Musharraf only over the first
hurdle By Philip Smucker
ISLAMABAD - Praised even by arch-rivals
for a successful operation against Islamic
extremists in the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in
Islamabad this week, President General Pervez
Musharraf appears to have snatched at least one
quick victory away from those who have predicted
his political demise this year.
But
without a major change in education strategy and
an imposition of law in the country's tribal areas bordering
Afghanistan, Pakistan is
likely to remain a hornets' nest of extremism for
years to come, say analysts and activists in the
capital.
For months, Musharraf has been
losing popular support over his abrupt suspension
of the country's chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad
Chaudhry, who had expressed reservations about the
president's efforts to remain simultaneously in
political power and in military uniform.
For nearly eight years since seizing power
in a bloodless coup, Musharraf has held
tenaciously to the presidency. With his insistence
that military rule is best, he has steadily
alienated many in Pakistan's educated civil
society, which longs to see genuine democracy. His
decision to side with the United States after the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on that
country helped Pakistan win more than US$10
billion in foreign aid, most of it for the
military.
Musharraf earned lavish praise
from residents in this tree-lined capital this
week for his decision to root out Islamic
militants holed up inside the mosque and an
adjacent girls' school. The battle shocked and
awed middle-class locals usually more concerned
with car pools and swimming pools.
But
while many said they would have preferred an
earlier crackdown, sympathy for those who had
turned a mosque into a militant outpost was hard
to find. Red Mosque deputy leader Abdul Rasheed
Ghazi, an outspoken critic of Musharraf and an
avowed associate of Osama bin Laden and the
Taliban, is unlikely to become a symbol for
martyrdom in Islamabad.
Although the 164
special commandos took far longer than expected -
more than 36 hours in total - to secure the
compound, massive civilian casualties appeared to
have been averted. The last surviving militant was
found cowering in a bathroom on Wednesday evening.
Military officials said 1,300 people had
escaped or otherwise left the compound since the
siege began on July 3. At least 106 people were
killed, including 10 soldiers, according to
military officials. At a burial on Thursday
morning, scores of numbered coffins were lowered
into the ground and officials said their bodies
had yet to be identified by frantic relatives
combing the city for missing loved ones.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters
that no bodies of women or children had been found
inside the sprawling mosque and school complexes,
but at least two corpses the size of children were
spotted being buried on Thursday.
The week
of urban warfare near the president's home and the
militants' hard-fought battle from within a sacred
enclave focused the country's attention on the
issue of religious extremism.
Commentators
on the country's 24-hour news channel, Dawn,
posited theories on how better to clamp down on
militants. Middle- and upper-class Pakistanis, who
are not under direct attack from extremists, often
pay scant attention to reports that the militants
have gained strength. Despite this, the Ministry
of Interior filed a report this month suggesting
that Pakistan's approach to militancy is failing
and that Islamic extremism is spreading like a
cancer across the country.
Pakistan's
military officials insisted this week that its
siege and flushing out of the Red Mosque was meant
to send a strong message to religious groups that
seek to turn schools into armed camps. Those who
live with the militancy every day, however,
remained skeptical that the country's extremists
are now on the defensive.
"I still don't
see the political will in this country,
particularly from Musharraf, to change the
policies that create these militants," said
Afrasiab Khattak, a leading human-rights activist
in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), where
Taliban fighters and al-Qaeda are thought to have
secured a major base for international terrorist
operations.
"The government knows where
these militants come from and it has used them for
its own purposes in the past, but it hasn't moved
a centimeter to limit them," he said.
Pakistan's efforts to implement a massive
overhaul of its religious-oriented educational
system - aimed at rooting out the teaching of
intolerance and militancy - have stalled because
of resistance from mullahs and schoolmasters who
often operate with funding from Saudi and Persian
Gulf charities.
Some militant Muslim
groups in Pakistan, including al-Qaeda, criticized
the operation. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's
deputy leader, released a four-minute video on
Wednesday calling on Pakistanis to retaliate
against Musharraf's attack on the Red Mosque. Both
Zawahiri and bin Laden are believed to be in
Pakistan, though their exact whereabouts remains a
profound mystery.
"If you do not retaliate
... Musharraf will not spare you," said Zawahiri.
"If you do not revolt, Musharraf will annihilate
you. Musharraf will not stop until he uproots
Islam from Pakistan."
The Egyptian doctor
sounded, on the surface, to be frustrated by the
loss of his strong allies at the Red Mosque.
"Rigged elections and politics will not help you,"
he admonished Pakistanis, asking, "Are there no
honorable men in Pakistan?"
Western
intelligence officials - who haven't always proved
"intelligent" when it comes to Pakistan - say
al-Qaeda is using Pakistan as a springboard for
its international operations. (A US report
released on Wednesday states the obvious - that
Pakistan is now al-Qaeda central.)
As
worrisome for Pakistan as the revolt at the Red
Mosque is the "in your face" attitude of many
other religious schoolmasters in the country. Many
religious ideologues, or jihadi mentors, hold
al-Qaeda leaders in much higher regard than any
military or civilian leaders in Pakistan.
In NWFP's Swat district, for instance,
Fazul Haq, a defiant schoolmaster in a well-known
movement to impose strict Islamic law, boasts that
"we consider Osama as a friend, a leader and a
good Muslim".
"If they - the military -
are going to arrest [religious leaders] and hand
them over, the people of Pakistan will come out
into the streets and will destroy the whole
country," he said, expressing a common sentiment
in Pakistan's badlands.
If anything,
Pakistan has seen a mushrooming of militant
madrassas, or religious schools, in recent
years.
In the past, Pakistan's military
has maintained a loose alliance with jihadist
groups fighting in Kashmir and in Afghanistan,
though those ties have soured of late, maybe more
so after this week's Red Mosque attack.
Militants fired rockets and launched
small-scale attacks in apparent retaliation for
the military operations in Islamabad, though the
full extent of retribution will play itself out
over the next several weeks.
Analysts say
the military's past support of extremism is now
rising up to bite it - where it hurts the most -
in the institution's political bank account. If
Musharraf has to turn his government over to a
civilian leader by the end of the year, many of
Pakistan's militants believe they can further
their agenda.
While Musharraf's
arch-rival, former premier Benazir Bhutto,
expressed some support for his siege and attack on
the Red Mosque, several other opposition leaders
criticized the president's "excessive use of
force".
Musharraf's success at the Red
Mosque could well turn out to be a hollow victory
if there is no parallel crackdown on extremism
along Pakistan's troubled border with Afghanistan.
Rather than continuing a limited crackdown
in these regions that began in 2003 and 2004,
Musharraf has, in the past year, retreated into a
policy of what critics call "appeasement" by
making deals with religious and tribal leaders to
avoid confrontation as long as they publicly
disavow militancy.
Even to Musharraf, a
master of double-talk in his own right, the notion
that these leaders are going to swear off their
allegiances to jihad must appear a little absurd.
Philip Smucker is a commentator
and journalist based in South Asia and the Middle
East. He is the author of Al-Qaeda's Great
Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's
Trail (2004).
(Copyright 2007 Asia
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