Musharraf lauds Lal Masjid massacre
By Keith Jones
13 July 2007
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In a nationally televised address Thursday evening, Pakistan’s US-backed dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, defended the Pakistani military’s storming of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), threatened military action against any madrassa (Islamic school) “used for extremism,” and promised to strengthen paramilitary and police forces in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).
The general feigned regret at the large number who perished in the 36-hour battle that ended Wednesday afternoon with the military wresting control of the Lal Masjid, a mosque-school complex in central Islamabad. “Unfortunately,” declared Musharraf, “we have been up against our own people ... They had strayed from the right path and become susceptible to terrorism.”
Among the many things Musharraf omitted to say was that he personally scotched a deal Monday night to peacefully end the military’s siege of the Lal Masjid and that the mosque and its leaders had long been part of a nexus linking the Pakistani military-intelligence apparatus to various Islamicist militia groups.
The reality is Musharraf and his military regime staged a massacre. They deployed twelve thousand troops, including many of Pakistan’s elite units, in the heavily-populated center of Islamabad, then ordered an attack on the Lal Masjid that included artillery barrages, even though they knew that hundreds of unarmed people, including women and children, likely remained inside.
Through this bloodletting, Musharraf hoped to achieve two objectives: to please the Bush administration, which has been pressing Islamabad to intensify military action against pro-Taliban elements inside Pakistan even at the cost of antagonizing the country’s tribal and Pashtun minorities; and, second, to divert attention from, and increase his options in dealing with, the mounting opposition to his attempt to stage-manage his “re-election” as president.
Less than two months ago, more than forty people were killed in Karachi when the pro-Musharraf MQM with the connivance of security forces mounted armed attacks on persons gathering to welcome “suspended” Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Just how many people died in the storming of the Lal Masjid complex remains an unanswered question close to two days after the military announced it had seized the mosque.
Pakistani authorities claim to have found 75 bodies in the Lal Masjid and put the total number of dead in the eight-day siege at around 108, including ten military personnel. Eighty-five of the 108 deaths reputedly came during Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s storming of the Lal Masjid.
But the real death toll is likely much larger. The Dawn reported Thursday that an unnamed source who had visited the Lal Masjid and the adjacent Jamia Hafsa seminary for women shortly after the army takeover said the floors were littered with corpses wrapped in white shrouds: “I could not count them but they must be in the hundreds.”
The Dawn also observed that “a promised media trip to the site was put off a day, fuelling speculation that the government was buying time to remove some telltale signs.”
Ever since the military launched its action to seize the mosque, reporters have been barred from the three closest hospitals, so as prevent them from gauging the number of dead and wounded.
