After the Siege

Operation Silence, the Pakistani military’s brutal siege of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, ended in a bloodbath with the deaths of dozens, perhaps hundreds of people that the Musharraf regime termed “terrorists.” The government claims that some 80-90 “militants” were killed in the operation, but most reports indicate that the number is much higher than that; moreover, there is little doubt that dozens of innocent students were killed in this clash between the military and a handful of religious fanatics.

The siege was carried out in a manner that not only demonstrated the ruthless power of the Pakistani military, but that shamed, humiliated and degraded the Red Mosque clerics and their supporters. As Farooq Tariq of the Labor Party of Pakistan (and a harsh critic of fundamentalism) tells us, those who came out of the mosque were treated by the media as “terrorists” who had “surrendered,” as if this were a “military-to-military” operation. The public humiliation of the students continued as they were paraded through the streets and on national TV, shirtless, with their hands raised. The most disgraceful episode, of course, was the manner in which Mullah Abdul Aziz, one of the clerics, was interviewed on television after his arrest while still wearing the burqa that he had donned as a disguise.

The siege of Lal Masjid has invoked comparisons with Operation Bluestar a similar siege and assault that took place in India in 1984. In June of that year, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the Indian military into action against Sikh separatists who had taken refuge in Amritsar’s Golden Temple. The bloody eight-day siege resulted in the killing of nearly 500 Sikh civilians by the military and paramilitary forces, according to figures that have only recently been made public. Four months later, in October 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards. (In the wake of Gandhi’s assassination, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of Sikhs were slaughtered in anti-Sikh riots and pogroms, particularly in the capital, New Delhi.)

Will Musharraf face a similar backlash from the Islamist forces in Pakistan? That is the question on everybody’s minds. Today’s papers tell us that the backlash might already have begun. In the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), the truce between the Pakistani military and Taliban-led forces came to an end this weekend, with the latter calling for renewed attacks against the Pakistani forces. Some 50 people were killed in bombings that are in all likelihood an indication of more violence to come.

U.S. Rushes to Musharraf’s Rescue

An article in today’s New York Times refers to debates in Washington about an “aid” package of $750 million that the U.S. plans to pour into Pakistan’s tribal areas. The money, they claim, (the Times blithely repeats this claim without questioning it) is to help “win hearts and minds” in the tribal areas.

The fact, however, is that Musharraf’s Washington handlers are not happy with these developments, and have promised to supply the Pakistani military with “all the tools it needs for a projected crackdown on militants in the NWFP and the tribal areas,” according to a news report in the Pakistani daily Dawn. This comes on top of the $100 million that the Pakistani military already receives to “monitor” the tribal areas of the NWFP.

After the carnage was over, Musharraf went on national TV to praise the work done by the military and to declare, in no uncertain terms, that he would begin a crackdown on Islamic militants across the country. (His speech, in Urdu, is available on YouTube.) The irony of it all, of course, is that the Pakistani military has for decades been complicit in forming and strengthening the very forces that they today claim to want to destroy. As Farooq Tariq puts it:

The Red Mosque incident can be best termed as fight between … two monsters. The two mullahs, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashed, were helped, developed and assisted in all means by those who are in power today. The present fight was between two close friends who had developed some conflicts of interest.

Thus, when the two clerics were arrested in 2004, they were released when the Minister for Religious Affairs, one Ijaz ul Haq, son of the late military dicatator General Zia ul Haq, intervened on their behalf. It was under General Zia, after all, that the madrassa system was turned into a recruiting tool for the Afghan mujahideen (under U.S. supervision, of course).

Now, having had to battle Islamist militants right in the heart of Islamabad, with the NWFP in flames again, and with large-scale flood-related disasters all across the south and Balochistan, Musharraf’s regime seems to be coming apart at the seams. With elections scheduled for later this year, it is not unlikely that Musharraf will use this instability to crackdown even further, possibly declaring martial law and canceling the elections.

What does this mean for progressives in Pakistan today? Farooq Tariq puts it this way:

[R]eligious fundamentalism can not be defeated by use of force…. It has to be [a] political fight to expose the real meaning of religious fundamentalism to the lives of ordinary people. “You can not kill ideas”…. By killing dozens at the Red Mosque, the … Musharraf regime has created [a] more difficult situation for the genuine progressive forces in Pakistan….

The progressive forces in Pakistan must have an independent position to condemn them both. We can not lend our support to one enemy in opposition to the other one. The Military Junta [supported by] American imperialism and the religious fundamentalists are both enemies of the working class. They both are against trade unions and radical social and political organizations. They both are believers of private property and free market. They both have same economic polices which are primarily responsible for the absolute poverty stricken conditions of the masses across [the] globe…. We must oppose them both [and] build our own ranks by fighting for the rights of the working class.

Check out Farooq Tariq’s article at the LPP website here.