Opinion Ghosts of Operation Silence

If you rise to the rank of general,there is something fundamentally wrong with you,as was proved in the autobiography published earlier this year by Lieutenant General (retd) Shahid Aziz. But if you also rule Pakistan after staging a military coup,then you are absolutely non compos mentis. Pervez Musharraf proved this when he returned to Pakistan this year from his exile abroad to face charges of multiple murders. With the hatchets of institutional revenge drawn against him,the man has one mammoth death wish.

The Taliban want his head for killing countless warriors fighting against America,the Baloch have massive head-money on him for killing their chief,Akbar Bugti,and now the Islamabad high court is hearing a case against him for having murdered ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto. But what takes the cake is the upcoming trial against him for killing Rasheed Ghazi,the cleric of a mosque in Islamabad.

After ascertaining that Islamabad’s Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) was infested with al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists,he ordered his army commandos to smoke them out. The operation ended up killing a number of girl students at a madrasa attached to the mosque,whose imam was sending out a posse of vigilantes to punish un-Islamic practices in the capital and threatening the biggest hotel there with suicide bombing.

Lal Masjid also haunted Shias because the founder of the mosque,Maulana Abdullah,had been killed in a sectarian clash. The Islamabad law-enforcing authorities were supine before Lal Masjid,which shocked the nation as most Pakistanis thought Musharraf controlled Islamabad. The fact is that the generals control everything except the terrorists,whom they use in proxy wars.

In 2007,there were 88 seminaries in Islamabad imparting religious education to more than 16,000 students. The students of these seminaries — many of them residential — flocked from all parts of the North-West Frontier Province and the tribal areas. The breakdown of madrasas in Islamabad was: Deobandi (5,400 students),Barelvi (3,000 students in 46 seminaries),Ahle-Hadith (200 students in two seminaries),Shia (700 students in eight seminaries) and the Jamaat-e-Islami-led Rabita-ul-Madaris (1,500 students in 18 seminaries). According to one investigave newspaper report,“the present number of seminaries in the federal capital is almost equal to the combined strength of the seminary students in Balochistan (6,374 students) and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (2,835 students)”.

After Lal Masjid was attacked by the army commandos,the proletariat of the city turned against Musharraf; so did the media. As a consequence,al-Qaeda won the day and ultimately ousted Musharraf from power in 2008. Its leader,Ayman al-Zawahiri,vowed revenge and founded the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP),which today practically rules the streets of Pakistan.

Now the superior judiciary,whose 100 judges Musharraf dismissed in 2007 (since restored to office) will decide how many times to hang him for the above crimes. The nation loves Lal Masjid,and the media speaks with a forked tongue — the Urdu media apotheosises the dead terrorists as “martyrs of Lal Masjid” and the English exposes them as criminals working for al-Qaeda.

Today,the Lal Masjid operation is owned by no one. General Musharraf regrets he ordered its destruction. But the facts will not disappear. On July 6,2008,the TTP observed the anniversary of the commando operation by killing 19 people in Islamabad with a suicide bomb,15 of them policemen. An al-Qaeda video cassette swore revenge for the acolytes killed.

Amir Mir,in his book Talibanisation of Pakistan: From 9/11 to 26/11,states: “Much before the military operation code-named ‘Operation Silence’ was launched by the Pakistan army,the Lal Masjid had become known to the outer world as a centre of radical Islamic learning,housing several thousand male and female students in adjacent seminaries.

“As Operation Silence unfolded,it was discovered that elements from jihadi groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba,Lashkar-e-Jhangvi,Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harkat-ul Jihad-ul Islami were present inside the seminary carrying Kalashnikov rifles,LMGs,hand grenades,petrol bombs and rocket-launchers”.

Zahid Hussain,in his book The Scorpion’s Tail: The Relentless Rise of Islamic Militants in Pakistan and How It Threatens America,noted: “Lal Masjid clerics Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rasheed Ghazi had learned their militancy from their father,Abdullah Ghazi,who received funding and guidance from the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies for jihad. After the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan,Abdullah Ghazi became closely associated with al-Qaeda.

“In 1998,he travelled to Kandahar to pay homage to Mullah Omar,and took his younger son along. During this visit,Abdul Rasheed Ghazi became radicalised. He met with Osama bin Laden alone for an hour. At the end of the meeting,he picked up bin Laden’s glass of water and drank from it and said: ‘I drank from your glass so that Allah would make me a warrior like you’.”

Two months after the Lal Masjid siege,an 18-year-old boy blew himself up inside the high-security base of Zarrar Company,the elite commando unit responsible for Operation Silence; 22 commandos were killed. It was an insider job. Zahid Hussain writes: “One of the officers identified was Captain Khurram Ashiq,who had served in Zarrar Company”. Captain Khurram Ashiq died in Helmand fighting on the side of al-Qaeda. His brother,Major Haroon Ashiq,too,worked for al-Qaeda,killing SSG commander Major-General Faisal Alvi in Islamabad. He has been acquitted in 2012 in one case of murder by an anti-terrorism court in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi “because the witnesses resiled”.

British journalist Owen Bennett-Jones,in his lengthy study,‘Questions Concerning the Murder of Benazir Bhutto’ (London Review of Books,December 6,2012),refers to one of the assassins of Benazir Bhutto,named Husnain Gul,who joined the killer gang because of Lal Masjid: “Husnain Gul was a madrasa student who in 2005 had received small-arms training at a camp in North-West Pakistan. The JIT [joint investigation team report says that when he was arrested,he had a hand grenade and clothes belonging to his friend Bilal. In his confession,Gul described how a friend of his had been killed when Musharraf ordered an assault on the Red Mosque in Islamabad in July 2007… Gul decided to avenge his friend’s death and persuaded his cousin,Muhammad Rafaqat,to join him.” Operation Silence was disowned by the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Q) government.

Will Musharraf hang? The judiciary at the top is manned by judges he deposed and maltreated,the government is headed by a prime minister he tried to get sentenced to death after deposing him,and the political party that propped him up as president has disowned him. By killing him,Pakistanis will once again side with al-Qaeda,in the hope that al-Qaeda will spare them.

The writer is a consulting editor with ‘Newsweek Pakistan’ express@expressindia.com