DAWN/The News International, KARACHI 31 March 2007, Saturday, 11 Rabiul Awal 1428
www.karachipage.com (click on underlined key-words/dates to get more details)
50 CCBs set up in Karachi to date
Minor girl raped by neighbour
3 killed in road accidents
Murderer of 7 held
2 Killed, 2 bodies found
Rockets fired at FC fort in Awaran (more)
Gas pipeline blown up
Women targeted by moral brigade quit the city (more)
Illegal radio station shut (more)
50 more killed in S Waziristan fighting (more)
Cable operator’s office, CD shop attacked (more)
Centcom chief arrives on unannounced visit
Bangladesh hangs 6 militants (more)
Talibanisation a threat to integrity, says HRCP (more)
The creeping coup (more)
50 CCBs set up in Karachi to date

KARACHI, March 30: The district nazim is the boss of the district police officer and writes the officer’s ACR (Annual Confidential Report) under the police order. However, like other sections of the Local Government Ordinance pertaining to devolution of power, its implementation is being resisted by traditional power wielders.

This was said by Muhammad Naeemul Haq, Member Prime Minister’s Secretariat, National Reconstruction Bureau, Islamabad in reply to a question during a media workshop on “Local Government System” held here on Friday.

He also pointed out that the nazims and councillors are public servants and equally accountable as any government servant. As such the nazims are under obligation to keep the accounts committee informed about their monthly expenditures.

He lauded the media’s role in creating awareness among the masses and playing an important role in compelling the provincial governments and authorities to enforce the LG system to make devolution a success, he said

Communication for Effective social Service Delivery (CESSD), a Canadian International Development Agency, and NRB project has jointly taken the initiative to involve the media effectively to communicate with larger sections of society to raise awareness among all sections of society to strengthen the principle and process of devolution of power and also strengthen the role of local communities, especially the poor and marginalised groups to have their say in local level needs, the identification, priority setting and budget allocation.

He said it was observed that even after completion of the first tenure of local governments there was confusion and lack of clarity about the roles and responsibilities of local governments, especially elected representatives with respect to local level development planning, priority setting and allocation of funds for development activities.

He said there were over 30,000 Citizens Community Board in all four provinces by September 2006, of which 3,902 were in Sindh. Sadly, in Karachi district there were only 50 CCBs! He said in three districts of NWFP Abbottbad, Nowshera and Peshawar were more than 800 CCBs and all of them had exhausted their development budget and demanding more allocation

He said the funds allocated to the districts for development could not lapse with the end of the fiscal year but continue to accumulate and whenever the CCBs were formed, the funds could be utilised. He said under the CCB, 20 per cent funds of the project had to be raised locally by the community while the rest of the budget would be provided by the federal and provincial governments.

He said in all four provinces, there were 394 town and tehsil councils, 6,125 union, 110 district councils and the total strength of councillors and nazims was more than 85,000.

To yet another question, he said that the ordinance was ready for promulgation for holding local government elections in the cantonments and Islamabad but the date was yet to be decided by the government about its enforcement.

Concluding the workshop, Advisor Dr Tariq Niazi said the biggest problem in implementation of the devolution system was lack of knowledge as the elected representatives and the officers concerned were still unaware of the powers they could exercise to ensure public service to the people.

He said the elite, who had been ruling for 150 years were reluctant and resisting giving up their powers to the elected representatives.

Minor girl raped by neighbour

KARACHI: A woman registered an FIR against her neighbour who raped her minor daughter. A case was registered at the Zaman Town police station. The police said that they received a complaint from Ms Khursheeda, a resident of Sector-50C, Korangi, to the effect that a day earlier, her daughter, A, 4, went outside to play and when she returned home after few hours, she was crying copiously with blood spots on her trousers. Khursheeda said that when she asked her as to why she was crying, she told her that her neighbour, Saeedullah, took her into his house while she was playing and raped her. She went over to the police station and registered her complaint.

3 killed in road accidents

KARACHI: Three people were killed in different road accidents on Friday. Muhammad Shafiq, 35, was knocked down by a truck near Mai Kolachi Road in Jackson town police limits, while he was riding on his motorcycle. An unidentified man was killed and Muhammad Afzal, 30, was injured when their motorcycle was hit by a truck on Sharea Faisal in Ferozabad police jurisdiction. Meanwhile Tayyar Khan, 60, was drowned in the sea, when he accidentally fell while fishing near Natte Jhatti Bridge in Jackson town police limits. An unidentified man of 19 was killed when his motorcycle was struck by a vehicle near Crown Cinema in Maripur police stations.

