NYT : Pakistan’s Battles Against Islamic Militants Reach the Capital

Pakistan’s Battles Against Islamic Militants Reach the Capital

By JANE PERLEZ and CARLOTTA GALL | July 4, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 3 — A months-long standoff between the Pakistani government and Islamic militants holed up in a mosque in the heart of the capital erupted in violence on Tuesday. The fierce clashes between security forces and students left at least nine people dead and scores wounded.

The fighting exposed the normally placid capital to the wider divisions between moderates and militants in Pakistan, shattering the notion that the seat of government was immune from extremism.

The crackle of gunfire and the arc of tear gas could be heard and seen from blocks away soon after the confrontation began in the afternoon around Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, a prominent place of worship in the capital. Students attacked a nearby government building where security forces had taken up positions, setting fires and sending black smoke billowing into the sky.

Each side blamed the other for causing the violence. Among those killed were a Pakistani Army ranger and two students from a pair of religious schools, or madrasas, that accommodate male and burka-clad female students in separate buildings.

The leader of the madrasa for young men, Abdur Rashid Ghazi, has used the students over the last six months to challenge the leadership of Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Mr. Ghazi, who apparently has the backing of a number of militant groups, insists that Pakistan follow Islamic law and keep good relations with the Taliban, whose influence the United States has consistently asked General Musharraf to confront more aggressively.

Since January, the students have staged a sit-in at a children’s library. In March, they seized three Pakistani women accused of running a brothel. Last month, the male students barricaded three police officers inside the school. Ten days ago, the students kidnapped six masseuses from mainland China working in Islamabad.

At each provocation, moderate Pakistanis have expressed frustration with General Musharraf’s reluctance to take on the madrasa leaders. His caution, they say, has only encouraged further challenges and demonstrated the folly of not drawing a harder line with the extremists.

Western diplomats, too, say they have been surprised at the unwillingness of the Musharraf government to confront the school, which says it has thousands of students enrolled, many from poor families.

General Musharraf was asked directly why he had not yet acted when he addressed a media workshop in Islamabad last week. He replied that the government might storm the building, but added that he would not want the news media to show the dead that could result from an attack, apparently fearing the popular reaction and response by militants.

The clashes Tuesday, bloody as they were, did not appear to be definitive, since the leaders of the madrasa and many students remained in the buildings through nightfall.

Government officials blamed clerics and armed students for starting the battle. They said the students, including some young women, rushed toward one of the police positions set up near the complex over the last few days. The police then apparently fired, according to witnesses.

Soon after the shooting began, the loudspeakers at the mosque announced that the mosque had been attacked and that now was the time for bravery.

On the street alongside the two madrasas, hundreds of students chanted jihad slogans; some threw stones at a government school where security forces had taken positions. On the roof of the madrasa for young women, Jamia Hafsa, students threw buckets of water on tear gas shells. Inside, many of the students clutched long sticks and some recited verses from the Koran.

By late afternoon, many of the female students had left the school building from a back door, often walking out in twos and threes.

One mother, Saifa Bibi, who said she had picked up her daughter, Kusar Shaheen, 15, at the school, described the tear gas there as so strong that she kept her veil wet in order to breathe.

One young student, when asked whether she was afraid of the police, replied: “I’m not afraid of the police, I’m afraid of God.” After evening prayers, one man rushed out of the back entrance waving his arms in the air, shouting “jihad, jihad.”

The minister of state for information and broadcasting, Tariq Azim Khan, said that the government’s security forces, including the police and Army Rangers — paramilitaries often used to quell urban violence in Pakistan — had been deployed around the mosque complex over the last four or five days to prevent students from conducting further vigilante raids and abductions.

Mr. Khan insisted there had been no plan to raid the mosque complex, but said the situation had changed once those inside seized weapons from the police and shot and killed a ranger and wounded five others.

“The government wants those people who shot the ranger and injured people and those who are carrying heavy weapons,” he said in a telephone interview. “We want them to surrender those people and give them up to the police. If they don’t do that, then they leave us no option.”

He described the casualties as regrettable but said the students were responsible for much of the firing. He said the government had demanded that Mr. Ghazi end the occupation of the children’s library, hand over the students responsible for the shootings and surrender all weapons inside the schools. Those demands, he said, were not open to negotiation.

As the shooting continued Tuesday afternoon, the emergency staff at two city hospitals scrambled to treat the wounded. Dr. Fazle Hadi, director of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Science, said 25 wounded people were being treated there. A passer-by and a student of the madrasa had died, Dr. Hadi said. More than 60 female students were being treated for exposure to tear gas, he said.

At the Federal Government Services Hospital, Dr. S. M. A. Pasha, the surgeon in charge of the emergency unit, said 12 people were treated for gunshot wounds.

Among those wounded were a television journalist, Absar Alam, who was hit in the head by a rock that apparently was thrown at him. He described the scene as a “war in the heart of the capital.”

“There was no one in control,” he said from his hospital bed, his head bandaged, his shirt soaked in blood. “It doesn’t look like a capital city of the country.”

Another journalist, Israr Ahmed, 45, a CNBC Pakistan cameraman was critically wounded when gunfire from government forces sprayed photographers and cameramen, a photographer at the scene said.

The Army ranger, 45, a male student from the madrasa, 22, and a laborer were killed by the gunfire, Dr. Pasha said.

The minister of information, Muhammad Ali Durrani, said nine people were killed.

Salman Masood contributed reporting.