Behind
The Red Mosque
By Tarek Fatah
12 July, 2007
The
Globe and Mail
In
the spring of 1965, Pakistani military dictator Ayub Khan rigged an
election to hold on to his presidency. This triggered outrage among
the people, especially in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Students and
trade unionists joined lawyers and academics in the streets chanting
the slogan, Ayub kutta, hai, hai (Ayub the dog, shame, shame).
Fearing a mass uprising, the field marshal (a good friend of presidents
Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson) dipped into the
time-tested tool used by all tyrants: He wrapped himself in the flag.
What better way to deflect the wrath of the people than to wage war
on the infidel "enemy," India.
So, in August of 1965, he launched Operation Gibraltar, sending thousands
of Pakistani troops in civilian clothes deep into Indian-administrated
Kashmir. New Delhi retaliated by attacking Pakistan on Sept. 6, resulting
in a 17-day war that ended in a stalemate.
For a few months, Ayub Khan was a hero. The opposition demonstrators
had disappeared, branded as traitors. It seemed that he had succeeded
in positioning himself as the saviour and would rule Pakistan for another
decade. That didn't happen. Within four years, Ayub Khan was gone in
a wave of citizens' protests that led to nearly 100,000 people being
arrested and hundreds killed.
Among the admirers of the fallen field marshal was a young student at
Karachi's St. Patrick's High School. His name was Pervez Musharraf.
Like Ayub Khan, he, too, would topple an elected government. And like
Ayub Khan, he, too, would be America's key ally in the region.
Leading up to the crisis of the Red Mosque of Islamabad, General Musharraf
was facing an unprecedented uprising by the ordinary citizenry, led
by the popular and recently dismissed chief justice of Pakistan. As
the sweltering summer of discontent spread across the country, tens
of thousands of lawyers poured onto the streets in what is known as
the "black coat" protests. Finding no room to manoeuvre, Gen.
Musharraf emulated Ayub Khan, and manufactured a crisis. Then, like
a knight in shining armour, he stepped in to put down the rebellion
by Islamists holed up inside the Red Mosque.
It's important to know that the Red Mosque was a creation of Pakistan's
intelligence services, which used it for decades to recruit armed jihadis.
It was another U.S.-backed Islamist dictator, General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq,
who had allowed the Red Mosque jihadis a free hand in spreading their
hateful doctrine of extremism under the name of Islam. The Americans
simply went along.
The brothers who led the Red Mosque rebellion - the one who was arrested
trying to escape in a burka, as well as the mullah who died in the fighting
- worked for Pakistan's intelligence agencies. Their father, too, was
an employee of the government and ran the fiefdom in the heart of Islamabad
until he was assassinated.
The mullahs and radical jihadis in the Red Mosque were all actors in
the game of Pakistani roulette. As long as the mosque remained a visible
hotbed of Islamist activity, Gen. Musharraf could show the West that
it needed him to fight terrorism. Just as Ayub Khan was able to convince
successive U.S. administrations that, without him, Pakistan would slide
into communism, Gen. Musharraf has convinced George Bush that, without
him, Pakistan would become one large Red Mosque teeming with jihadis
trying to whip the nation into an Islamist nuclear power.
What he fails to disclose, of course, is that the arming of the Red
Mosque could not have happened without his government's full knowledge.
There's no way that machine guns, rocket launchers and ammunition could
be brought into the heart of Islamabad, next door to government ministries,
without arousing the suspicion of the country's omnipresent security
agencies.
Today, the Pakistani army will claim to have stamped out a hotbed of
Islamic terrorism. Tomorrow will be another story. Abdul Rashid Ghazi
will emerge as the martyr of the Islamist movement in Pakistan, and
his death will become the rallying cry for the Islamofascists, not its
end.
In the end, Gen. Musharraf was caught in his own trap. He could not
put the jihadi genie back into the bottle, so he had to kill it. He
may come out as a hero to the White House and to Pakistan's ruling upper-class
elites, but history dictates that this will be a short-lived romance.
Both Gen. Musharraf and the Americans who prop him up must realize that,
to fight malaria, one needs to drain the swamps, not kill individual
mosquitoes. The best way to fight Islamist radicalism in Pakistan is
to ask the general to step down and organize democratic elections without
the aid of fraudulent voter lists that deny exiled politicians a return
to the country.
For too long, the U.S. has propped up men in uniform who ruin the political
and social fabric of Pakistan. The risks are too high to continue playing
this game of Pakistani roulette. Like his hero Ayub Khan, Gen. Musharraf,
too, has sucked almost a decade out of the life of the nation. Like
Ayub Khan, he, too, should go, or the country will go, instead.
Tarek Fatah, a former student activist in his native Pakistan, is founder
of the Muslim Canadian Congress.
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