Murderer of 7 held

KARACHI: The Anti-Dacoity and Robbery Cell (ADRC) arrested a person wanted for the murder of seven persons including a police official.

On a tip off that the wanted murderer and his accomplice were present near Baba Shah Wilayat Shrine situated in Moackho police limits, DSP Ghulam Rasool Abro along with staff of the ADRC raided the place and arrested Ghulam Sarwar Jablani while his two accomplices Ali Haider Jablani and Shabir Jablani fled the scene.

Abro said the accused was involved in the killing of seven people including Azizullah, Rafi, Rehman and a cop Abdul Rehman in Ratodero, district Larkana.

The accused confessed to have killed seven people from 1996 to 2004 in Ratodero, Larkana.

Meanwhile, the ADRC team arrested a bandit while stealing a rickshaw from Lasbella area. The police claimed to have recovered the rickshaw from the possession of the accused Gulfaraz alias Haider. The police said that his accomplices fled the scene.

2 Killed, 2 bodies found

Karachi: Atif Noor, 30 was killed when he resisted a robbery bid. Rahimuddin, 27, was killed when he was hit by a hard object in Sohrab Goth police area. Body of Manzoor Hussain, 27, was recovered in Manghopir police limits. Body of Kamran, 25, was recovered from the Korangi River. Yousuf Baloch, 27, was killed by unknown assailants at his residence in Super Market police limits.

Rockets fired at FC fort in Awaran

QUETTA: Armed men fired three rockets at the Frontier Corps (FC) fort in Awaran, without causing any fatalities, reports said on Friday.

Reports said the rockets fired from an unknown destination landed close to the FC fort. Later officials of the local administration and police reached the spot and started investigation. Meanwhile, repair work has been started on the transmission lines damaged in Tuesday’s subversive acts in the Bolan area, sources in the Quetta Electric Supply Company (Qesco) told The News.

However, power supply would remain suspended for 12 hours in as many as 20 districts of Balochistan. Qesco sources said the province has been facing a power deficit of 330MW after the damages caused to the transmission lines.

Repair work on the 132 KV transmission line was started on Friday morning and completed in the evening. Twenty districts of the province will suffer power shut from 7am to 7pm, while in Quetta city eight-hour load-shedding will be carried out.

Gas pipeline blown up

QUETTA, March 30: Supply of gas to Kalat was suspended on Friday night after a main pipeline was blown up on the RCD highway. Police sources said a powerful device, planted under the pipeline, exploded near the Government College for Boys, damaging three-foot portion of the 12-inch diameter line.

“Kalat town and adjoining villages are without gas,” police sources said.

SSGC officials said work on repairing the pipeline would be started on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, three rockets were fired on the Frontier Corps fort in Mashkey area of Awaran district.

 Women targeted by moral brigade quit the city

Sources in Islamabad administration on Friday confirmed to Dawn she had left the city along with her young daughter.

“Now that she has left the city, Islamabad police cannot provide her security,” said a senior officer of the administration which looks helpless in the face of rising religious militancy in the capital.

Ms Shamim, her daughter, and her daughter-in-law along with her six-month-old baby, were seized from their house in G-6 by the girls of Jamia Hafsa madressah in a raiding party from the Lal Masjid on Tuesday night.

They were freed on Thursday after Ms Shamim confessed to the charge of leading an immoral life. Once home, she said the confession was forced on her with threats of dire consequences if she retracted it.

Though Ms Shamim’s son Kamran Mehdi, a government servant, was said to be still living there with his wife and baby daughter, the house on Friday gave a deserted look.

Ms Shamim was said to be extremely fearful and under severe mental and psychological stress.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Information Tariq Azeem has said the government was seriously looking into the illegal acts of Jamia Hafsa students.

“People are demanding that government should do something,” he said when Dawn asked if any action was planned against the management of Lal Masjid and the seminary.

Certainly, the government will not allow anyone to challenge its writ, pick people from their houses, illegally occupy government property and take law in one’s hands. Mr Azeem said the management of Lal Masjid was taking undue advantage of the government’s soft attitude and efforts to avoid any loss of life.

Neighbours of Ms Shamim approached by Dawn said the goings on in her house worried them but they disapproved of the way the family was captured by madressah students. They said her connections in police and bureaucracy prevented them from voicing their concerns.

However, neighbour Nisar Ahmed rejected Ms Shamim’s charge that Jamia Hafsa girls had mistreated the family.

