Pakistan troubles
Financial Times - July 11, 2007
Red line drawn By Jo Johnson and Farhan Bokhari
Early yesterday morning, General Pervez Musharraf took a decisionhe
had avoided for more thansix months. Pakistan’s president ordered
soldiers from an elite squad ofcommandos he once led to storm the Lal
Masjid religious complex in Islamabad, held by heavily armed radical
Islamists with alleged links to al-Qaeda.
The crack force encountered fierce resistance. As the crump of
explosions and the rattle of gunfire echoed across the capital into
the early evening, any hope Gen Musharraf may have had of avoiding a
massacre - one that could prompt dozens of copycat martyrdom
operations - seemed to fade with the dying light.
The ramifications of Gen Musharraf’s long-delayed decision to act
against the clerics at the Lal Masjid, or “Red Mosque”, who were
believed to be using hundreds of women and children as a human
shield, will become fully apparent only in the weeks to come. Whether
Gen Musharraf’s deployment of force against the mosque marks a
turning point in the government’s approach to combating violent
extremism is unclear. If that were to prove the case, it could
consolidate international support for the beleaguered general,
alleviating the pressure he is facing to exit politics and restore
democracy.
“If the government sustains this kind of momentum, this could be a
watershed for Musharraf, but that’s a very big if,” says one western
ambassador. “The problem is with Musharraf’s track record. He has had
time and he hasn’t taken action in the past.”
A senior European diplomat expects Gen Musharraf’s international
image to benefit only from a short-term boost “as the man who can
fight militants, the leader who ordered this action”. He warns,
however, that a durable solution to Pakistan’s problems remains, by
definition, beyond Gen Musharraf: “The military and Musharraf are
part of the problem.”
There is a broad consensus that the government stalled over the Lal
Masjid situation for too long. “This action should have been taken in
January or February,” says retired Lieutenant General Moinuddin
Haider, a former interior minister under Gen Musharraf. Referring to
the so-called madrassa belt of Islamic schools across the country, he
adds: “Of course, there are many madrassas that are affiliated with
politico-religious groups - and they will react. [But] in the final
analysis, the government is obliged to enforce the writ of the state.
Militancy cannot be tolerated, no matter how difficult the challenge.”
The US is publicly backing the decision to storm the mosque. Tom
Casey, a state department spokesman, said the militants were given
many warnings before the commandos moved in on the compound. “The
government of Pakistan has proceeded in a responsible way,” he said.
“All governments have a responsibility to preserve order.” US
officials were privately expressing the hope that Gen Musharraf would
be able to ride any backlash that might result.
Since the September 11 2001 attacks on the US, Gen Musharraf has
faced relentless criticism for failing to follow through on his
pledges to take tough action against madrassas that promote religious
extremism. Over the past six years a clear pattern has emerged: his
periodic declarations of resolve, exacted in the wake of
international events and under sustained diplomatic pressure, have
invariably been followed by inaction and broken promises. Analysts
attribute his half-hearted efforts to his lack of legitimacy and
dependence on religious conservatives for political support.
But opposition politicians say it is wishful thinking on the part of
a perennially deluded west to believe that the storming of the Lal
Masjid represents a new determination on the part of the government
to clamp down on rogue madrassas. The clerics had staged their
defiance of the state at a mosque in the very heart of the capital,
scarcely more than five minutes’ walk from the diplomatic zone and
the headquarters of the Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency.
“How was it possible for such a lot of arms and weapons to be brought
in? Was it the connivance of the intelligence agencies or the result
of their incompetence that this situation was aggravated?” asks
Senator Farhatullah Babar, spokesman of the Pakistan People’s Party.
“Ultimately, neither Musharraf nor the army can deal with this
problem alone. Tackling militancy has to be done through allowing a
credible democratic process to take root in Pakistan, which then
leads to a broad national consensus.”
But Gen Musharraf’s struggle to stay in power following his 1999 coup
has forged a complex relationship between the military and the
mullahs in Pakistani politics. The country’s six principal religious
parties - grouped in a formation called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal -
vehemently oppose many of Gen Musharraf’s policies at a national
level: the MMA denounces the general for “betraying” the Taliban in
2001, rejects all peaceful attempts to settle the 60-year-old dispute
with India over Kashmir and opposes the presence of American troops
and agencies in Pakistan.
At the same time, the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), the pro-
Musharraf governing party, relies on the religious parties to prop up
its weakening domestic support base and help it counter the
mainstream civilian opposition, Benazir Bhutto’s PPP and the Pakistan
Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of Nawaz Sharif, whom Gen Musharraf
ousted as prime minister.
