Haqeeqat.Org Face it…

There continues to be a strong debate on how Musharraf should have handled this situation, but what surprises me is the inhumanity of this attack, dexterity of the assault should have meant targeted exchange of fire maybe an occasional rubber bullet to pacify the milder militants, but the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons, by the National Army against its own people. Is jaw dropping serious, its akin to the mass murder which happened in Karachi on May 12th when the Army headed off to the barracks leaving the city at the hands of ruthless killers for six hours..

Chemical Weapons used on Lal Masjid

Posted at Teeth Maestro: On 12th July, AAJ Tv boradcasted a program of Live with Talat in which Talat Hussain visited Jamia Hafsa. While touring the bullet ridden compound a number of military personal hovered around, at a certain point Talat Hussain asked an accompanying Army personal about all the evidence of smoke around the area asking, “Why is there so much smoke?”, the solider replied “WP”, Talat put another question “Please explain WP?”, the solider answered “White Phosphorus.”

White Phosphorus is a flare / smoke producing incendiary weapon which is also used as an offensive Anti-Personnel flame compound capable of causing serious burns or death. White phosphorus weapons are controversial today because of its potential use against humans, for whom one-tenth of a gram is a deadly dose and according to the Geneva Convention which was later amended by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons signed into effect in 1997, expressively prohibits the use against civilians. White Phosphorus weapons have been used in the recent past by Israel in Lebanon and US and UK in Iraq, but probably the first time ever by a an army against its own people

Article 1 of Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (Wikipedia) defines an incendiary weapon as ‘any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target’. The same protocol also prohibits the use of incendiary weapons against civilians or in civilian areas. However, the use against military targets outside civilian areas is not explicitly banned by any treaty.

There continues to be a strong debate on how Musharraf should have handled this situation, but what surprises me is the inhumanity of this attack, dexterity of the assault should have meant targeted exchange of fire maybe an occasional rubber bullet to pacify the milder militants, but the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons, by the National Army against its own people. Is jaw dropping serious, its akin to the mass murder which happened in Karachi on May 12th when the Army headed off to the barracks leaving the city at the hands of ruthless killers for six hours..

To understand the gravity of the situation one has only to look at these two images of burnt bodies the sight is excruciatingly painful, when the Americans used White Phosphorous on the victims in Fallujah back in April 2004.

If you look at the top most image which appeared in Dawn on 13th July (link) one sees the classic signs of a high intensity flame, which reached astounding temperatures to melt the steel framework of ceiling fans, one must also noted that the public was not shown the remains of numerous people killed in the disaster and quickly buried them in concealed wooden coffins the next day.

I am shocked and stunned at what has just happened, it should be enough for the world to wake up and ask for an unconditional removal of the dictator

http://www.dictatorshipwatch.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=949&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Daily Jang

July 25, 2007

The following article from Daily Jang, July 25, 2007 explains how the military regime deliberately took provocative actions over a period of more than six months and in the process didn’t allow any solution even if everyone on the ground agreed upon certain issues. The write up summarises all the available evidence that leads to the conclusion that Musharraf regime took all the steps it could to make the massacre inevitable

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The following is an in depth interview conducted by the highly respected Dr. Sahid Masood at the Lal masjid, with both the female students and the late Abdul Rashid Ghazi. Masood was fired from the ARY channel(thanks to “pressure” from Musharraf’s goons) and moved to GEO TV. Contrary to popular misinformation, this affair started after 7/7 when Musharraf ordered a raid on the masjid(at the “request” of the British government to crack down on madrassas) in which commandos fired upon and severely beat the female students(who consequently retaliated in the second raid with batons and ejected the thugs). I’ve provided a short summary for each video segment(if any of you tech wizards can add subtitles, I’ll do a full translation).

