Daily Times : End of Lal Masjid crisis is start of govt’s struggle

End of Lal Masjid crisis is start of govt’s struggle

The Daily Times | July 13, 2007

LAHORE: The siege of Lal Masjid in Islamabad has come to a bloody end — but the struggle between the government and the jihadists can now only escalate, reported the New Statesman magazine on its website..

According to the magazine, Pakistan is currently facing one of the most serious political crises in its modern history. The siege at Lal Masjid and the Jamia Hafsa turned the federal capital into a war zone and the government had to establish a curfew for the safety of local residents.

The weekly writes that Maulana Abdul Ghazi, the chief cleric of Lal Masjid, was patronised by Pakistan military and intelligence agencies during the 1990s, as their links with jihadist groups through the mosques and madrassas they ran were essential to Pakistan’s regional policy.

However, the report adds, the jihadist movement’s increasing strength and influence steadily and inevitably outgrew the tight leash imposed on it by its creators and sponsors in Pakistan.

It opines that Lal Masjid’s plan was to create a model for Pakistan’s estimated 20,000 madrassas to follow. It was the tested, highly effective Islamist model of setting up parallel social and welfare institutions, aimed at highlighting the failure of the state to protect the masses. It has worked for Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

According to the report, the madrassas offer impoverished rural families a chance to send their children to cities to receive an education in a morally and socially conservative environment. The education that madrassas offer is strictly religious, but Lal Masjid’s ideological links with jihadist groups inevitably exposed the students to far more than just spiritual instruction.

Fearful of a nationwide showdown with thousands of madrassas and their militant leaders, President Musharraf was hesitant to respond to the vigilante tactics of Jamia Hafsa students. But while domestic considerations deterred him from confronting the students and leaders of Lal Masjid, international pressure was pushing him in the opposite direction. According to the magazine, the turning point came when the mosque held a group of Chinese nationals hostage.

Beijing, with considerable commercial interests in Pakistan, started to question if it had a stable ally in Pakistan. It was at this moment that Musharraf decided to take action and the confrontation with Lal Masjid militants started.

The weekly magazine adds that there is far more at stake in the crisis than the immediate battle. At its heart, it states, it is about the Pakistani state confronting the jihadist groups and ideologies it has given rise to. The prominent Pakistani journalist Zahid Hussain has described this as “a battle for the soul of Pakistan”.

Nonetheless, the siege will have a profound impact on Pakistan in the coming months. It will have made “martyrs” of the people killed in the operation and thereby insured that Musharraf will be the mortal enemy of many militant madrassa leaders and their followers.

How civilian politicians in Washington and Pakistan respond will be critical, with the violent end marking the beginning of a critical shift in the politics of Pakistan. The decades-long alliance between the government and jihadists had been broken and it is a point that will be difficult to return to. It is indeed the start of the long battle for Pakistan’s soul, adds the report.