Issue 43 Vol II, July 15, 2007

E D I T O R I A L

Deafening Silence

“Operation Silence" opened with a deafening bang. Why is the silence still deafening? An answer to this question posed by a senior Pakistani commentator could provide an answer to the maladies that afflict Pakistan.

The “Operation Silence” launched by Pakistan’s elite commandos backed by tanks and gunships that lasted 36 hours has succeeded in ousting the hard line clerics and their equally frozen minded students from the Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad. Over 150 persons including the deputy imam Abdul Rashid Ghazi and ten soldiers lost their lives. Many of them were innocent.

As the siege began and after an initial gun battle outside the mosque the government sealed off the surrounding neighbourhood, cut off water and electricity and deployed a 12,000-strong force of soldiers and police. Their tactics ranged from bribery to brute force.  1,200 students abandoned the mosque after the government offered an amnesty and a 5,000 rupee payment. Imagine this gun battle and bloodshed  in the most modern capital of Pakistan, a few kilometers away from where the all power president  cum army chief lives.

This could have been melodrama but for the real killings, blood and gore that has followed and it reached its anti climax when one of its central characters, Maulana Abdul Aziz, was caught while trying to flee along with girls  from the scene in a burqa. The Lal Masjid issue and the consequent military crack down have nearly upstaged other issues like the on going saga in the Supreme Court and the political efforts to unite and begin their campaign for democracy.

This cleric presented a comic scene on PTV, the state television. The opening image showed a burka clad figure lifting his black veil to reveal the gray-bearded cleric, famous for his blistering rhetoric. Smiling frequently, he said , "If they can get out quietly, they should go, or they can surrender if they want to. I saw after coming out that the siege is very intense ... our companions will not be able to stay for long."

Before the siege Lal Masjid and its affiliated religious schools had about 6,000 students, mostly teenagers from poor rural backgrounds. They shot to prominence in January when the women occupied a children's library and the men started an anti-vice campaign targeting women and traders selling films and CDs. Strangely there were many takers among the public of this sham. Pakistani society is clearly divided between those who seek moderation, democracy on secular lines and development and those who want to turn into medieval society wedded to orthodoxy and fanaticism without even a semblance of democracy.

Coming weeks and months would lay bare more violence, particularly in NWFP, Waziristan and Blochistan including southern Punjab. Two suicide attacks have already killed a dozen odd soldiers.   This, as Musharraf calculates, will push other problems, the judicial predicament, and demand for democracy to the backburner. He could have a phony election and rule happily with his masters blessing from America for first creating the monster and then nailing him down. But matters are not simpler and the issue may  not disappear.

The cause of ‘enlightenment’ would be served by a return to democracy. But who’s interested in democracy? Stuck in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, the United States wants an ever-compliant ally in Islamabad. Musharraf fits this bill. That is why the US has no interest in seeing him go. It is for the people of Pakistan to grab the occasion and not let go waste the present mass movement for democracy and the rule of law.

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