The news on 5 December 2012 read like this: Pakistan's Supreme Court has constituted a judicial commission to probe the 2007 Lal Masjid operation in Islamabad in 2007 - a government crackdown on a controversial pro-Taliban mosque in the capital which ended in a bloody eight-day siege killing at least 58 Pakistani troops and seminary students.

Lal Masjid facts have been overwhelmed by politics. The operation marked the beginning of the end of the Musharraf regime. It is said that he brought himself down by first allowing the operation against Lal Masjid and then dismissing the Supreme Court of Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The PMLQ, through which he was ruling, wanted no part of the operation because of their deep rightwing conviction not to take on the clerics. As they began distancing themselves from it, his political platform began to slip from under him.

The media, provoked by restrictions he sought to place on it, rebelled, not least also because of the popular support of the mosque under attack. Two opposition parties - PMLN and PPP - wanted him pinned down so that he could be removed from the scene together with his PMLQ facade. The PMLN was clear about what it wanted to do: go all out for Musharraf's ouster. The PPP had a mixed approach because the Taliban were targeting its allies. Then it fell foul of the Supreme Court by delaying its restoration. The Supreme Court had a showdown with Musharraf, backed by popular support, not a little assisted by the media and the PMLN.

Today, the Lal Masjid Operation of 2007 is owned by no one. Musharraf may regret he ordered it. But the facts will not disappear. Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was created after the operation. Al Qaeda was furious because it counted a lot on Lal Masjid as its foothold in the capital where most youths believed al Qaeda was not a terrorist organisation and not an enemy of Pakistan. TTP insisted on owning the mosque.

On 6 July 2008, it celebrated the anniversary of the operation by killing 19 in Islamabad through a suicide-bomber, 15 of them policemen. An al Qaeda videocassette marked the first anniversary of the destruction of Lal Masjid in which revenge was sworn.

Understandably, the Supreme Court wants to get to the bottom of what really transpired. It has already taken steps to undo the damage done to the madrassa by the operation.

Amir Mir in his book Talibanisation of Pakistan from 9/11 to 26/11, states: 'Before the bloodshed, the Mosque had a reputation for radicalism, mostly attracting Islamic hardline students from North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and tribal areas where support for the Taliban and al-Qaeda is quite strong...Much before the military operation code named "Operation Silence" was launched by the Pakistan Army, Lal Masjid had become known to the outer world as a centre of radical Islamic learning, housing several thousand male and female students in adjacent seminaries'.

Founder of the mosque Maulana Abdullah Ghazi was murdered in the sectarian war of Pakistan. His sons Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid ran the seminary aggressively, targeting elements they thought were flouting the sharia and attacking the Shia. They fed youths into state-sponsored jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir, connecting the state to training camps run by terrorist organisations under al Qaeda.

'As the Operation Silence unfolded it was discovered that elements from militants groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkatul Jihadul Islami were present inside the seminary. Lal Masjid compound was being used as a hide-out by dozens of wanted militants who had Kalashnikov rifles, LMGs, hundreds of hand grenades and petrol bombs and a few rocket-launchers in stock'.

Ayman al-Zawahiri said during the Operation: 'This crime can only be washed by repentance or blood... If you do not retaliate....Musharraf will not spare any of you. Your salvation is only through jihad'.

Zahid Hussain in his book The Scorpion's Tail: The Relentless Rise of Islamic Militants in Pakistan and how it Threatens America (2010) noted: 'Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid had learned their militancy from their father, Abdullah Ghazi, who was the head cleric of Lal Masjid during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and who had developed strong ties with the Islamist groups that joined in the fight. He had received funding and guidance from the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies for recruiting militants to the cause, and Lal Masjid had become a citadel of militancy. After the Taliban's victory in Afghanistan, Abdullah Ghazi became closely associated with al Qaeda.