By repeatedly backtracking on promises to reform the jihadi content
of the madrassa curriculum and curb the flows of money into radical
seminaries, the government has emboldened sectarian and extremist
forces, contributing to the violence that now plagues the country,
the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention think-tank,
argued in a recent report.
The Lal Masjid, established in 1965, has long been at the centre of
Pakistan’s officially encouraged jihadi culture. It played an
important role in raising mujahideen - holy warriors - for the CIA-
backed battle against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s
and its two leading clerics, known as the Ghazi brothers, were long
considered untouchable by the authorities, protected by their
supposed ties to the intelligence services. Its students hail mostly
from the poor and lawless North-West Frontier province, to which they
generally return, many to run madrassas along the porous Afghan border.
For the last six months, many believe, the mosque’s administrators
have been intent on provoking the government into a bloodbath that,
in turn, would unleash religious violence across the country and
create the desired conditions for an Islamic revolution and the
imposition of sharia religious law.
The tactic appeared to start in earnest in January when scores of
female seminary students armed with canes occupied a children’s
library in Islamabad, protesting at government plans to demolish
mosques and madrassas that had been built without official permission.
Two months later, in the start of aTaliban-style anti-vice campaign,
female students abducted three women they accused of running a
brothel, then seized two policemen, all of whom were released after
reportedly repenting.
In April, Maulana Abdul Aziz, one of the two Ghazi brothers and the
mosque’s senior cleric, threatened thousands of suicide attacks if
the government tried to close the mosque’s newly established sharia
court. This court later provoked international outrage after it
handed down a fatwa against the country’s tourism minister. She
resigned her post after it objected to photographs of her embracing a
parachute instructor following a charity jump in France.
Emboldened by this success, students associated with the mosque in
May briefly kidnapped six policemen in an attempt to secure the
release of detained militants - a provocation that met with little
official response.
Only last month, however, when Beijing protested at the kidnapping of
a number of Chinese women, also accused of running a brothel, did the
government take steps to end the moral vigilantism. In street battles
around the mosque last week, at least 21 people died in clashes with
security forces and some 150 were wounded, setting the scene for
yesterday’s denouement.
As security forces laid siege to the mosque, demanding an
unconditional surrender and the release of alleged hostages held
inside, Aziz was arrested while sneaking out of the mosque disguised
in a burqa and high heels, leaving his brother, Abdul Rashid Ghazi,
to take over as the mosque’s chief. Yesterday, in a telephone
interview with Pakistan’s Geo TV conducted over the crackle of
gunfire, the cleric said his “martyrdom was certain now”. By early
evening, Ghazi’s death was confirmed.
The storming of the mosque drew fierce criticism from human rights
groups. Asma Jehangir, chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan, is calling for a high-level independent inquiry into the
operation, denouncing the “disproportionate use of brute force” and
the “arbitrary action” taken to deal with the situation.
“The homage paid by government members and others over the last many
years to clerics such as those running the Lal Masjid and the
obsequious manner in approaching them has also quite obviously
emboldened them,” she says. “The situation at the Lal Masjid did not
crop up overnight. The build-up of arms and the training in their use
imparted to students had obviously continued for years, with the help
and connivance of authorities.”
Even if the government attempts to exert its authority against some
of the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of madrassas that are also suspected
of training militants and stocking vast arsenals of arms, the danger
according to human rights groups is that the government’s ham-fisted
handling of the red mosque has created the potential for further
problems.
“The deaths of so many at the hands of state forces may act only to
pave the way for greater extremism in society and support for the
violent cause militants espouse,” adds Ms Jehangir.
Gen Musharraf now has two main options as he contemplates his own
political future. If the Lal Masjid operation is a foretaste of a new
determination to clamp down on religious extremism, he could choose
to abandon the conservative religious parties that, in return for his
acquiescence in the Talibanisationof Pakistani society, have propped
up his government.
Instead, he could seek a broader political alliance with Ms Bhutto or
Mr Sharif. Both former prime ministers would insist, however, that he
stepped out of uniform as part of any agreement to support his
planned re-election as president.
Alternatively, it is not impossible that Gen Musharraf may be tempted
to use the threat of a looming crisis in the madrassa belt as a
pretext for a state of emergency. “Should this happen,” warns Samina
Ahmad of the ICG, “Pakistanis would perceive the US as an impediment
to, rather than a supporter of, democracy and it would lose all
remaining vestiges of credibility in the country.”