Comments: Interestingly everything is on the public record; all interview; all eye witness accounts from before and after the Lal Masjid massacre and authentic press and electronic media reports which can prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Lal Masjid massacre was planned and conducted by the military regime. Nevertheless the press and political leadership are totally silent as if nothing has happend. No one is asking for bringing the culprits to justice.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Lal Masjid massacre Part 2 : The Women of Lal Masjid

The following is an in depth interview conducted by the highly respected Dr.Shahid Masood at the Lal masjid, with both the female students and the late Abdul Rashid Ghazi. This interview is from March of this year on the “Meray Mutabiq” program( urdu for “in my opinion”). Masood was fired from the ARY channel(thanks to “pressure” from Musharraf’s goons) and moved to GEO TV. Contrary to popular misinformation, this affair started after 7/7 when Musharraf ordered a raid on the masjid(at the “request” of the British government to crack down on madrassas) in which commandos fired upon and severely beat the female students(who consequently retaliated in the second raid with batons and ejected the thugs). I’ve provided a short summary for each video segment(if any of you tech wizards can add subtitles, I’ll do a full translation)

Introductory segment. Dr. Masood raises the question of how far can people in civil society go before breaking the law. Ghazi explains that there is no law and order in Pakistan and that his students only took action(against the brothel) after all other options were exhausted. Masood asks Ghazi if he will forcibly enforce public morality, to which Ghazi responds this is an entirely different matter where criminal activity was taking place out in the open, with the authorities sitting on their hands despite repeated complaints. Hence the citizens arrest, detainment, and subsequent closure of the brothel with the departure of its madame from the area.One of the ladies asks where is the law, and how its the duty of individuals in society to make corrections with their hands, citing Hadith. Some statements in english here. An explanation of why the sisters started to use batons in self-defense after repeated raids and physical assaults. Ghazi dismisses the accusation of “talibization” as a smear tactic propagated in the western press, especially after 7/7. We also learn that 6500 students are enrolled at the masjid. Concluding segment. More details of how rangers beat woman during the initial raid. Ghazi states that any assault would be “a great mishap.”

Video:

A memorable interview of Martyred Maulana Abul-Rasheed Ghazi with CNN followed by Sir. Aetzaz Ahsan’s interview…

Link to the file above…

Audio/Video: (Urdu)

Dr. Shahid Masood & Justice (R) Maulana Mufti Taqi Usmani Sahib

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Link to the above file…

Audio/Video (Urdu):

What really happened? by Mufti-é-Azam Pakistan Maulana Rafi Usmani

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Part 1:

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Link to the above file…

Part 2:

Link to the above file…

July 20, 2007

The first video is of women students at the Jamia Hafsa - they talk about a sense of peace and tranquility (sakina, sukoon) and barka, even while the puppet regime’s (la) army was bombing the masjid. And they clearly state that they were never held against their will - nor did they have a “huge amount” of arms. The puppet regime had repeatedly stated that their was a huge amount of arms inside the masjid - this is nothing more than a rehash of the “weapons of mass destruction” nonsense that Busharraf learnt from his master.

The liberals/progressives/moderates etc. have been deliberately asking the wrong question about “why Lal Masjid was allowed to accumulate a huge amount of arms”? They have asked this wrong question to 1) provide an underhanded justification for their support, and lack of outrage over the Lal Masjid massacre, and 2) to continue their Islamophobic campaign, and to provide a pretext for egging on the puppet regime to slaughter even more Islamic groups in the country (maybe even ultimately inviting the US neo-cons to bomb and invade the country).

Fact is that there was no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and there were none in Lal Masjid.

Why then was the Lal Masjid attacked, and over a 1000 martyred? The second interview, of a mother of one of the women students tells it like it is: “… by evening the Americans will be given a gift (by Musharraf) and the Americans will give Musharraf a palace of gold…”

Save Your Children from Pharaoh Musharraf

Rubia Faisal

Martyrdom of Thousand Children of Jamia Hafsa: A Question Mark

Senator Sami-Ul-Haq

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AKORA KHATTAK: The head of JUI (S), senator Maulana Sami-ul-Haq has termed the brutal and heartless martyrdom of thousands of children of Jamia Hafsa as unsolved mystery.