'In 1998 he travelled to Kandahar to pay homage to Mullah Omar, whom Pakistani radical Islamists regarded as their spiritual leader, and he took his younger son, Abdul Rashid, with him. During this visit Abdul Rashid became radicalised. He met with bin Laden alone for an hour and discussed with him issues that had troubled him for a long time. At the end of the meeting, he recounted, he picked up bin Laden's glass of water and drank from it. An amused bin Laden asked him the reason for his action, to which Abdul Rashid replied, "I drank from your glass so that Allah would make me a warrior like you".' (p.112)

'Rashid's elder brother condemned Pakistan's Army's decision to fight the terrorists. In 2001, he declared to a packed gathering, "Allah has punished America for its anti-Islam policies and the sinful life of its population". When Musharraf sent troops to Waziristan in 2004 Abdul Rashid led a campaign against the military operation and issued a fatwa together with a number of leading clerics declaring the military action in Waziristan un-Islamic and proclaiming, "Those killed in the battle against Pakistani forces are martyrs".' (p.113)

Two months after the Lai Masjid siege, an 18-year boy blew himself up inside the high-security base of Zarrar Company, the elite commando unit of the Pakistan Army responsible for Operation Silence; 22 soldiers were killed. It was an insider job. Zahid Hussain writes: 'One of the officers identified was Captain Khurram Ashiq, who had been with Pakistan's Special Services Group and had also served in Zarrar Company' (121). Captain Khurram Ashiq died in Helmand fighting on the side of al Qaeda. His brother Captain Haroon Ashiq too worked for al Qaeda, killing an SSG commander Major-General Feisal Alvi in Islamabad. He has been acquitted this year by an anti-terrorist court in Adiala Jail.

British journalist Owen Bennett-Jones in his lengthy study Questions Concerning the Murder of Benazir Bhutto (London Review of Books, 6 December 2012) refers to one of the assassins of Benazir Bhutto named Husnain Gul who joined the gang of her killers because of Lal Masjid:

'Husnain Gul was a madrassa student who in 2005 had received small-arms training at a camp in North-West Pakistan. The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) report says that when he was arrested he had a hand grenade and clothes belonging to his friend, Bilal. In his confession, Gul described how a friend of his had been killed when Musharraf ordered an assault on the Red Mosque in Islamabad in July 2007. The attack on the jihadis who had seized the mosque was a turning point in modern Pakistani history, persuading many Islamists that the Pakistani state was not their friend but an enemy that must be attacked. Gul decided to avenge his friend's death and persuaded his cousin, Muhammad Rafaqat, to join him'.

The clerics who visited the mosque to intercede with the Ghazi brothers included: Grand Mufti Rafi Usmani of Karachi, Harkatul Mujahideen commander Fazlur Rehman Khalil and Al Qaeda lawyer Javed Ibrahim Paracha. Maulana Fazlur Rehman of JUI was at first opposed to the Ghazi brothers for not listening to advice till he was tamed by fellow clerics through a reprimand.

Comments (2 comments)

Who has right to decide the right or wong for the state? An Army General? or the parliment?

Posted: Thursday, January 03, 2013 by Saqib Rauf from Rawalpindi

During my visit to Pakistan in Nov 2012, I also visited the Red Mosque but only from outside. When I tried to take pictures, a man came running to me and said; “it is forbidden to take pictures of this mosque”. When I argued that it was non-sense that I cannot take pictures of a public building, he went away. To those who blamed President Musharaf for ordering the extremists to vacate the premises and stop its zealot Imam brothers to take laws into their own hands, he was criticised by political parties and now Supreme Court wants a Commission to investigate the event. I have a simple question: What would any government do if a mosque, an organisation, a town or part of a country refuses to abide by the constitution and refuses to accept the law of the land? Would it be acceptable behaviour? Just because the mosque housed religious students and Imams does not mean that they have the right to mutiny against the state. There have been many cases in the west, especially USA when FBI flushed out by force such movements. The same goes for mutinies against the state. No country can allow a state within a state and especially those who flaunt the law publically and misuse the religion for their own political agenda.

Posted: Wednesday, December 26, 2012 by Bashy Quraishy from Copenhagen