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ISLAMABAD — The bloodbath at Islamabad's Red Mosque continues to hang like a grim shadow over Pakistan's fractured politics and society, one year after the army moved against militants holed up there.
More than a thousand faithful gathered at the small mosque in central Islamabad Friday for highly charged prayers, the first Sabbath after the anniversary of the military assault.
Pakistanis from all walks of life, not just the ultra-religious, believe that thousands of innocent people, mostly women and children, died in the assault on the mosque and an adjoining seminary for women, a sentiment that has further alienated the population from the state. The government's official death toll is 100.
The operation sparked a campaign of violence that has had profound implications for Pakistan: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by extremists, and the deteriorating security situation has prompted the government to enter controversial peace negotiations with Taliban militants on its northwestern fringe, a move that many fear is undermining the stability of the country.
Pakistani students of the religious school Jamia Hafsa, which is adjacent to Islamabad's radical Lal Masjid or Red Mosque, pray on the ruins of the site Friday as they mark the anniversary of a bloody operation run by the Pakistani military forces, in Islamabad. (Associated Press)
Many reject outright the government version of events.
“A lot of innocent students were put to death and no one has been brought to book,” said Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, a member of parliament for Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N.
“We need an independent judicial inquiry. We believe that everything was illegal and immoral,” said Mr. Chaudhry, who attended prayers at the mosque Friday.
After Friday's service, Amir Siddiq, a nephew of the Ghazi brothers, who ran the mosque until it was stormed, addressed a crowd outside, provoking a cry of “Let's go for jihad” from several hundred bearded men who had gathered on the street outside.
Mr. Siddiq, now deputy cleric at the Red Mosque, denied that militants were based at the mosque and the women's seminary, Jamia Hafsa.
“It was done just to give a message to the outside world that we are against terrorists,” Mr. Siddiq said. “When they try to crush us, it creates an even bigger reaction, a bigger movement.”
The government said at the time that it was forced to act after the mosque accumulated a large cache of arms and the students of Jamia Hafsa kidnapped some Chinese women they said were running brothels nearby.
President Pervez Musharraf is the focus of most of the anger, resentment that cost his allies during the election. Sheikh Rashid, a former minister in Mr. Musharraf's government who unexpectedly lost his Rawalpindi seat in the February polls, believes that the Red Mosque issue swung voters away from the main pro-Musharraf party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q.
“Of course, it was a great effect [on the election], there were so many dead bodies,” Mr. Rashid said.
In conspiracy-mad Pakistan, many believe those bodies were buried in secret mass graves after a siege that lasted several days and culminated in heavy bombardment of the mosque compound. The rumoured death toll is about 3,000, mostly at Jamia Hafsa, where girls studied a strict version of Islam. Pictures of the female students, clad in black all-enveloping burkas, wielding sticks and shouting their defiance, were some of the most memorable images of the showdown.
Jamia Hafsa was subsequently razed. A patch of derelict land next to the mosque now marks where it stood. Protesters will gather on the Jamia Hafsa site Sunday for a mass public meeting.
Feza Shamshed, a former Jamia Hafsa student who managed to escape on the second day of the military operation, returned Friday with a group of other burka-clad women, who played Islamic revolutionary songs from a portable music system. “Why are they hitting us with guns and cannons? What wrong did we commit?” the lyrics went.
“We had no idea our own government would act in this way,” Ms. Shamshed said. “They have bulldozed Jamia Hafsa, but a hundred more have sprung up in streets and alleyways all around.”
The Red Mosque has come to symbolize the fundamentalist challenge to the Pakistani state. The brutality of the government response was such that politicians who were then in charge, such as Sheikh Rashid, now condemn the action.
The institutions involved in the military operation, such as the ISI intelligence agency and the army itself, were subsequently the target of suicide-bomb attacks. Militant groups have repeatedly claimed that they are acting to avenge the Red Mosque deaths. Intelligence agencies are thought to carefully monitor those who go to the mosque for their prayers even now; some of its congregation have allegedly disappeared into their hands.
But far more damaging for the Pakistani authorities is the way in which the episode has radicalized ordinary people, who believe that an attack on a mosque can never be right, that any state capable of such an action is illegitimate.
Abdul Wajeed, attending Friday prayers, said: “They [at the Red Mosque] were fighting for Islam. The government has unrestricted power and they used that power against innocent people.”
Special to The Globe and Mail
