MUST READ: THE ROAD TO LAL MASJID & ITS AFTERMATH

The Road to Lal Masjid and its Aftermath
By Hassan Abbas

It is clear that most Pakistanis wanted Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) leader Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi to be held accountable for his vigilantism and for trying to enforce his extremist version of Islam on society. The public's views have changed, however, now that it has become obvious that the government used indiscriminate force during the operation and since its claims about the presence of foreign militants inside the mosque complex have not been independently verified. The following important questions remain unanswered: why did the government act so benignly for the past six months and allow a problem to augment into a major crisis; who was Abdul Rashid Ghazi and how did he manage to smuggle a huge cache of weapons into the mosque complex; was intelligence flawed or were intelligence agencies involved in the plot; and why did President Pervez Musharraf choose a time for the crackdown that coincided with the meeting scheduled for all of Pakistan's opposition parties in London.

While people search for answers to these critical questions, Pakistan is witnessing an unabated terrorism cycle—having experienced a suicide bombing or a bomb blast each day since the July 10 military operation against the mosque. Tragically, those who died in the Red Mosque operation are now being proclaimed as shaheed (martyrs), and a debate has ensued in Pakistan between what the media are calling "religious extremists" and "liberal fascists." A week before the operation, ordinary Pakistanis were stunned that the government was not acting to resolve the crisis; today, a week after the deadly operation, Pakistanis still have few clues as to the new crisis that is unfolding. Furthermore, Musharraf's legacy seems frozen between these two weeks.

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Pertinent Links:

1) The Road to Lal Masjid and its Aftermath (pdf file)