Islamabad - 'Martyrs are calling you from heaven. We
sacrificed our lives for God, they say. But you still love your
lives,' read a banner as more than 12,000 hard-line Islamists
assembled in Islamabad to mark the first anniversary of the storming
of the radical Red Mosque.
Slogans like this always work well in Pakistan, once the land of
moderate Muslims but now a breeding ground for militancy, extremism
and terrorism.
As the faithful began to disperse after absorbing dozens of fiery
speeches from their leaders, a suicide bomber struck, sacrificing his
own life as well as slaughtering 20 people, 16 of them policemen, a
few hundred metres from the venue over the weekend.
'The message from the remnants of the Red Mosque is very clear.
'We are still there and we can strike you whenever and wherever we
want,'' said Talat Masood, a retired general and a security expert.
'They will keep on hitting again and again till the issue of the
mosque is resolved to their liking and I will not be surprised if the
government does so,' he added. 'That would be very unfortunate.'
Among the Islamists' demands is the reconstruction of the mosque's
adjoining girls seminary, Jamia Hafsa, from where hundreds of burqa-
clad, stick-wielding female students repeatedly raided houses in the
capital last year, alleging these were brothels, and abducted women
for reformation.
Backed by their male colleagues, the vigilantes patrolled the
markets and warned music vendors to abandon their businesses,
prompting from the government serious action, which started from a
simple siege of the mosque and concluded with a commando action on
July 10, 2007, followed by the razing of the seminary.
Most of the people believe that some 3,000 people, mostly women
and children, were brutally killed in the assault, completely
disregarding the official death toll of around 100.
The former mosque administration even alleged the security forces
of using phosphorous bombs to burn alive the women and children, a
claim which created a wave of sympathy for the Red Mosque victims and
anger against the government.
The operation triggered a countrywide suicide bombing campaign,
which not only annihilated many of the elite commando group that led
the mosque raid but also targeted political leaders and senior
military officials, leaving around 4,000 people dead over the last
one year.
The country's fragile economy, already toiling under rising
international fuel and food prices, suffered heavily.
The major Karachi Stock Exchange saw 22 billion dollars of foreign
capitalization eroding from it in the past year, and the rupee lost
15 per cent of its value against the dollar, propelling inflation
which now stands at 30 per cent, creating a further risk of internal
unrest.
President Pervez Musharraf, who ordered the operation, also paid a
price. His popularity slumped sharply subsequently and his political
backers heavily lost February 18 elections, leaving the retired army
general struggling for political survival.
Political scientist Rasul Bakhsh Rais said the operation seems to
be setting off a 'new, dangerous Islamic movement' in the country as
the extremists use their 'victims' to arouse the sentiments of the
masses and propagate their philosophy.
'The movement is nihilist in form. It rejects every political and
social structure, every rule and regulation, that exists in the
country. The forces behind it are ready to ... pay any price that is
needed to reshape Pakistan and Pakistani society.'
The new movement is slowly becoming popular among the masses,
especially the poor and underprivileged sections of society
disillusioned with the prevailing political system that they believe
promotes injustice and benefits only the elites.
'The military action proved to be a disaster. There were ways to
resolve the stand-off at the Red Mosque peacefully. Instead, the
government used excessive force and now we see the tragic fallout,
which is uncontrollable, irreversible,' Rais said.
It is not clear yet how far the Red Mosque philosophy has made
inroads in the public, but the resolve and determination of its
followers to carry it forward is hard to be ignored.
After issuing a warning to the government over the weekend to
immediately start rebuilding the demolished Jamia Hafsa, dozens of
Islamists on Monday started Koran classes for female children in the
open, in a symbolic move to reassert their claim over the seminary
land.
Hardly a single policeman showed up to stop them. Perhaps the
images of the charred and dismembered bodies of their colleagues who
died in the weekend suicide bombing kept them away.
'This is exactly the spot where I surrendered during the
operation. At that moment here on the ground were lying the dead
bodies of three children around me, but today children are again
learning Koran at the same place,' said Umme Hassan, the principal of
seminary and wife of detained former mosque prayer leader Maulana
Abdul Aziz.
'Those who wanted to eliminate us should know that our movement
still exist, and it will exist till the Day of Judgement, because God
is with us, because the blessings of those who gave their lives at
this place are with us,' she added proudly.
salmanJul 8th, 2008 - 14:56:58
This miserable and worse situation is unfortunate for whole the nation as well as the country and no one is able to understand the exact situation that as to what is happening and who is responsible for this.
the Pakistani society and people, as i consider, generally are secular and liberal. They dislike religious politics and they have rejected religious parties in recent 18th Feb polls.
The gathering of some 18,000 people near red mosque and after the speeches the open-air Quraan classes, i think, were arranged by the agencies that may be ISI or CIA. In my opinion, our country is strong grip of foreign as well as local agencies and every political change and event is influenced directly or indirectly by them. People are angry, no doubt, by the killing of red mosque students but they do not endorse their jihadi ambitions. Even they are of the view that the whole episode of the red mosque was prepared by the govt itself.
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