He strongly denounced the brutal suppression of Ghazi family and their justified demands, terming them as a stigma for Pakistan, which would always remain embossed on its integrity.

The activists and workers of JUI, mosque rectors, (S) held Nationwide demonstrations and protests against the recent action taken against Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa alongwith martyrdom of Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

The rally in Akora Khattak was led by prominent JUI (S) Ulema who termed assaults on mosques and seminaries as inviting the wrath of God Almighty, while similar rallies were also held in Mansehra, Karak, Peshawar, Hayatabad In which prominent Ulema strongly condemned the attack on Jamia Hafsa and Lal Masjid, terming the imposition of enlightened and moderate philosophy as a bid to damage the pristine values of Islam.

They accused that the recent attack was a series of steps being taken to appease the west, and has diverted the government towards bloody vendettas and brutalities towards its citizens.

The Ulema contended that seminaries preach and impart Shariah based concepts of brotherhood, harmony, peace, lawfulness, and religious norms, and not terrorism and extremism as being claimed by government.

They cautioned that this act of government has widened the never-ending gulf of hatred between army and masses, which could and would never be able to be filled, and said that this feud has also unveiled the true intentions of Musharraf and his cronies.

While paying their glowing tributes to Abdul Rashid Ghazi, they maintained that his sacrifice would never go waste.

Lal Masjid: What really happened?
by Abid Ullah Jan
July 15, 2007

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“Musharraf wanted to diffuse the multi-parties conference in London [a meeting of dozens of Pakistani politicians]. Before that he was using Lal Mosque to distract [from] the judicial crisis.”

The so-called Lal Masjid operation is officially over but it leaves the military regime and Pakistan in a major security, political, moral and religious crisis. Based on the available information, we can clearly see as to what really happened. Following are the bare minimum facts that can be accommodated in a short article. It is, however, not difficult to dig the associated facts and prepare a legal case against the culprits of this bloody adventure.

The pro-regime analysts claim that all the damning information that exposes the regime is fantastic and damning allegations, facts mixed with fantasy to create dramatic PR affects. They want to make the public believe that the following are mere perceptions and have nothing to do with the reality:

• That there are over 1000 casualties of students, mostly women and children and the government have removed the bodies for secret burials.

• There were no weapons in the complex and the governments have planted them after the operation.

• There were no terrorists or foreign fighters inside the complex and the government is only using this excuse to build its cases.

• The operation has been carried out on the orders of US by General Musharraf to please West to seek a re-election for next five years.

As far the number of casualties are concerned, it is not just the clerics who are kicking dust that 1000 casualties have taken place within students of the seminary, there are “editorials” and “analysis” by credible and neutral journalists who have come to the conclusion after putting all available statistics side by side that “at least 902 and at the most 1956 people have been killed.”

Among the victims were “orphans”, people from as far as “Azad Kashmir” and other remote areas. These include families with little of no resources to afford to come to Islamabad, get together in one place and campaign for their dead ones in these circumstances.

Relative of the victims, who “are already in Islamabad” are running from pillar to post to no avail. Camps have already been established for the victims from Kashmir to assess the actual number of missing people. Amid the reports of mass burial people have already lost hope to find their loved ones.

Not allowing the media at the time of operation makes some sense. However, not allowing them to enter the mosque immediately after the operation and a “ban on media personnel to visit hospital” and cold storage for dead bodies simply shows that there was too much for the regime to hide and plant.

It would be ridiculous on the part of relatives of the victims to insist looking in the mass graves for their loved ones, which the regime should have handed over to the relative in the first place.

An announcement to come and recognize your loved ones in the dead bodies at cold storage would have brought many to the front to show the estimate of missing people. May be that’s why the government was in a hurry and started digging and burying during the night. The laborers working on the graves have told BBC of finding “two and more bodies in one coffin.” And logically, more than 100 mass graves for 102 victims (as per the military regimes claim) just do not make any sense.

