthodoxly Sunni Nawab Saleemullah Khan of Dacca. Later, when the League had fallen on hard times, it was revived by another Ismaili, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who galvanised it into the creation of Pakistan in 1947.
However, Jinnah, who was acclaimed as the Quaid-i-Azam by the Muslims of the Subcontinent well before he became the first Governor-General of the new state, seemed to have doubts on the sectarian issue. He himself converted to the Ithna Ashariya school late in adulthood, even though, already a follower of the Jafari fiqh as an Ismaili, he did not need to do so to obtain any benefit of the law of inheritance. His specification by will, that his funeral prayer was to be led by Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, a Deobandi scholar, points again at his doubts about his sectarian status, his rejection of sectarianism, or both.
However, for sectaries who hold the Ithna Ashariya outside the bound of Islam, as certain sectaries do, the Ismailis are equally so. It should also be noted that the Mughal Court, though it interfered in Ismaili affairs, had no Ismaili tradition, but did have an Ithna Ashariyya one, probably because of the Persian influence. Persia was a constant source of personnel, warriors, administrators and poets, and those who came and settled were mostly Twelvers. As a result, the Shia sect in India was Iranian in perspective. An important point of acculturation was that, while there were many educational institutions in India, there was nothing like the training imparted in the seminaries of Qom, which was in Iran.
Ismailis being so much fewer in number, and geographically thinner, would not be a natural target. However, ISIS, being based in the Arab world, came across their splinters more. It is perhaps not commonly realized, but the Alawis of Syria are a branch of the Ismailis. So are the Drouze of Lebanon. The former are not accounted as Muslim, and nor are the latter. However, it is worth noting that the Twelvers of Iran support not just the fellow Twelvers of Iraq, but the Alawis of Syria, against ISIS. Striking an Ismaili target thus makes sense for the ISIS while making its first entry into Pakistan.
Another area which has a strong Ismaili presence is Gilgit-Baltistan. That region has also a very strong Twelver presence. With a Sunni leavening, no sect is in the majority, but put together, the Seveners and Twelvers outnumber the Sunnis. The area has already been subject to sectarian riots. The Ismailis have naturally concentrated the activities of the Agha Khan Rural Support Programme there, thereby putting up another red flag. The AKRP is not only Ismaili, but also an NGO.
The AKRP, as well as the Agha Khan Medical University, and the Agha Khan Foundation, have already been targeted, for the Safoora Goth bus did not carry Ismailis, but employees of these three, who were travelling together to offices which are together.
That illustrates, more than the attack itself, the dangers of ghettoization. Ghettoization is natural for a minority, particularly one which is a minority within a minority. Not only do its official institutions cluster together, but so do residences. This makes it relatively easier for an attacker.
Another, more sinister, aspect is the Indian connection. RAW could have carried out the massacre either through one of the sectarian parties it influences, or directly, through agents who left behind ISIS leaflets to throw the blame on it. The Sindh government announced that it captured the culprits, and backtracked on the claims of Indian involvement. However, that might be more diplomatic than factual. Certainly, this attack would fit in with the Modi governments aggressiveness, and it would be seen as revenge for the Mumbai attacks, which India thinks were executed by religious militants. It should be noted that Ismailis, form an important part of Mumbai. The Ismailis of both ports are thus under attack, from the Indian state supposedly committed to protecting them.
However, if the Shia mainstream is able to own them enough to take up their cause, that would provide Sunni Pakistan an example. If Shias take within themselves their minority, it will provide an example of how a majority, in this case Sunnis, make a minority part of themselves. If arguing on Islamic grounds, either the Ismailis killed were Muslim citizens who are still unavenged by a torpid state, or they were non-Muslim citizens equally unavenged by a state which was supposed to protect them.