Source: The Indian Express 

Tavleen Singh in Pakistan

Thursday, January 10, 2008

As they chant Go Musharraf Go, protesters ask him to wash his uniform, go to America and cry because his show in Pak is over

 Lahore with its urbanity, its soft winter sunlight, its liberals and its many seductions is deceptive. It is easy to forget the Islamist violence that could make Pakistan the new hinterland of the jihad. Despite the pall of sadness that has hung over the city since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto there are weddings every night in the Pearl Continental Hotel and restaurants are full. You can drink wine in public if you bring your own bottle and there are private clubs that have licences to serve liquor.

A new middle class, created by the free-market economic policies of General Pervez Musharraf, is more interested in personal prosperity and a modern standard of living than jihad. Its financial muscle manifests itself in the glittering, new shopping malls and the vast housing estates that are coming up at such a pace on the edges of Lahore that it’s as if a whole new city were under construction. It is only when you talk to politicians that you get a whiff of the violence that spreads like a skein under the surface of Pakistani society.

In a glass-walled restaurant at the Royal Palms Golf Club I meet a minister in the caretaker government called Mobashir Lucman who tells me that the jihad is hard to control. There are 22,000 registered madrasas in Pakistan, he says, that raise Rs 19 billion a year in religious contributions called ‘zakat’. This money is used to spread the Islamist message and this is not hard to do among those who have been to religious schools themselves. The only solution is to resort to ‘hard options’ like the government’s action at Islamabad’s Lal Masjid last summer.

Many died and few gave the government credit for the operation because they sensed hypocrisy and deception in the way the problem was handled. How could so many weapons have been stored inside the mosque without the government knowing what was going on? Why did the government not act earlier? Imran Khan is among Pervez Musharraf’s fiercest critics. He refuses to allow his party to contest the February 18 election on the grounds that there can be no free and fair elections under Musharraf.

What Pakistan needs is real democracy, he says, that is the only solution to the violence. In his view there are different kinds of violence in different parts of the country and the common enemy is the Pakistani army. He sees the violence only as a response to repression and the denial of democracy.

To try and understand the roots of the violence, I drove to Rawalpindi to meet a man who is considered one of the main progenitors of the jihad. General Hamid Gul, former head of the dreaded ISI and someone closely associated with creating the Taliban in Afghanistan and those militant groups in Kashmir who converted the movement for ‘azadi’ into an adjunct of the worldwide jihad.

General Gul lives in a suburban villa in an area of the city reserved for retired military men and despite many years in retirement continues to take a keen interest in the jihad. When I asked if he thought there was any danger of Al Qaeda destabilizing Pakistan enough to be able to turn it into its headquarters he said, “Al Qaeda is a reaction to America’s attempts at world domination. The Americans want world domination and for this they need to get their hands on the energy tap of the world.”

General Gul said he was more afraid of America’s ambitions than he was of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. The solution to the problems of Muslim societies was more Islam not less, he said, because the Shariat meant a new order. What Pakistan needed to be concerned about was America’s attempts to destabilise it and make it look unmanageable so they could get their hands on the country’s ‘nuclear assets’. “They have been demanding joint custody. But, they will not succeed in this unless the Pakistan army breaks.”

From Rawalpindi I went to Islamabad making sure to drive past Liaqat Bagh to pay a silent tribute to Benazir Bhutto. It is a dreary, little public park surrounded by grubby bazaars and cheap hotels and it was here that she made her last speech warning the militants that she would fight to save Pakistan from terrorism. Those who think they understand why she was killed say it was because she threatened to deal firmly with the Taliban and Al Qaeda and because she suggested that she might allow American troops into Waziristan to find the leaders of global terrorism.

Was that the reason she was killed? Was it because she came home with the blessings of the American state department? Or because she was too big, too charismatic a figure? Nobody knows. But, not many buy the official version given to me by the President’s spokesman, General Rashid Qureshi, that she was killed by Baitullah Mehsud, the al Qaeda leader who hides in Waziristan.

Mehsud and Maulana Fazlullah are among the more dreaded commanders of the jihad and held directly responsible for the violence in Waziristan and Swat. To fight them the Pakistani army is believed to have deployed more than 100,000 troops in the Northwestern Frontier Province (NWFP) and in the tribal areas that border Afghanistan. It is here that the remnants of Osama bin Laden’s army are said to hide and from here that the resurgence of the Taliban is said to have occurred.

In Islamabad I meet one of Benazir’s former Intelligence chiefs, Masood Sharif Khattak, who believes that the root of the problem is American support for Pakistan’s military dictators. He said it was time for Musharraf to go. “I think if he really believes in Pakistan he would resign. We need a government of national unity under whose supervision free and fair elections should be held. Then there has to be dialogue with those who are behind the violence. It is the only way.”

Go Musharraf Go, is the slogan of the protesters in Lahore’s streets. The rest of the slogan is in Punjabi and urges Pakistan’s former military dictator to take his uniform off and wash it, then go to America and cry because his show is over. “Go Musharraf Go, Vardi Laah key dho, Amreeka ja key ro, Tu banda number do, Muk gaya tera show. Go Musharraf Go. “

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