I'VE always had a soft spot for Afghanistan's ethnic Hazara people.

Most likely it's a throwback to my days in the 1980s travelling clandestinely with Afghan resistance fighters inside the country during the Soviet occupation.

Far and away I spent most of my time then with a guerrilla group comprised of men from the ethnic minority.

Within Afghanistan the Hazara have always been regarded as something of an underclass and, unlike the country's majority Pashtun population, are predominantly Shi'a, not Sunni Muslims.

It was during my time with the incredibly tough but terrifically hospitable Hazara that I first witnessed these Shi'ite worshippers marking the Ashura day of mourning.

To this moment I still have the photographs I took then of those young Afghan men beating themselves with their fists, chains and blades in an act of self-flagellation and remembrance for the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed who was killed at Karbala in Iraq during Islam's seventh-century split into Sunni and Shi'ite sects. Like the 150 million followers of Shi'a Islam worldwide, Afghanistan's adherents believe it was this event that denied Imam Hussein what they regard as his rightful leadership of Muslims.

For this reason the Ashura bears a special meaning for Shi'ites, and as I witnessed that day in the 1980s and on numerous occasions since, the mourning is always marked with calls to emulate the imam's sacrifice.

Earlier this week in Afghanistan, that sacrifice took on another contemporary dimension as a series of near simultaneous bomb attacks targeting Shi'a Ashura gatherings left at least 60 dead and 170 injured across cities from Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif.

As a war of words, allegations and counter-allegations instantly erupted between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the wake of the blasts, crucial questions remained.

Who was behind the attacks, what did they have to gain and why carry them out at this precise moment in time?

While nothing is certain in the tangled web of allegiances that makes up Afghanistan's political, religious and ethnic mix, there is a growing consensus that those who orchestrated the bomb strikes were outside or foreign players. Some analysts, though, were perhaps a little too quick in insisting that such seemingly sectarian-motivated violence could not have been homegrown in Afghanistan.

Over the years sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims has admittedly been the exception rather than the rule here. That said, in the past it has sometimes been difficult to distinguish between sectarian and ethnically motivated killing in the country.

I well remember the mass killings of Shi'a Hazaras by the Sunni and ethnically Pashtun- dominated Taliban in 1998 as revenge for the Hazaras having risen up to drive the Taliban out of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Other ethnic groups too have had their darker moments, with Uzbeks massacring Pashtuns and Tajiks, and all three picking on the traditionally oppressed "underclass" Hazaras.

Adding to these historical tensions, today there is also growing disquiet among more conservative Sunni circles in Afghanistan that the country's Shi'ite population is in something of the ascendancy.

These Sunni critics point to the fact that Afghanistan's Shias, bolstered by the presence and influence of neighbouring Shi'a Iran, have celebrated their festivals more assertively, openly and on a larger scale than ever before.

Despite this unease Afghans, by and large, have fortunately never bought into the Sunni- Shi'a sectarian hatred that has been fomented and cynically manipulated elsewhere in the Islamic world over recent years, notably in Iraq.

And this brings me to the question of outside or foreign players being behind the recent attacks in Afghanistan.

Certainly the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai remains convinced that the perpetrators of the Ashura attacks originated in neighbouring Pakistan. Nothing new there however, given that Kabul almost always points the finger of blame eastwards towards Islamabad.

This time, though, many are convinced Karzai has a point, not least because shortly after Tuesday's attack in Kabul a man claiming to be a spokesman for Lashkar-e Jhangvi al Alami contacted Radio Free Europe (RFE) to claim responsibility on behalf of the Pakistan-based militant group.

Lashkar-e Jhangvi al Alami is known to be a splinter faction of a core organisation called Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ), which once enjoyed close links to Pakistan's ISI intelligence service –regarded by some as being hell- bent on creating instability inside Afghanistan using whatever means and militant groups necessary.

Not all regional observers are so convinced by this take, however, pointing to the fact that Lashkar-e Jhangvi and its offshoots have been banned in Pakistan itself for some years because of their Shi'a-killing campaigns there and the threat they have brought to the country's own security and stability.

For now, the Afghan Taliban has been interestingly quick to denounce this week's bombing and denied culpability. Perhaps they realise they have nothing to gain from open association with sectarian violence.

Maybe the most telling factor of all about this week's attack on Afghanistan's Ashura gatherings was the way it coincided with the International conference in Bonn, convened just the day before to discuss and plan the country's future.

This was a major gathering at which Pakistani diplomats were conspicuously absent, having pulled out of the conference as a protest over the deaths of 24 of its soldiers in a recent American airstrike.

Pakistan may be smarting, but there is no denying that the recent attempts to stoke up sectarian violence inside Afghanistan bear all the hallmarks of the modus operandi used by Lashkar-e Jhangvi on Pakistan's own soil.

To that end, they are perhaps best placed to cast some light on those responsible.

Could it be that we are witnessing the beginning of the "Pakistan-isation" of the Afghan conflict, just in time to coincide with a drawdown of international forces and presence in Afghanistan?

Yesterday, Pakistan was doggedly sticking to its call for an end to what it called the "blame game" after the Afghan government demanded action against Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

Islamabad's protestations aside, Pakistan may yet have a lot of explaining to do.

In the meantime though, the Afghan people must be vigilant in ensuring that whenever and wherever possible, they do their utmost to shun cynical outside efforts to push them into sectarian civil war.