The military operation against Islamabad’s Lal Masjid has brought into focus the price Pakistan is paying for its past sponsorship and tolerance of Islamist militants as an instrument of foreign policy. When Pakistan’s first military ruler, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, moved the capital to Islamabad he envisaged a quiet city inhabited by diplomats and government servants and untouched by the political upheavals in the rest of the country.

For most of its history, Islamabad has lived up to that expectation. During the 1990s, for example, when Sindh was torn by ethnic violence, one hardly felt its reverberations in Islamabad. In this context, the very fact that the first major urban clash between Islamist militants and Pakistan’s military has taken place in Islamabad indicates the depth of Pakistan’s extremism problem.

For his part, General Pervez Musharraf has described the operation as part of a war on extremists. But he made similar assertions soon after taking power in 1999, then immediately after 9/11 and subsequently in his famous speech of January 12, 2002. Then, Musharraf had declared. “Whoever is involved with such (terrorist) acts in the future will be dealt with strongly whether they come from inside or outside the country.”

Five and a half years since that declaration, terrorist attacks in Pakistan have reached an all-time high. If Musharraf has been waging a war against terrorism for the last several years, Pakistan is clearly losing it.

Now US intelligence assessments indicate that the Al-Qaeda has reconstituted itself and is planning attacks around the world from its new base in Pakistan. Optimists say that the Lal Masjid operation reflects renewed resolve within the Musharraf regime to root out terrorism. Pessimists point out that there have been several similar turning points in the past and the overall picture has not changed. If Musharraf could not tackle the problem when he was relatively new to the job, how can he be expected to crack down effectively against militants at a time when his lack of domestic political support is widespread?

... contd.