Dawn editorial on July 11, 2007 states:

“Eighty per cent of the operation,” to quote an army spokesman, had been completed to expel the terrorists from the Lal Masjid when these lines were written, and Abdul Rashid Ghazi had been killed, though resistance from hard-core militants was still going on, with the death toll in the vicinity of 150.”

Note the figures of 150 dead by the time when 80 % operation was completed. And come back to the government’s figure of just 50 after 100% operation that was regurgitated by all the national and international media for a long time after completion of the bloody drama.

For the sake of discussion, even if we take the official figures of casualty as true, aren’t more than 100, including women and children, a significant number?

Couldn’t these lives be saved?

Of course, they “could have been saved” provided General Musharraf the had not “ordered operation before the end of negotiations” as we can see from “numerous reports” and personal testimony of those who were involved in the negotiations.

Mufti Usmani who was part of the delegation affirms that the two sides had reached an agreement. They wrote it down. In fact, the government Minister of Information inked it and took it share with General Musharraf, who rejected it and when Chaudhry Shujaat returned “things were back to the square one.” Moreover, at the same time, the military personnel on the ground “started harassing them to leave” as it was already too late for them to begin the operation.

This has been proved conclusively that the bloodbath at the mosque could have been avoided but Musharraf had other nefarious designs and malicious objectives to achieve. The “daily Ummat, July 11 report ” and interview with the two individuals, who were part of the final delegation, is part of the evidence against General Musharraf. Ghazi’s “last communication to the media” is far more credible than all the government reports.

The deceased Ghazi could be evil, so to say, but at the very least he would not lie to three TV channels “just moments before his death.” He said it repeatedly that he wanted the government to allow media to come in to see for itself if what the regime was claiming had any connection with the reality.

If the government were true in its claims to foreign fighters and a cache of weapons in the mosque, it should have let the media in. What was it afraid of? It is not a blunder on the part of government. It was part of the strategic planning. With media’s access, the regime’s case would have fallen apart and it’s lies about foreign fighters and weapons would have been exposed leaving it with no justification to launch the bloody assault and score points with its foreign masters. The negotiating ulema have also refuted the regimes claim that Ghazi has asked for safe passage for foreigners.

According to a Pak-Tribune story:

“They further said that Maulana Muhammad Saleem Ullah Khan including his colleagues Maulana Muhammad Rafi Usmani, Maulana Abdul Razzaq Skinder, Maulana Qari Muhammad Hanif Jalandhari, Maulana Zahid-ur-Rashadi and others arrived in Islamabad on 9th July to settle this issue and called on Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, PML-Q chief Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain and other ministers and formulated the unanimously joint strategy on which Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi showed his consent.

They said that at final stage, Ch. Shujaat Hussain insisted to send the agreement to Awan-e-Saddar for final approval, and when this agreement returned, it was altered. When informed about this new formula, “Maulana Ghazi refused to accept it.”

It proves that Musharraf simply didn’t want “a peaceful resolution.” The week long stand off was only part of the drama to show that his junta is showing restrain and negotiating. That was absolutely not the case despite the “public statement of the Ghazi Aziz” with the expression of hope on July 5 after the “deceptive arrest of Maolana Aziz” and Ghazi’s discussions with Chaudhry Shujaat that the crisis will be resolved in a few hours time.

It also proves that all the people involved in this agreement were not fool, or blind, or terrorist and extremists, or RAW agents. However, Mush tried to show that he was above their collective wisdom and what he thought was right and above their agreement.

By amending the joint agreement, Mush simply told all concerned that the final word belongs to him, else all are dead. That is what he did. This is what all tyrant dictators do.

The pro-regime media has a different story to tell. Dawn July 11 editorial says, “Abdul Rashid Ghazi refused to show any flexibility. Even Maulana Fazlur Rahman accused Ghazi of intransigence. Those who went to negotiate with him included Maulana Abdul Sattar and Bilqees Edhi and some of the country’s respected ulema, but Ghazi remained obdurate. He and his militants fired on parents who had gone to the mosque to meet their children.”

