THE government of Pervez Musharraf may pretend that it has closed its Red Mosque file but it cannot put paid to militancy so easily. Especially considering that Pervez Musharraf and his predecessors were no less responsible for nurturing the demon of militancy and terrorism. The Red Mosque phenomenon is only the culmination. The weeks of growing tension reached its climax on July 10 with the storming of Islamabad’s Red Mosque by government forces known as ‘Operation Silence’. The toll in this final round was heavy. Sixty militants and eight Pak troops were initially reported killed and 50 women and children who were allegedly being used as human shield were rescued alive. But gun battles of lesser dimension were already taking lives. The victims of Operation Silence included deputy chief of the mosque Abdur Rashid Gazi (the chief had earlier been caught fleeing, masqueraded under woman’s veil) but it is not certain that he died fighting. Even after the final assault the mosque-turned-fortress was not immediately rid of all militants and many were said to be still holding out. Despite the heavy toll the military action was far from an all-out assault upon terrorism. The government took the action reluctantly by its own admission, after negotiations failed. The government had to mollify foreign critics and also there was the compulsion to keep the country’s capital free from any alternative challenging power-centre. The mosque may be recaptured and government authority in Islamabad may be reasserted but how much dent it will make on the growing power of militancy in Pakistan remains to be seen.
   That the going will not be easy is clear from the fact that soon after the storming of the Red Mosque to arrest and neutralise the militants and other inmates lodged within, a series of terrorist acts have proclaimed that the Islamist militants are alive and kicking, with undiminished power. Besides the lesser ones, two major incidents of terrorism must be very disturbing for the Pakistan establishment, as for anti-terror campaigners everywhere. Two days after the pacification of Red Mosque militants, a suicide car bomb at Pak-Afghan border killed 24 Pakistani troops, obviously in retaliation of the action against the Taliban-linked Red Mosque extremists. On the next day suicide attackers struck the police headquarters and a military convoy in Pakistan’s north-west killing 38 in an intensified anti-Musharraf war. The victims are mostly army personnel and the irony is that a large segment in the Pak army is believed to be Taliban sympathisers. Clerics have given a call for holy war against Musharraf. That violence will not abate soon is becoming increasingly clear. On Tuesday s suicide bomber killed four people at a check-post in the tribal zone near Afghan border. In Islamabad on Tuesday another apparent suicide bomber killed 12 people outside a court where the country’s suspended chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry was due to address lawyers. It looks, thus, that opposition gatherings are also targeted.
   Only days before the start of ‘Operation Silence’, Musharraf had had one more escape from an assassination attempt when his plane was taking off from Rawalpindi airport. An airport is a top security area even during ordinary times and traffic of ordinary passengers. Then how could the would-be assassins penetrate the tight ring of presidential security in a top security area? Then are the security men helping terrorists? A bewildering question it is. While more trouble from terrorists is expected it is remarkable that protests against Operation Silence at public level were not of a formidable kind and there is a general mood of acquiescence as a whole. A sign that among the common people there are not too many sympathisers of terrorists.
   Many have questioned Musharraf’s sincerity in controlling extremism, not without reason. The 9/11 incident and in its wake the American pressure forced a sudden policy shift for Musharraf government. The government policy may make a U-turn but that will not be orchestrated by the entire government machinery, the mindset of its forces and intelligence agencies which have been oriented towards the opposite direction for as long as, say, 24 years since 1977 when the military dictator Ziaul Huq sought to create for himself a fundamentalism-based constituency. And Pervez Musharraf, the self-proclaimed disciple of Kamal Ataturk, has not yet given any convincing proof of his anti-militancy credentials. His action against militancy always lacked vigour, although he could blame it on his lukewarm security forces and also he could rightfully deserve some US applause for capturing and handing over one top Al Qaeda fugitive. Terrorists are terrorists only when they operate in forbidden territories within Pakistan; when they operate in India-administered Kashmir they become glorified freedom fighters. His signing of an accord with the pro-Taliban state government in the north-west last September was seen as appeasement of an unacceptable degree. (The militants have meanwhile repudiated the accord). Whether or not the US was convinced of Musharraf’s sincerity, it was backing his government all the same.
   As for the Red Mosque militants, they had almost got away with their Islamist zeal but for certain miscalculation on their part. The militants are death-defying desperadoes, well-trained and capable fighters and even possessed of the necessary technology knowledge. But in the case of the Islamabad mosque they proved themselves to be poor strategists. They should have realised the Islamabad is a modern city with a demographic composition very different from that of Waziristan. When the authority of the state is challenged right in the capital, no government however sympathetic can afford to look the other way. And why they had to humiliate the Chinese women? Here their motive is not clear. And the fundamental question is how the mosque-cum-seminary was allowed to be turned into a fortress? It must have taken months to pile up the arms and ammunition. And the zealots were working with total impunity in a city where everything is under close security scanner. That they were a law unto themselves is clear from the fact they found it possible to abduct and keep as captives seven foreign women not in a no-man’s land but within Islamabad. What the militants aimed to execute (like removing posters and signs with feminine figures, banishing music) they have already executed in considerable measure. Nothing stopped them. All this creates the feeling that Operation Silence was something like an eye wash. There were foreign governments breathing over Musharraf’s shoulders.
   Feelers were sent by the government, terms of ‘peaceful resolution’ of the standoff were being negotiated and the government was willing to make a good deal of concession. If a deal could be struck, it would have met the extremists halfway and boosted their morale. And it should be remembered that the Red Mosque is only one among the countless newly founded religious institutions in Pakistan which have strayed from their aim. These supposed religious seminaries had mostly been founded in the eighties and nineties and largely funded by some West Asian donors. If these mujahideen were to fight the Afghan war against occupation by the erstwhile Soviet Union on the issue of nationalism, things would have been different today. But a misplaced religious zeal was infused into their fight. While a nationalist war has a precise target, a religious war does not necessarily have one fixed enemy and may pick on multiple targets. The militants have not sprung out of nothing. There was money, training, perverse curriculum and mind-bending indoctrination. What has the Islamabad government done to dismantle the base of terrorism? Even if a beginning has been made, one can entertain a hope? Does the takeover of the Red Mosque signal any such beginning? On the contrary, some observers think it is a ploy to deflect attention from his trouble with domestic opposition over his dismissal of the chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
   Secularism may be a bad word in Pakistan, democracy with entirely civilian rule is not conceivable for Pakistan in the near future. But it can do much to undo the series of retrograde actions it has taken since 1977. The Red Mosque incident is only the logical outcome of decades of state-sponsored religious exclusionism.