“I was witness to the drama when she was picked up. Some 15 to 20 girls, who had already given a warning to Ms Shamim to stop immoral activities in the area, reached her house in a van along with some male students.

Only girls entered the house, seized the three women and put them into the vehicle and took them to Lal Masjid,” he said.

Residents of the area pleaded that the action against Ms Shamim should not be given sectarian colour.

Benazir: Chairperson Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Benazir Bhutto said on Friday that the Madressah Hafsa incident has given rise to suspicions that under the present government Pakistan was moving towards Talibanisation because the military regime seeks international community’s support.

Ms Bhutto condemned the incident of Wednesday when the girls students of an Islamabad seminary took law into their own hands as the police and law enforcing agencies turned a blind eye to it.

In a statement issued from Dubai and released by the party’s media office here on Friday, Ms Bhutto said the images of ‘burqa- clad’ and stick-wielding women holding policemen hostage, forcing shopkeepers to shut their business and kidnapping a family of three women accusing them of loose morals had done incalculable damage to the image of the country in the community of nations.

Illegal radio station shut

ISLAMABAD, March 30: The authorities have shut down an illegal FM radio station set up by clerics in the capital. Madressah students and hard-line clerics had set up the station on Wednesday to propagate their strict version of religion.

The authorities reacted quickly to shut it down.

“We took action as soon as the issue was brought to our notice. We have stopped the transmissions,” a spokesman for the electronic media regulator said.

He said further action would be taken if warranted.—Reuters

 50 more killed in S Waziristan fighting

PESHAWAR: At least 50 more people were killed, 35 of them Uzbek militants and their tribal collaborators, in fresh fighting between local and foreign militants in South Waziristan tribal agency on Friday.

Sources told The News from the troubled South Waziristan Agency that the dead include 11 local tribal militants and four personnel of the paramilitary Frontier Corps. The fighting erupted on Thursday morning.

Director-General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj-Gen Waheed Arshad said four FC men died when rockets fell on their post near Wana. He said some of the FC men present in their post were injured in a similar action and hospitalised.

He, however, strongly denied involvement of Pakistani security forces in the clashes between the foreigners and the local tribesmen. Also, a senior commander of tribal militants in Wana, Haji Sharif, was injured in the fighting while another important commander identified as Amir Muhammad and personal driver of Commander Maulvi Nazeer, Din Muhammad, died in the fighting at Shin Warsak on Friday.

According to the sources, fierce fighting took place on Friday between the two sides at Shin Warsak, Azam Warsak, Zha Ghundai and Ghwakhwa villages, southwest of Wana. Both sides reportedly used heavy weapons against each other.

They, however, said Shin Warsak was the major battlefield where fighting continued unabated since Thursday morning between the armed men of Uzbek commander Tahir Yuldashev and Maulvi Nazeer.

The sources said so far 50 people were confirmed dead in the Friday fighting while two tribal militants were injured. They said the dead included 35 Uzbeks and their local tribal supporters, while 11 were local tribal militants.

However, Arbab Arif, who is secretary security Fata and rarely shares official information with the media, said 38 Uzbeks and 11 tribal militants were killed on Friday. He said eight tribal militants were injured in the clashes.

Also, there were reports that four of the dead were soldiers from the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) fighting alongside local tribal militants in plainclothes. The tribal militants did not hide their death toll and admitted that 11 of their fighters, including a regional commander Amir Muhammad, died in the latest fighting.

According to the sources, Commander Maulvi Nazeer had a narrow escape while his driver Din Muhammad was killed in the Shin Warsak fighting. Another senior tribal commander, Haji Sharif, was also injured in the fighting at Shin Warsak.

Interestingly, two of his brothers — Haji Omar and Noor Islam — have publicly been supporting the Uzbeks against their local tribal people. Omar was appointed commander of tribal militants in Wana reportedly by Mulla Dadullah when Commander Nek Muhammad was killed in a US missile attack.

Omar, according to the sources, was not happy with some of the Taliban leaders when they replaced him with a younger commander Maulvi Nazeer. The residents in Azam Warsak, Ghwakhwa, Shin Warsak and adjoining villages had already quit their homes for DI Khan and other areas due to heavy tension and fighting in the area. All educational institutions as well as business and commercial centres in the town remained closed on Friday.

It is to be mentioned here that Commander Maulvi Nazeer is the Ameer (leader) of tribal militants in Wana and its adjoining localities fighting the Uzbeks hiding in South Waziristan and want them to quit their soil.

