What next to do, President Musharraf ?
July 9th, 2007 by ashish
Musharraf has always tom-tommed his thinking to be that of a commando, quick and decisive action being his forte. However, the siege of the Lal Masjid must be straining his though process pretty badly. The stand-off between the security forces outside the mosque and the clerics and the students inside the mosque keeps on, with no easy solution in sight. Easy, means a negotiated / face-saving solution. The siege has taken the pressure that the President was facing on account of the campaign by the dismissed Chief Justice. That campaign was putting tremendous public pressure on the President and giving the opposition parties a good stick with which to beat the President.
However the President is caught in a cleft stick. This crisis is something that he has allowed to fester, given that he needs the support of the Islamic parties in order to remain as President. Thus, the authorities have condoned the actions of the students of the mosque, whereby the students were allowed to protest Government demolition of illegal structures, until the Government agreed. Thus emboldened, the students converted themselves into an-anti vice committee, spreading mayhem in the capital. And then, the next step. They kidnapped some Chinese citizens, accusing them of immoral activities; maybe this was what precipitated the Government action. It is nobody’s argument that the President had given them a long leash, and they took full advantage:
The week-long stand off between the Pakistani security forces and armed militants holed up inside the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) is being described by many observers as a double-edged sword for President Pervez Musharraf. The siege of the mosque in Islamabad has eclipsed more serious issues that have dogged the country in recent months, thereby diluting the ability of the opposition to capitalise on them more forcefully, they say.
Since then, the Red Mosque conflict has been “waxing and waning with the lawyers’ movement, and it is felt that every time the chief justice addressed a high-profile gathering, the Red Mosque students made a controversial move as if to grab rival space in the media”, says Tanvir Ahmad Khan, a former diplomat and analyst.
“After the conflict, the government has to explain why the intelligence apparatus failed to notice the presence of a large cache of arms and ammunition that enabled the militants to put up such a long fight in the heart of the country’s capital,” says Tanvir Ahmad Khan.
It was impossible for the inhabitants of the mosque to stockpile such major weapons without the active connivance of the military and intelligence, given that the mosque was so close to their headquarters. Fearing the loss of some powers, Musharraf had allowed them to grow, until, like the hydra-headed monster, they started threating his powers.
It is very much possible that a lot of the incidents have been instigated so as to allow Musharraf to keep popular support and maybe give him some emergency powers. He still has the powers
