Life After Death

On the morning of his last day alive, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, head cleric of Islamabad’s besieged Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), swore his readiness to die. “My martyrdom is certain,” he told the local press. Within hours, Ghazi’s bullet-riddled body was carted out of the basement of the sprawling mosque and madrasah, or seminary, complex where he and scores of heavily armed militants had battled Pakistani security forces for eight days. Ghazi is dead, but he may well come to haunt the President, General Pervez Musharraf, and the country.

The assault on the Red Mosque, which began on July 3, was an operation to root out extremists angry with Musharraf’s unwillingness to Islamicize Pakistan and with his pro-West policies in the war on terror. On the surface, Musharraf won. By Wednesday, July 11, the death toll was at least 50 militants (as well as 14 soldiers), and the army was mopping up small pockets of resistance inside the compound. Yet the siege could become the first salvo in a divisive war for Pakistan’s soul: to be a traditional, Shari’a-based society, or a modern, moderate Muslim nation. As the urban élite and middle class lauded what they considered to be Musharraf’s action to clean out a hotbed of radicalism, protests erupted in the tribal areas condemning the President and lionizing Ghazi.

Musharraf knew he was playing with fire by attacking a mosque and risking civilian casualties. The authorities weren’t saying how many noncombatants had been killed, but, given the vicious, close-quarter fighting and the thousands of students, including women and children, inside the complex, the miracle was that more people did not die.

Survival is also an issue for Musharraf, who has been under siege, both at home and abroad, over his inability to tackle al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, his stalling over restoring full democracy to Pakistan, and his drawn-out dispute with the popular Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Now his religious and political opponents are using the Red Mosque siege as fresh ammunition against him. “Our blood,” Ghazi said, “will be the first step toward Islamic revolution.” Most Pakistanis pray he will be proved wrong.