Nagging doubts

Published : Jul 27, 2007 00:00 IST

PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf has won praise for exercising maximum restraint during the Lal Masjid standoff and exhausting all avenues for ending the crisis through talks before ordering military action. It has enabled the politically embattled leader to show that he is still in control and capable of hard decisions in the midst of a muscular agitation by the legal community that has questioned his legitimacy and left him weak beyond imagination.

The showdown at the mosque removed the ousted Chief Justice's legal challenge against his ouster from the front pages of newspapers and from the top news stories on television. Conspiracy theorists saw a connection between an unprecedented order of the court against the country's intelligence agencies on July 2, and the start of the showdown at Lal Masjid the day after. Most of them commended the government for holding back, managing to bring out 1,200 young men and women, and trying to get the rest out before going for an all-out strike.

That does not mean that the hard questions have gone away. As the operation was still going on, Religious Affairs Minister Eijaz ul-Haq made the shocking admission that Lal Masjid was a "hub and a transit point" for all kinds of terrorists "from North Waziristan to Bajaur to Karachi". They used to come there for a place to hide and stay there until whatever they were wanted for was forgotten, he added. Earlier, Musharraf said the compound was swarming with cadre of the banned organisation, Jaish-e-Mohammed.

Neither explained how these elements had managed to find safe haven in Lal Masjid right under the noses of Pakistan's intelligence agencies, who are infamously everywhere, so much so that the Supreme Court recently passed an order asking them to keep out of courts and demanded that their homes and offices be swept for listening and viewing devices.

The mosque's development as a militant centre was after 2002, and so the Musharraf regime cannot hang the blame on the previous Nawaz Sharif government. Nor has anyone been able to explain how Lal Masjid was able to hoard a huge cache of weapons, which, going by the briefings of military spokesman Major-General Waheed Arshad during the operations, included rocket launchers, Kalashnikovs, small arms and mines, which they used to booby-trap the compound wall during the operation.

Students of other seminaries did not march to the rescue of Lal Masjid, nor did suicide-bombers alleged to be inside blow themselves up. That raised the question if the backlash threat the government had used for six months to put off dealing forcefully with Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the cleric brothers who ran the complex, was exaggerated.

It is clear now, if it was not before, that most Pakistanis were uncomfortable with the brand of Islam being preached at Lal Masjid. Nor did they want religion thrust down their throats the way the brothers were attempting to. Much before the operation, the Wakaful Madaris, a national federation of seminaries, had cancelled its recognition of the Jamia Hafsa and distanced itself from the brothers.

But it is still early to rule out a backlash. In Waziristan, where Pakistani forces are battling militants as part of the American-led war on terror, there have been two suicide attacks targeting security forces since the Lal Masjid showdown began. Unidentified gunmen killed three Chinese automobile engineers in Peshawar in what may have been a retaliation against China for demanding that those from the Hafsa-Fareedia-Lal Masjid brigade who kidnapped seven of its nationals from a massage parlour be punished. The entire North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), including the tribal agencies, saw unrest from the time the operation began. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of six religious parties which rules the NWFP, has led a few protests and announced a three-day mourning for those killed inside Lal Masjid.

The period after 9/11 up to 2004 saw a lot of government activity to bring militant groups under control, including the banning of many groups and arrests of their leaders. But in what appeared to be a nod-nod wink-wink arrangement, the leaders were released for lack of evidence and the groups returned under different names. In his eight years in power, the crackdown on Lal Masjid was the first decisive action Musharraf took against religious extremism. Many see the operation against the mosque as sending out a message to other radical elements in the country. So here is another hard question. Will President Musharraf extend this new determination to crack down on other hotbeds of extremism in Pakistan, especially in the NWFP?

A prime candidate is Mullah Fazlullah, a cleric who runs an FM radio station in Swat, preaching his Taliban-style views on it. He told a television channel that if the government tried to take him on, as it did with the Lal Masjid clerics, he would unleash a well-trained guerilla army on the security forces. At a National Security Council meeting on June 4, Musharraf was told about the fast-spreading "Talibanisation" of the NWFP and the tribal areas.

Even before the crackdown on Lal Masjid, the government managed to send out an ambivalent signal that raised doubts about its intentions vis-a-vis other radicals in the country. Included in the negotiating team that made the last-ditch effort to convince Ghazi to surrender was Mullah Fazlur Rehman Khalil, founder of the banned group Harkat ul Ansar. A known al Qaeda sympathiser, Khalil tried to take 70 militants from Pakistan to Afghanistan when the United States launched its war against the Taliban.

He was arrested in 2004 under a law for the maintenance of public order, but was released shortly afterwards for "lack of evidence". Khalil was once again reported arrested on May 2 as he was driving towards Lal Masjid with a cache of weapons in the boot of his car.

The next he was heard of was when he reappeared at the security cordon around Lal Masjid in the early hours of July 10 as part of the government delegation to hold talks with Ghazi. Reporters were shocked to see him sitting in the car of Pakistan Muslim League president Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain, who was leading the team.

Nirupama Subramanian
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