Who the editors of Dawn are trying to fool? Did we not personally hear Ghazi on Geo 24 hours before the operation, when he was so confident after talking to Chudhry Shujaat that he predicted everything to be settled within a couple of hours. He said it repeatedly that he had agreed to all the conditions.

Did we not read “the reports” about Ghazi’s offer to surrender? And what about Asia Times July 10, 2007 report mentioning these facts:

“‘Yes, the talks were successful. The draft was written. Abdul Rasheed Ghazi was to be allowed a safe passage, but then the draft was sent to the president and he amended it. Things were back to Square 1 and the talks failed,’ a dejected Grand Mufti Usmani told Asia Times Online by telephone. He rarely leaves his seminary in Karachi, but was specially invited to Islamabad by the government for the talks.

“Asia Times Online contacts claim that the situation was complicated by the sudden appearance of a delegation of members of Parliament belonging to the government’s coalition partners, the Muttahida Quami Movement. They are believed to have met with a US official at his official residence, after which the situation changed within an hour.

There is no reason for us to believe the one-sided, pro-government, biased reports, which is no less than an attempt to fool the nation and the world.”

According to “Ishtiaq Ali Mehkri”, news editor at Geo TV, the Lal Masjid standoff was a “masterpiece of intelligence agencies” and an “eyewash” to deflect attention from issues of national importance, especially the Supreme Court hearing of the petition of Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, whom Musharraf summarily suspended as chief justice.

Mekhri’s views were endorsed by Hamid Mir, senior political analyst at the same TV channel. “Musharraf wanted to diffuse the multi-parties conference in London [a meeting of dozens of Pakistani politicians]. Before that he was using Lal Mosque to distract [from] the judicial crisis.”

According to Mir, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, head of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, who was sent to negotiate with the mosque administration, and who was about to resolve the issue in April, was “asked by someone very important to delay it”.

There is so much behind the façade of fighting extremism. To save the nation, to save the armed forces and Pakistan, we need to be persistent and press for answers to all the questions which are still left unanswered. At the same time, based on the available, undeniable facts and witnesses, we need to make the regime accountable and make the culprits pay the price because not only the blood of innocent civilians lie on their hands but it has give a perfect justification to the Islamophobes to prepare a case for an all out war on Pakistan.

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/layout/set/print/content/view/full/44962

By Keith Jones
July 13, 2007

In a nationally televised address Thursday evening, Pakistan’s US-backed dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, defended the Pakistani military’s storming of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), threatened military action against any madrassa (Islamic school) “used for extremism,” and promised to strengthen paramilitary and police forces in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).

The general feigned regret at the large number who perished in the 36-hour battle that ended Wednesday afternoon with the military wresting control of the Lal Masjid, a mosque-school complex in central Islamabad. “Unfortunately,” declared Musharraf, “we have been up against our own people … They had strayed from the right path and become susceptible to terrorism.”

Among the many things Musharraf omitted to say was that he personally scotched a deal Monday night to peacefully end the military’s siege of the Lal Masjid and that the mosque and its leaders had long been part of a nexus linking the Pakistani military-intelligence apparatus to various Islamicist militia groups.

The reality is Musharraf and his military regime staged a massacre. They deployed twelve thousand troops, including many of Pakistan’s elite units, in the heavily-populated center of Islamabad, then ordered an attack on the Lal Masjid that included artillery barrages, even though they knew that hundreds of unarmed people, including women and children, likely remained inside.

Through this bloodletting, Musharraf hoped to achieve two objectives: to please the Bush administration, which has been pressing Islamabad to intensify military action against pro-Taliban elements inside Pakistan even at the cost of antagonizing the country’s tribal and Pashtun minorities; and, second, to divert attention from, and increase his options in dealing with, the mounting opposition to his attempt to stage-manage his “re-election” as president.

Less than two months ago, more than forty people were killed in Karachi when the pro-Musharraf MQM with the connivance of security forces mounted armed attacks on persons gathering to welcome “suspended” Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.

Just how many people died in the storming of the Lal Masjid complex remains an unanswered question close to two days after the military announced it had seized the mosque.