The Uzbeks, who have been enjoying support of some of local Wazir tribesmen, have been continuously refusing to leave Waziristan with an argument that since every land is the land of Allah Almighty, therefore, it is their land.

A Jirga sent by the Taliban in Afghanistan could not convince the Uzbeks and their leader Qari Tahir Yuldashev to leave South Waziristan.The Taliban Jirga, which comprised Mulla Dadullah, Maulvi Sirajuddin Haqqani and other religious leaders, had even offered two districts to the Uzbeks and their leader in the Taliban-dominated provinces of Kandahar and Helmand. One of the Jirga members told this scribe that the Jirga made it clear on both the warring factions that their fighting was totally un-Islamic.

AFP adds: Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao told AFP, “Fifty-four people were killed today, two were yesterday. They include 45 foreigners”.“The fighting is going on, it intensified today after peace talks failed. Tribes are insisting on their demand that these people either surrender or quit the area.”

The government says the latest developments reflect the success of its policy to encourage local tribesmen to expel foreign Islamic extremists, instead of costly and politically damaging army operations.

Earlier a security official said tribesmen overnight seized control of a school which the foreigners were using as their base in Ghwakhwa, a town near Wana, killing seven Uzbeks.Residents said the militants also shot dead a local man who was travelling in the area on his motorbike.

Residents say between 300 and 500 Uzbeks and Chechens are holed up in the area.The Uzbeks were effectively under siege in the mountainous terrain as all roads leading to the troubled towns were being controlled by tribal commander Mulla Nazir, whose men are said to number around 1,500, they said.

A tribal leader, Haji Sharif, late Thursday ruled out any negotiations with the foreigners.“We gave them shelter under our traditional Pashtun hospitality but they misused it and killed our people including tribal leaders,” he said. “We advised them to change their behaviour but they did not listen. Now we cannot tolerate them on our soil.”

 Cable operator’s office, CD shop attacked

KOHAT, March 30: Petrol bombs were thrown into a cable operator’s office on the Rawalpindi road and a CD shop opposite the Kohat airbase was destroyed by an explosion, officials and witnesses said on Friday.

In the Bahawalnagar locality, armed men lobbed the petrol bombs into the cable operator’s office on Thursday. It caused fire which destroyed the equipment.

The owner, Kamran, told police that the armed men had asked him to get out of the office and then hurled the bombs into the office and destroyed the machinery.

The CD shop was destroyed when a time device went off at around 6am on Friday. Police rushed to the site and cordoned off the area. The Saddar police registered a case.

Police said CD shop owners and cable operators were receiving threats from extremists to close their businesses.

Meanwhile, police in an attempt to control the situation filled all posts of station house officers in Kohat on Friday, it was learnt.Officials said pro-Taliban groups had for the first time targeted these businesses in Kohat.

In the past, the airbase, from where 156 Al Qaeda operatives are said to have been taken to the Guantanamo Bay prison, had come under rocket attacks several times. Kohat is the headquarters of the IXth division of the Pakistan Army and the official residence of the field commander of Waziristan Operations.

Centcom chief arrives on unannounced visit

ISLAMABAD: Commander-in-Chief of the US Central Command (Centcom) Admiral William Fallen arrived here on Friday on an unannounced visit to Pakistan.

Admiral Fallen has come to Pakistan for the first time after assuming the command of Centcom last month. He will be meeting President Pervez Musharraf today (Saturday) in Rawalpindi. Admiral Fallen has replaced General Abizaid.

Diplomatic sources told The News here on Friday that issues relating to defence affairs between the countries would be discussed at various levels. The visit carries significance in the context of the prevailing situation in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Admiral Fallen attended a dinner on Friday evening in Rawalpindi where top brass of the host command was also invited. He will also be visiting Afghanistan before returning home, the sources added.

Meanwhile, Pakistan and the United States will soon hold important high-level political and defence talks. The political talks will take place under the flag of Strategic Dialogue while the Defence Consultative Group (DCG) of the two countries will provide the forum for talks on defence matters and cooperation.

The talks are expected to be held in a couple of weeks but the schedule has yet to be finalised since it is being worked out through diplomatic channels. Sources in the Ministry of Defence told this scribe that the Pakistani delegation will be led by a new defence secretary to be appointed in a day or two while US Undersecretary of Defence Eric S Edelman will be heading the American delegation.

The sources said the DCG serves as a primary forum for exchanging ideas and coordinating defence policy discussions with a view to deepening cooperation in diverse areas of bilateral defence relationship.

