The Hindu Business Line : Clerics raise a Challenge — The Talibanisation of Islamabad?

More than two decades ago a visiting Indian journalist charmed by the old world splendour of Lahore and the vigour and vitality of the bustling commercial city of Karachi, where I was then India's Consul General, described Islamabad as a city of "bureaucrats, bores and boulevards." Around the same time America's then Ambassador to Pakistan remarked that Islamabad was a city "half the size of the Arlington cemetery (in Washington D.C.) and twice as dead."

Islamabad has always been a sanitised city, far removed from the reality of what is Pakistan. The army and bureaucracy that have received preferential allotment of housing plots are comfortably ensconced there. But two events in recent days have shattered this comfortable belief of Pakistan's privileged classes.

The first was the unprecedented solidarity of the legal fraternity, after Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry unexpectedly refused to bow when peremptorily sacked by the President, Gen Pervez Musharraf, dressed up in his attire of a four star general. The more ominous development was the defiance shown by two clerics, Maulana Abdul Aziz and his brother Abdur Rashid Ghazi, who appear determined to challenge the establishment and coerce it into adopting Shariah laws in the capital.

While it was widely expected that the ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 would lead to a reduction in Islamic radicalism in neighbouring Pakistan, the opposite seems to have happened. With the Taliban and Al Qaeda finding haven in Pakistan, their radical supporters, particularly in the tribal areas (FATA), elsewhere in the Northwest Frontier Province and in Baluchistan have risen to challenge the writ of the Pakistani state. These areas, bordering Afghanistan, are now becoming progressively Talibanised.

First Challenge

The first real challenge to the writ of Gen Musharraf came when he sent in over 80,000 troops to FATA to force tribals to end support for the Taliban. The Pakistan army received a bloody nose in FATA, losing over 700 soldiers. More ominously, over 300 officers and men reportedly face disciplinary action for refusing to take up arms against fellow Pashtuns. Paradoxically, even as his soldiers were getting killed, fighting supporters of the Taliban in Waziristan Gen Musharraf permitted Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders to seek asylum in Quetta.

With Gen Musharraf's writ over the NWFP under challenge, pro-Taliban elements soon established Shariah courts, banned videos and music, forbade barbers from cutting and trimming beards and prevented girls from receiving modern education. In Peshawar and other places in the NWFP that abut the tribal areas, the local Taliban has ordered schoolgirls to veil themselves and men not to shave their beards. Elsewhere in FATA, armed Taliban men stop vehicles and remove cassette players and radios and force men to grow beards.

What is shocking is that the two clerics in Islamabad are threatening to enforce similar measures in Islamabad from the precincts of a Masjid-Madrassa complex they control. This complex is a stone's throw from the Prime Minister's Secretariat, the Supreme Court and Parliament, with the quasi-military Pakistani regime apparently immobilised. Maulana Abdul Aziz runs the Lal Masjid set up with tacit approval of the powers-that-be in the very heart of Islamabad. His brother, Abdur Rashid Ghazi, runs two Madrasssas — the Jamia Hafsa (for Burqa-clad girls) and the Jamia Faridia for bearded male students.

A few months ago, the students of Jamia Hafsa forcibly occupied a children's public library after the administration demolished seven illegally constructed mosques, evidently on security considerations. The two brothers then proclaimed their determination to enforce Shariah laws on the capital. They set up a Shariah court to hear public complaints, with their male students warning owners of video parlours and musical cassette stores to close shop, while women driving cars were warned to stop doing so.

A campaign against vice

A campaign against vice was commenced with the abduction of a woman accused of encouraging prostitution and two of her family members. When the Islamabad police sought to rescue the kidnapped women, they had to beat a hasty retreat when police vans were seized in retaliation. The clerics issued a Fatwa against Pakistan's gutsy Tourism Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar for being hugged by a paragliding instructor in Paris. In the meantime, the Shariah court even started entertaining complaints from women police personnel, who complained of sexual harassment.

The entire episode is now threatening to get out of hand. There is an understandable disinclination to use force against the Masjid-Madrassa complex. Over 70 per cent of the students-male and female, are Pashtun. They are evidently well armed. Given the fact that around twenty percent of the Pakistan army is made up of Pashtuns and recent experiences in Waziristan, any significant loss of lives would provoke Pashtun outrage. Moreover, responding to appeals from the clerics, a large number of fundamentalist Madrassa students from across Pakistan have converged on the site of the Lal Masjid.

Seeking political accommodation with the clerics, Gen Musharraf has deputed the Head of the Muslim League (PML-Q), Chaudhry Shujat, who, like many of his ilk, is given to yielding to pressures from religious extremists, for talks with Maulana Aziz. Shujat has held talks with the clerics, with the Musharraf dispensation showing signs of buckling to their demands. The Government has agreed to reconstruct the seven illegal mosques it had pulled down. It has also agreed to act against alleged centres of prostitution. The clerics have refused to close the Shariah court they have set up and remain firm on their demands for the introduction of Shariah law. Measures to deal with this situation will figure prominently when the country's real rulers, the Army's Corps Commanders meet in Rawalpindi this week.

Reflecting on developments in Islamabad, the Editor of the Lahore-based Friday Times Najm Sethi notes: "More Mullahs (across Pakistan) are likely to follow suit, if the issue is not "closed" swiftly. Brothels, billboards, veils, music, film, haircuts, dress, and schools-there will be no end to "concessions" demanded in the name of Jihad and Islam." The process of Talibanization moving eastwards from the NNWFP appears to have commenced. In Lahore, the student wing of the Jamat-e-Islami, the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba has beaten up "un-Islamic" students and proclaimed "Islamisation" of the campus.

Can this process of creeping Talibanisation of Pakistan be halted? It can, if Gen Musharraf and the army establishment take a few crucial steps. These include an irrevocable break with their traditional partners — the Islamic political parties — end support to such groups as the Lashkar e taiba, which declare "Hindus, Christians and Jews" as "enemies of Islam", end support for the Taliban, offer secular education, allow mainstream political parties to function freely. Whether Gen Musharraf has the inclination, will or ability to undertake these measures remains to be seen. He is still averse to giving up his uniform, even if re-elected President and appears unwilling to realistically concede political space to the two political leaders in Pakistan who enjoy grassroots political support — Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif.

(The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan.)