Pakistani authorities claim to have found 75 bodies in the Lal Masjid and put the total number of dead in the eight-day siege at around 108, including ten military personnel. Eighty-five of the 108 deaths reputedly came during Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s storming of the Lal Masjid.

But the real death toll is likely much larger. The Dawn reported Thursday that an unnamed source who had visited the Lal Masjid and the adjacent Jamia Hafsa seminary for women shortly after the army takeover said the floors were littered with corpses wrapped in white shrouds: “I could not count them but they must be in the hundreds.”

The Dawn also observed that “a promised media trip to the site was put off a day, fuelling speculation that the government was buying time to remove some telltale signs.”

Ever since the military launched its action to seize the mosque, reporters have been barred from the three closest hospitals, so as prevent them from gauging the number of dead and wounded.

For hours after the fighting had ended, the government and military insisted that no, or next to no, women and children had been killed. Later they conceded that some of the 19 bodies too charred to determine gender or age might be those of women and children.

The government’s claims are belied by the scores, possibly hundreds, of people who continue to search desperately for relatives, many of them teenage boys and girls, who were enrolled in one of the two seminaries affiliated with the Lal Masjid and who are now missing.

Acknowledging the widespread public skepticism about the number of casualties, Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani insisted Thursday, “There’s no cover-up. Why should we?”

Reporters who toured the mosque complex Thursday afternoon described it as a battlefield, with bullet-riddled, blood-stained, and in some cases blown-out walls. Military spokesmen said this was evidence of the intensity of the resistance they faced.

A principal government justification for the assault was the reputed presence of “foreign militants” in the complex. This claim was vehemently denied by Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the younger of the two brothers who led the Lal Masjid. Ghazi, who was killed during the storming of the mosque, became the leader of the mosque militants after his brother was arrested on the second day of the siege.

Musharraf, in his speech to the nation Thursday, repeated the charge that foreign fighters had been ensconced in the Lal Masjid, but offered no proof.

Security forces remain on high alert across the country for possible reprisal attacks. On Thursday five people including three police were killed in a suicide bombing in the Swat district of NWFP, and two government officials were killed in a second suicide bombing in North Waziristan, which is part of Pakistan’s tribal belt.

The NWFP government, which is formed by the MMA, a six party alliance of Islamic parties, has decreed a three-day official period of mourning to commemorate all those killed in siege and storming of the Lal Masjid. Since Tuesday there have been demonstrations in many NWFP towns, with protesters denouncing Musharraf as a US puppet.

Opposition to the US government due to its current wars of conquest in Afghanistan and the Iraq and long history of supporting military dictatorships in Pakistan cuts across Pakistan regionally and, to a large degree, socially. But it is especially strong in NWFP, where the majority Pashtun population has strong ethnic and cultural ties to Afghanistan.

US praise for massacre

The Bush administration, meanwhile, has strongly praised the Pakistani government’s brutal suppression of the Lal Masjid militants. Speaking Tuesday as the military operation was in full swing, Bush professed his admiration for the dictator Musharraf and his efforts to build “democracy” in Pakistan: “I like him and I appreciate him.”Various liberal voices like the New York Times that have been critical of Musharraf of late for not doing enough to suppress support for the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan have also welcomed the military operation against the Lal Masjid.The US is deeply implicated in the Lal Masjid massacre and not only because the political establishment has been demanding Musharraf do more to support the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan.The US played a pivotal role in encouraging the Pakistani military and political elite in using Islamic fundamentalism as a bulwark against the working class and left and in developing ties to armed Islamacist groups in furtherance of US Cold War aims. These ties Islamabad subsequently used to further its own geo-political ambitions in Afghanistan, Kashmir and India-proper.The US gave the green light to General Zia, who would proclaim “Islamicization” his principal policy, to seize power in a coup in 1977. Soon after, Zia’s regime emerged as the principal conduit for CIA and Saudi support for the mujaheedin in Afghanistan.

