Net closes on mosque - and
Pakistan By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
KARACHI - A fierce battle to seize
Taliban and al-Qaeda assets in Pakistan has begun
from the capital Islamabad, where hundreds of
militants holed up in the radical Lal Masjid (Red
Mosque) are surrounded by 12,000 Pakistani troops.
Significantly, Lal Masjid has become the
rallying point for jihadis against the
establishment. The country's jihadis have
traditionally fought under the umbrella of the
state in Kashmir or in
Afghanistan - not against
their own government.
Security forces,
after delaying for months, began their assault on
Lal Masjid on Tuesday, despite very real fears
that the action would inflame radicals across the
country, especially in the pro-Taliban tribal
areas on the border with Afghanistan.
Since then, at least 24 people have died,
including militants, security officers and
bystanders. Scores have been injured. More than
2,000 students at the mosque and nearby seminaries
for men and women have surrendered to the
authorities. And one of the two outspoken brothers
who run the mosque, Maulana Abdul Aziz, was
arrested while trying to flee under disguise of a
woman's burqa (veil). His brother, Abdul
Rasheed Ghazi, is still in the mosque.
Although the director general of the
Pakistan Army's Inter Services Public Relations,
Major-General Waheed Arshad, has denied any direct
military involvement in the crackdown, tanks fired
shells at Lal Masjid in the early hours of
Thursday, apparently destroying its front wall.
More than 100 armed militants are thought
to be well entrenched in the women's seminary
adjacent to the mosque as well as in the mosque
itself. The government has let several deadlines
for the students to surrender expire. The latest
was 12:30pm local time on Thursday. Circling Cobra
helicopter gunships received heavy fire from
within the mosque.
The president of the
ruling Pakistan Muslim League, Chaudhary Shujaat,
and Ghazi spoke on Wednesday night on possible
terms of surrender, but suddenly Ghazi changed his
mind and refused to lay down his weapons. It is
suspected that militants inside the mosque forced
Ghazi to take a stand and made it clear to him
that they would fight until the last man and the
last bullet.
The female students who have
surrendered have been allowed to return to their
homes, while most of the male students, more than
500 in number, have been sent to Adyala Jail in
Rawalpindi, Islamabad's twin city. They will soon
be moved to a nearby special facility jointly
manned by US and Pakistani officials. This was
intended to take Pakistanis currently held in the
US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (see
Pakistan to help as the US's
jailer, Asia Times Online, June 29.)
Interrogators of the students and Aziz can
be expected to focus on several key issues:
Possible channels of communication between Lal
Masjid and al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri;
Tahir Yuldashev, leader of the Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan; and Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, deputy
to the Taliban's Mullah Omar.
The strategic assets of the Taliban, such as
training centers in Pakistan. Lal Masjid has been
a recruiting center for the Taliban from where
youths were sent for training to North Waziristan
and South Waziristan, as well as to the Swat
Valley in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and
Malakand in Balochistan province.
Financial channels - how money collected from
all over Pakistan through charities and
philanthropists makes its way to Taliban and
al-Qaeda members.
The Lal Masjid
"movement" has steadily fallen into the hands of
Islamic militants connected with the radical bases
of the Taliban in the two Waziristans. In the past
few months, brothers Ghazi and Aziz have lost a
lot of their power, becoming more like puppets
whose strings are in the hands of the students
around them.
Ghazi admitted to this
correspondent two weeks ago that things were not
in his hands and that if he ever tried to
compromise with the government (as there was
considerable pressure from the clergy around the
country to do so), he and his brother would be
killed by their students.
Aziz's attempt
to sneak away from the mosque dressed in a veil is
evidence of this. Within minutes of his arrest,
Aziz was sped away to the nearby headquarters of
the Inter-Services Intelligence, from where he
telephoned his brother and told him to lay down
his weapons. Similarly, a delegation of Muslim
scholars visited the mosque to seek a peaceful
solution. The militant students forced Ghazi to
issue a statement that they would not surrender.
More targets Lal Masjid is the
first line of defense of the Taliban's assets in
Pakistan. The next is
Tehrik-i-Nifaz-Shariat-i-Mohammedi (TNSM), a
pro-Taliban organization dedicated to the
enforcement of Islamic laws. TNSM is based in the
Swat Valley, near Mingora and Malakand. TNSM
militants have already occupied strategic national
highways, including the Karakoram Highway on the
Silk Road that connects Pakistani trade to China.
After the crackdown on Lal Masjid, Mullah
Fazal-ullah of the TNSM has instructed his men to
carry out attacks on Pakistani installations. In
two separate incidents in Swat, a police station
was attacked and a district police officer was
killed in a rocket attack.
A mob of
stone-throwing religious zealots tried to occupy a
police station in Abbotabad in NWFP but they were
dispersed when police opened fire.
Militants in the two Waziristans have
conveyed to the local administration that their
peace deal with Islamabad no longer holds. Soon
after, a suicide attack on a military convoy in
North Waziristan claimed six personnel. Early on
Thursday, four policemen were killed in Peshawar
when their van was attacked.
The Pakistani
military's several operations in the Waziristans
over the past few years have always primarily been
against al-Qaeda and foreign militants, and the
establishment has had a policy of reconciliation
with Pakistani jihadis - hence the peace deals.
Admittedly some breakaway factions have
targeted the establishment, but with specific
goals, such as the assassination of President
General Pervez Musharraf, of which there have been
several attempts. As a whole, though, the
establishment and the jihadis have not fought one
another.
Recent estimates suggest there
are as many as 200,000 Pakistani jihadis, mostly
in bases in the Waziristans, NWFP and southwestern
Balochistan. Their mission is to join the
insurgency in Afghanistan to fight against the
foreign occupiers there. The attack on Lal Masjid
could give them new targets in their own country.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia
Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be
reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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