It's three in the morning and the slight patter of the raindrops on my window is interspersed with sounds of firing and mortar shelling a few kilometers away from where I live.
Islamabad is in a state of stalled shock. We still can't digest all the absurdity of some bigoted idiots and the misfortune that it has brewed in the last few days. Okay, Pakistan has had its fare share of shit but hardly in my eighteen years of life have I ever heard even gunshots, let alone mortar shells, being fired in Islamabad. We had the first ever curfew imposed in the history of the city two days ago. The Islamabad, that usually doesn't lose its cool, seems like a transformed place in just six months.
The most disturbing is the uncertainty of it all: we don't know what to think, who to believe, what to expect; indeed we don't even really know WHY all this is happening in the first place.
It all started a few months ago when a certain Ghazi , leader of the famed(read notorious) Red Mosque started agitating with his band of rowdy extremist students, against what he saw was the rampant immorality and demolishing of a few mosques(which were illegally built on public land) by the city authorities. They burnt CD shops selling porn, kidnapped a brothel owner and what not.
The girls from the seminary(attached to the mosque) took over a children's library by force, wielding batons and kidnapped policemen. It just did not make sense that the government tolerated all that in this case, whereas we had incidents of whole madrassahs, full of children, being blown up by guided missiles on the presumption that there were Taliban inside, in Waziristan, the northwestern part of Pakistan.
Then suddenly one day, while I was at a ceremony, I get a phone call from my father telling me to avoid the route back home through Aabpara, the area where the mosque is. I of course didn't and it was a mayhem there. Smoke bellowing from around the mosque, heavy firing and police, rangers and ambulances all over. Apparently, government forces had besieged the mosque for a few days and then that particular day one of the militants fired at the rangers, killing one. And then an open confrontation ensued.
The standoff has continued for a few days now, killing about 20 people so far, injuring I don’t know how many, and many a comic and sad incidents we have come to see in the process too.
Shit, just now there was a loud blast very close by. They're saying on the TV that it was at this other seminary close to my home. A retaliatory blast they're calling it. It's not clear what it was. Could have been a suicide bomb, could have been not. They don't know yet.[edit=they clarified on TV that it was actually not a suicide bomb. Just another mortar fire at the Red Mosque by the govt. forces]
And that's exactly what we're afraid of. Retaliation. The government forces, sooner or later will for sure wipe these suckers out from this mosque, but what after that? I tried to gauge the mood amongst the mullahs by going to a Friday sermon by one of the more extreme mullahs and it sounded threatening. It seems like they'll look to pay the government back. But I don't know. And that's the bottomline.
The interesting thing about this confrontation however has been the role of the media. Reminds me of Baudrillard's theory about the Gulf War being fought on the TV screen rather than the Gulf itself. As I said earlier, I was surprised how the government could have given these blokes so much leverage in the first place. There are conspiracy theories(which frankly make more sense than the conventional version of truth in this case) going around about how Musharraf tried to exploit the situation to his advantage by taking the action at the time when a)he was losing the case against the Chief Justice he suspended in the Supreme Court BADLY and b) when he desperately needed some stunt that would keep him in office even after the next elections.
I don't know how much of this makes sense, as complicatedly twisted and ugly the whole situation is, but I just needed to banter for a little bit. And that's just what I have done.
I will be off for now. Until later,
BBC's take on the Red Mosque: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6503477.stm
4 comments:
Sounds turbulent. Are you a government stooge or an extremist psycho? Lol. Why is Baudrillard relevant?
Anyway, tell me more about Pakistan. I don't know anything about that country.
I can't believe this, it seems like it must have happened so suddenly...
How far will it go do you think? is it a bunch of extremist students with no real force or experience or is it something more powerful and well-organised?
Stay safe man.
It IS sudden. I was here six months ago, and so much has changed since.
The thing is we don't really know how far it'll go. In this particular mosque, I don't really think there is much ammo, fighters, or balls to even worry the government forces if they decide to take them out. But why the long stand-off then? The government says that they're trying to save as many lives as possible, since there are students(some as young as under 10) believed to be held hostage by the main maniacs. But I think there's more to it. The timing of the operation is just too good to be true. Today, there happened to be the All Parties Conference in London which was being touted as a vital event when it comes to swaying public opinion against Musharraf in the upcoming elections. But due to this operation, there has almost been NO media coverage at all. And there is also, as I mentioned the embarrassment the government is facing in the Supreme Court in the case against the Chief Justice.
It's all so very meddled up. We just don't know what to think. If political manoeuvring by Musharraf this be, then he is one fucking clever clown of a bastard. If not, then very confusing it still is.
Either way, one thing we can anticipate is a backlash. And to answer your question Jon, even if these guys aren't very well-organized, then that backlash will be. The government has made a lot of enemies in the last six years and I guess all of them will be more than happy to join the party if it gets started.
Ignoring the spice, to elaborate my point: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6274018.stm
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