The 18th meeting of DCG is expected to be preceded by a meeting of the Military Cooperation Committee (MCC) which will look at ways of better coordinating the military-to-military cooperation and improving the overall US-Pakistan military relationship. The sources hinted that the Counter-terrorism Working Group may also deliberate on issues confronted by it.

The delegations will be given detailed presentations on Pakistan border region operations and counter-terrorism strategies, Afghanistan stabilisation efforts, opportunities for further cooperation in the areas of humanitarian assistance and US foreign policy priorities and objectives in South Asia. The centrepiece of the DCG meeting will be a discussion about the US-Pakistan long-term strategic relationship.

The two delegations will review the results of their relationship over the past year, including progress in the war on terror and joint operations in the wake of the October 2005 earthquake.

Bangladesh hangs 6 militants

DHAKA: Bangladesh authorities on Friday executed six Islamic militant leaders accused of killing two judges and masterminding a wave of deadly bombings, and stepped up security to prevent revenge attacks. Extra police and members of the elite Rapid Action Battalion patrolled the main streets of Dhaka after the men’s hanging, carried out two weeks ahead of schedule for security reasons. The six included Shaikh Abdur Rahman, the leader of the outlawed Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), and his deputy Siddiqul Islam Bangla Bhai. The men were hanged in four different jails and their bodies were handed over to their families.

Talibanisation a threat to integrity, says HRCP

LAHORE, March 30: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has called upon the government to read the threat to national integrity and wellbeing of people implicit in the recent doings of the militants in the name of religion and realise its duty to safeguard the lives and freedom of all the citizens.

HRCP Secretary-General Iqbal Haider said in a statement that a series of extremely grave and alarming happenings had been reported over the past few days. “The militants attack on public and private properties in Tank in which several lives were lost, the Islamabad female students raid on private residence and attempts to administer private justice, and the attack on a security establishment in Kharian were all fruits of establishment’s vacillation in the face of fanaticism and gangsterism if not its connivance with them.”

He said that “there was no doubt about the government’s inability to answer the threat of Talibanisation in a straightforward and transparent manner had enabled the militants to extend their control over large areas in FATA and FANA.

“The Islamabad affair was a direct consequence of allowing a petty affair to drag on for months. The keenness of official spokespersons, including ministers, to woo the Islamabad group of female students and their male supporters for peace on their terms had emboldened the perpetrators of an unlawful attack on a private residence. Nobody would approve of brothels but to allow vigilantes to take law and lives of people into their own hands would land Pakistan in greater chaos and pose greater danger to its integrity than it had hitherto known.”

 The creeping coup

 ISLAMABAD, March 30: The primary theatre of battle may still be North and South Waziristan, as evidenced by the Pakistani Taliban’s recent bloody assault on the settled town of Tank that borders the tribal areas. But the events of the last few days in Islamabad are more disturbing in some ways, suggesting as they do that creeping Talibanisation is now a reality across the country.Indeed the Lal Masjid brigade, as it has come to be known, has every right to celebrate. Tuesday’s showdown with the police was its second major success of the year. First its women’s wing, comprising hundreds of burqa-clad and baton-wielding students, occupied a children’s library in the federal capital in January.

Now both the men’s and women’s wings of this emerging brand of the Pakistani Taliban have started to impose new rules of morality by forcibly shutting down video and music shops in Islamabad, and by abducting women whom they believe are engaged in ‘immoral’ activities.

Situated in an area where the prime minister’s secretariat and seat of power is on one side, and the headquarters of the country’s premier intelligence agency, the ISI, on the other, Lal Masjid and its adjacent Hafsa madressah have not only managed to enforce the Taliban-style system of ‘moral policing’ in matters of ‘vice and virtue’, to date they remain in control of the situation.

But who are these people, and why are the government and the security services finding it so hard to enforce the rule of law? Is it that the government really wants to avoid bloodshed because hundreds, if not thousands, of women are part of this violent brigade? Or is it a reflection of some kind of infighting in the establishment where one faction still has a soft corner for their former Islamist allies?

Led by two cleric brothers, the Lal Masjid brigade is a relatively new phenomenon in Pakistan’s militant politics. But the ambitious manner in which its leaders have sought publicity in the last few months has clearly set alarm bells ringing among the general public as well as sections of the security establishment.

Sons of Maulana Abdullah, a firebrand pro-jihad cleric who was assassinated inside the mosque about a decade ago, Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdul Rasheed Ghazi have been running two separate wings of this movement.

