With fundamentalists calling the shots, Musharraf’s government has made the tactical error of breathing life into Pakistan’s Islamists
Hard News, May 2007
Sonya Fatah
ISLAMABAD: “We have no intention to wage a war against the government leading to a bloodbath,” Maulana Abdul Aziz, the leading cleric at Islamabad’s controversial Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, told a local reporter during an interview at the mosque’s premises on the morning of Monday, April 23, 2007. “However, if it launches a crackdown on Jamia Hafsa or Lal Masjid, of course, the movement would automatically turn into a militant movement.”
Such statements from Lal Masjid’s main man are not empty threats. The Red Mosque is not in the spotlight for the first time. It has enjoyed the attention of presidents past and present, of visiting dignitaries and the country’s military chiefs for several decades, and its strength, like that of the Taliban, has grown to be largely independent.
As decisions made by President General Musharraf weaken his control in Pakistan, and as political parties, legal bodies and human rights groups combine to protest in force against the president, the Red Mosque’s leading clerics are piggy-backing on the momentum, promising all kinds of ultimatums, including suicide bombs, if the government tries to interfere in their affairs. The ultimatums by Islamist bodies mean it’s a significant crisis for the Pakistani president, but his solution lacks vision. With a growing internal crisis on his hands, and the development of Talibanisation on Pakistan’s western borders and main western cities, Musharraf is walking a political tight-rope.
Observers feel Musharraf’s tried-and-tested and failed process of military solution followed by appeasement has wrecked havoc in the tribal areas. It will have the same result in the Lal Masjid controversy. “This is a government concentrating on elections and regime control,” says Samina Ahmed, project director, South Asia, for the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention think-tank that is headquartered in Belgium. “The problem is that regime survival is the objective. If that priority means making yet another deal with the mullahs, that is what they will do.”
And so, not surprisingly, on April 11, 2007, the Pakistan Muslim League’s Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain was sent to negotiate with the Lal Masjid’s brothers-in-arms. The brothers, Mullah Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi have been threatening to start their own sharia court, calling the Pakistani legal system ‘unIslamic’. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s cabinet has been divided over how to deal with the law-breaking mullahs of the Red Mosque but the government’s chief negotiator, Chaudhry Hussain, has already penned some masterstrokes.
A long list of legal grievances documents the vigilante actions taken by students of the mosque’s affiliated madrassas, the Jamia Hafsa, for women, and the Jamia Fareedia. The women of Jamia Hafsa, in particular, have been active vigilantes. For instance, armed with long, bamboo staves and dressed from head to toe in black burqas, women students barged into the home of suspected brothel owner, Shamim Akhtar. The moral brigade bound and gagged the woman, her daughter, daughter-in-law and a six-month baby, and kept them under their watchful gaze. The women, called ’sinful Shias’‚ were disgraced, but for three days the Pakistani government appeared paralysed.
The government said it had not intervened because it did not want to harm the women vigilantes. But the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent NGO, who’s fiery human rights lawyer, Asma Jehangir, has been roughed up in public, mocked these assertions. Many other human rights activists and female political leaders have been roughed up in the past, the organisation stated. “The lack of action in this case only exposes the deep-rooted links between the military and religious jehadi groups,” the commission’s statement read.
The folks at Lal Masjid do have some legitimate grouses against the State. Since Pakistan came on as an American ally on the war on terror, it’s foremost intelligence agency, the ISI, has collaborated with the CIA in setting up and operating secret prisons, many of them in safe houses in the nation’s capital. Illegal detentions have raised the ire of many human rights groups and also led Pakistan’s Supreme Court chief justice to demand an open judicial process for those detained. The Lal Masjid’s clerics have been vocal in their opposition to Pakistan’s support of the war on terror. That, too, has been labelled, un-Islamic.
An editorial in the Daily Times pointed out that there might be ulterior motives for raising the profile of the controversy. “Many observers think that the ‘Lal Masjid Affair’ has been allowed to become front-page news to take the limelight away from the judicial crisis. There are others who think that the Lal Masjid revolt has been allowed to grow so that the world outside realises that Pakistan is an extremist-dominated state and that democratic reforms here might jeopardise its very existence.”
If the government is playing a game, as the editorial suggests, it is a dangerous one, which like many other similar strategies, could backfire. Talibanisation is already encroaching in Pakistan’s western cities of Quetta and Peshawar. Taliban supporters have begun burning music stores in Peshawar. In the agencies, taxi drivers playing music in their cabs are being fined Rs 500 if they are caught with music blaring from the speakers. And leaflets are being dropped into women’s college grounds warning students that if they do not cover themselves from head to toe, in the appropriate form of dress for a Muslim woman, their safety and security cannot be guaranteed.
“I am afraid to send my children to school,” says the wife of a secular politician in Peshawar. “The school has received bomb threats and there are armed guards at every corner. We don’t know what will happen but everyday I feel fear.”
Part of the problem is the government’s refusal to listen to the voice of the people, observers say. “Who are the stakeholders? They are not consulted,” says Ms Ibrahim. “The appeasement deals are with tribal leaders and mullahs, not with the people of the region.”
Some fear that by engaging the clerics and accepting their demands, Musharraf’s government has made the tactical error of breathing life and importance into Pakistan’s Islamists. Both Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri and Education Minister Lieutenant General (Retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi have been opposed to the government’s handling of the Lal Masjid issue. They have called for strong government action against the mosque’s illegal actions.
But their voices are not being heeded. Instead, Lal Masjid’s head cleric has already declared that the mosque and its affiliate madrassas are stockpiled with weapons that will be used should the government try and use force against them.
Last week, citizen groups across Pakistan rallied against religious extremism reacting strongly to the threats issued from Lal Masjid. The protests were loud and well attended in virtually every major Pakistani city. How much impact they will have remains to be seen.
Popularity: 4% [?]
imam hussain challenged the writ of the government. He was besieged by them. He and his companions were deprived of water, he fought back and was killed. All the muslims in the country sat by and applauded.
That was then. This is now. Musharraf and his new Yazidi army is at its best.