US priorities shifted with the end of the Cold War, but the Pakistani military-intelligence apparatus continued to nurture and expand its relations with various Islamic militias.

The prestigious Lal Masjid mosque, which is situated in the center of Islamabad in close proximity to many government buildings, including the headquarters of Pakistan’s secret police (the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency), became an important part of this nexus.

The La Masjid was long led by the father of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Maulana Abdullah—a man said to have enjoyed a close relationship with General Zia. And both Ghazi and his brother are known to have had links to the Pakistani military-security establishment.

Since seizing power in 1999, Musharraf has been forced to make a series of sharp shifts, under US pressure, ratcheting back the military-security apparatuses’ relations with Islamicist groups. Most dramatically, in September 2001, in response to US threats to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age, Musharraf withdrew Islamabad’s support for the Taliban regime and agreed to allow the US to use Pakistan as a staging area for the conquest of Afghanistan. But Islamabad has also been pressured by Washington to curtail its support for the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir.

These steps have caused frictions within the Pakistani establishment, especially given the sidelining of the Pashtuns within Afghanistan’s US-installed government and the failure of Washington to prod India into make any meaningful concessions over Kashmir.

The full story of how and why the Lal Masjid Islamacists came into collision with the Musharraf regime has yet to be told. Some of their actions, such as voicing support for pro-Taliban elements in the NWFP and tribal areas, drawing attention to the growing number of “disappeared,” and kidnapping police and Chinese nationals as part of a campaign for sharia law, clearly cut across the government’s agenda.

Lucrative property was also an issue, with government authorities claiming facilities connected with the Lal Masjid and other Islamabad mosques were built illegally.

The vast majority of the students at the two seminaries affiliate with the Lal Masjid, many of whom participated in an armed agitation in Islamabad in support of sharia law, it needed be added, come from the most impoverished regions of Pakistan. The spread of madrassas is not due just to the political support they have enjoyed since the Zia dictatorship. It is also a product of the wretched poverty that prevails in Pakistan and the abysmal state of public education.

That said, there is much evidence to show Pakistani authorities allowed the Las Masjid agitation to develop, ignoring for months actions that challenged the government’s legitimacy. As numerous observers have pointed out, it is ludicrous to suppose that large quantities of arms and ammunition could have been smuggled into the Lal Masjid unbeknownst to the ISI high command, whose plush offices are within easy walking distance.

At the very least, the Musharraf regime saw the Islamic agitation in the capital as a means of intimidating the working class and democratic opposition to military rule.

After temporizing and conniving with the Lal Masjid agitation, Musharraf cynically and brutally turned against it, seeing its bloody suppression as a means of both demonstrating to Washington his determination to heed the US’s demand he crack down on Taliban support in Pakistan and of perpetuating his dictatorship.

As part of his attempts to broker a power-sharing deal with Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan People’s Party (PP), the general is trying to cast himself as a “secularist” and advocate of “enlightened” Islam. Bhutto, for her part, has repeatedly indicated that she is prepared to ally with the general in the name of opposing the Islamic right, if a satisfactory division of the spoils of office can be hammered out.

Bhutto’s PPP welcomed the military action against the Lal Masjid and has refused to join forces with the most of the other opposition parties, including Nawaz Sharif’s PML (N) and the MMA, in a new alliance. The All-Parties Democratic Movement has called anti-Musharraf rallies for next month, but the PPP, which has increased its interaction with the Bush administration in recent months, has declared the time not propitious for a popular agitation.

Should it prove impossible for him to strike a deal with the PPP, Musharraf has the option of using the government’s confrontation with Islamic “extremists” as the pretext for imposing emergency rule and thereby short-circuiting the elections promised for this fall.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/paki-j09.shtml

When Dictators Serve US Interests
by Sir. Imran Khan
July 13, 2007

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Over recent days, news from Pakistan has been dominated by the siege at the Red Mosque, which ended late yesterday. Scarcely a mile from the seat of power in Islamabad, the madrasa students and their two leading clerics inside the mosque first claimed attention with kidnappings, threats of suicide bombings and demands for the imposition of sharia law. The Musharraf regime mounted a military operation against the militants which led to the loss of numerous lives, among them one of the clerics, Abdul Rashid Ghaz. A number of questions arise. Why was action not taken immediately? How were militants and arms able to get in under the gaze of the police and intelligence services? And why were other measures, including shutting off electricity at the mosque, not exhausted earlier?

