Truth Overtaking Exaggeration
If Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf's message that he was forced to invoke a situation of martial law to apprehend the potential for an violent Islamic insurrection seemed to lack credibility at the time, no one can deny the upsurge in terror activities since that time. It is also likely that he was opportunistic in so doing, enabling himself to order the imprisonment of many of his political detractors, defanging the judiciary, and taking the opportunity to ensconce himself more securely as the sole defender of Pakistan under great duress.When he agreed to permit Benazir Bhutto to return from exile and to plan their co-operation where each would support the other, her jubilant reception that resulted in a horrendous suicide bombing killing over 150 people served to underline just how urgent the situation was becoming in the country. When she was president, Ms. Bhutto was no more effective in controlling the renaissance of Muslim fanaticism than has, up to now, been President Musharraf. Both looked the other way, unwilling to confront the growing tide of jihad.
Since the decision was made to clean out the Red Mosque and the urban threat their members posed in threatening more secular-minded shop-keepers and the population at large by their fundamentalist denunciations, agitations, and law-breaking violence, the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan with their tribal chiefs and Taliban-inspired mullahs have become more restive, outraged at the insult to Islamic Sharia's precepts, and have expressed their anger through a succession of attacks against Pakistan's military.
More latterly a suicide bomber killed 50 worshippers, injuring several hundred more, when a mosque was attacked on the holy day of Eid al-Adha in the trouble-prone North-West Frontier province. Its aim, besides the fall out resulting in the murder of innocent people at prayer, was to assassinate a former minister of the interior in his home town near Peshawar. This was the second unsuccessful attack against the same politician, the first having killed 30 and injured over 50 innocents.
Those are powerful statements of disaffection. "It was like a terrible explosion in the middle rows of the mosque, and then there was only smoke and cries of the people" according to one worshipper who was spared death, but whose memory of the horrible event will no doubt mark the rest of his life. "There is hardly a home today in our village where there is no dead body or injured" said another villager whose uncle and four cousins died in the attack.
Aftab Khan Sherpao was targeted because as interior minister he had directed military operations against al-Qaeda and tribal militants along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. Which has been described as the most hostile region in the area; both with respect to its geology, its geographic formations, its formidable mountain terrain, and the tribal people who traditionally live there, fiercely exercising laws unto themselves.
President Musharraf may have exaggerated the threat against Pakistan posed by the ferocious fundamentalism of Islamists when he brought the country temporarily into emergency rule, but events appear now to have accelerated to the extent where his country is truly embattled by the ideology of fascist Islam. And he may represent the only hope for Pakistan to successfully battle that scourge.
Labels: Political Realities, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, December 23, 2007
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