Maulana Aziz, the more religious and scholarly of the two, heads Islamabad’s biggest Jamia Fareedia madressah, which is located in the woods near the elite E-7 sector on land allotted by the late General Ziaul Haq. At any given time, the madressah boasts over 7,000 students seeking higher degrees in Islamic education. But as has been the case during the present conflict, it also provides the bulk of the Lal Masjid militant force.

The younger brother, Maulana Rasheed Ghazi, known to be a worldly man, manages Lal Masjid. Once known for his close links with the establishment, he is now spearheading the Islamic ‘brigade’ which includes several thousand madressah students, both men and women.

Popularly known as Lal Masjid — probably after the building’s façade of red bricks — it has long been regarded as the city’s main mosque for the followers of the Deoband faith. It caught the eye of its detractors during the protest campaign by pro-Taliban forces in the aftermath of the 9/11 incidents and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

However, the critical point came when Lal Masjid hosted a major conference of ulema and clerics about four years ago to issue a fatwa which not only opposed the military operation in Waziristan but also called for a boycott of the namaz-i-janaza of soldiers killed in the fight with Islamic militants.

A number of people were arrested shortly after the fatwa was issued but Maulana Ghazi went into hiding. During this period the authorities made half-hearted efforts to arrest him, while Maulana Ghazi effectively used his contacts with the media for publicity and quickly transformed himself into the leader of the pro-Taliban movement in Islamabad.

The latest confrontation is also of his making, as was the case in January when he led the campaign against the demolition of mosques in Islamabad described by the government as illegal or unauthorised.

On that occasion, hundreds of burqa-clad women from the adjacent madressah Hafsa, all of them brandishing batons, occupied a small children’s library in protest. And though the controversy revolving round a demolished mosque was resolved with the religious affairs minister, Ejazul Haq, coming to their support, the library still remains in the control of the Hafsa women, and has in fact been made part of the madressah.

Encouraged by the manner in which the authorities capitulated, those managing Lal Masjid increased their demands, and called for regularising a large number of mosques constructed without prior permission. More recently they decided to push the campaign a step further by introducing the Taliban-style police system based on “amar bil maroof wah nahi anil munkir”, more commonly known as the ‘department of vice and virtue’.

Within no time groups of men and women from the brigade started visiting shops, threatening them with dire consequences if they didn’t stop selling DVDs, CDs or music cassettes. People were also issued directives about dress codes and other ‘moral and ethical’ issues.

The latest confrontation, which again ended in victory for the Hafsa women, was also the result of this campaign during which they raided a nearby house and abducted an elderly woman as well as her daughter and daughter-in-law, accusing them of immorality.

The authorities, meanwhile, focused on securing the release of two policemen who had been made hostage the same day by the Lal Masjid boys. The women were set free only a day later, and that too after being forced to seek ‘forgiveness’. All this happened not somewhere in remote and distant Miramshah or Wana, but a stone’s throw from the seat of power.

The situation today is that the leaders of Lal Masjid are declaring victory in this latest round. The children’s library is still in their control, and their baton-wielding force patrols the streets in the area. The authorities keep claiming that a number of wanted men are hiding inside the mosque but remain reluctant to take action. The excuse they offer is that the use of force may result in bloodshed. That brute force was used only a few days ago to crush opposition supporters a few hundred yards from Lal Masjid is easily forgotten.

Lal Masjid is supported by not only the Hafsa and Fareedia madressahs but also has the backing of a dozen or so other large and small seminaries in different parts of city. And their students — almost all of them from outside the city — can assemble at the shortest possible notice, as has been witnessed during recent protest gatherings.

To some it seems the government doesn’t realise the gravity of the situation. And that has prompted a few to ask if a government even exists in Islamabad.

But of course there is a government, with Mr Shaukat Aziz sitting pretty in the palatial and well-secured Prime Minister’s House on the hill. President Pervez Musharraf, with much already on his plate, is meanwhile busy trying to solve issues more crucial to him, ranging from the judicial crisis to Waziristan, and even the Islamic ummah’s wider concerns like Palestine and Iraq.

To them the stand-off in Islamabad may not yet be a huge crisis as has been the case with crises in the past. It may take a while for the decision-makers to understand how dire the situation has become. In the meantime, the creeping coup by the Pakistani Taliban will continue unchecked to challenge the writ of the government and the state. And perhaps alter the country’s social fabric to an extent that it is rendered unrecognisable.

YESTERDAY'S NEWS

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