The episode appears to have been drawn out deliberately by President Musharraf. Since he sacked the chief justice in March, a movement led by lawyers, journalists and opposition parties has been clamouring for democracy on Pakistan’s streets. As Musharraf faces his biggest crisis, he is desperate to prove his indispensability to the west in the war on terror.

But this use of force is likely to produce unintended and dangerous consequences, as it has in Baluchistan, Waziristan and Bajaur. It may be salutary to recall how Indira Gandhi’s order for troops to attack the Golden Temple, where Sikh militants were holed up, not only failed to subdue the militants but triggered a wave of violence, including her assassination. While few Sikhs may have sympathised with the militants, many came to deeply resent the government’s high-handedness.

Suicide bombing and other noxious forms of terrorism were once alien to Pakistan. After eight years of military dictatorship, radicalism and fundamentalism are in the ascendant everywhere. Musharraf is perceived among radical elements as the west’s instrument in a “war on Islam”–there could be no greater failure in the battle for hearts and minds.

Terrorism requires a political solution. Extremists can be marginalised through debate and political dialogue in a democracy. Military dictatorship, as we are now seeing, only exacerbates the problem. It has become obvious to every Pakistani that, far from presiding over a transition to genuine democracy in the country, Musharraf is intent on dismantling every democratic institution in his way. Over recent months he has assaulted the judiciary, restricted freedom of the press, and put hundreds of members of the opposition behind bars.

The roots of the most shocking incident so far, however, can be found in north London, where the chairman of the Musharraf-allied Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Altaf Hussain, resides. When Pakistan’s chief justice decided to address the bar in Karachi, a vast welcome was expected in the city. This worried Musharraf and his MQM allies, who control the Sindh government–and especially Karachi, the provincial capital. They decided to organise a rival rally the same day, despite protests by the opposition. What followed on the blood-soaked May 12 could be described in two words: state terrorism.

While the police stood aside, the terrorist arm of the MQM sprayed bullets into a peaceful procession of the opposition parties. Some 48 people lost their lives and 200 sustained bullet wounds. Among them were 10 members of my party. Most callously, Musharraf later that evening triumphantly claimed that the people had shown their “force”. None of the opposition parties believe MQM’s denials that they were involved in turning this peaceful protest violent. It was then I decided to launch legal proceedings against Altaf Hussain, who has been living in exile in London since 1992 and became a British citizen in 1999.

The MQM came into existence in the mid-1980s as a genuine people’s movement in Karachi, representing the immigrant community that had arrived from India shortly after the creation of Pakistan. This community had serious grievances, the most significant being that educated young muhajirs could not get jobs because of imposed quotas. But within a few years it had degenerated into a thuggish mafia outfit, controlled by one man, Altaf Hussain.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and even the US state department and the European Union have issued reports about the MQM’s terrorist activities. The only independent provincial assembly in Pakistan recently denounced the party as a “terrorist organisation”, and last weekend the conference of opposition parties jointly resolved to support the legal proceedings against Hussain.

While Musharraf maintains that he is at the frontline of the war on terror–in which thousands of Pakistani soldiers and citizens have lost their lives–he has allied himself with the country’s number one terrorist. And Tony Blair’s government, which was at the fore of this war, gave Pakistan’s number one terrorist citizenship.

It is impossible to embark on any quest for the hearts and minds of Pakistanis when these blatant double standards exist. Are dictators somehow fine when they exist to serve US interests, even if they destroy hopes of democracy in the process? And are terrorists only a problem when it is western blood that is shed?

Imran Khan is the leader of the Pakistan Movement for Justice and a member of parliament.

http://www.counterpunch.com/khan07132007.html