A radical Islamic student in Pakistan in a police van after surrendering on Thursday. AFP
Desperate Clerics Hide Behind Children in Islamabad
By Chiade O'Shea in Islamabad
On day three of the Red Mosque seige in Islamabad, radicals used women and children as human shields against the advancing Pakistani military. With Friday prayers on the horizon, more trouble may be ahead.
Increasingly desperate clerics at Islamabad's hard-line Lal Masijd, or Red Mosque, used women and children as human shields against the approaching Pakistani military, as the third day of the siege saw repeated fire fights and ground-shaking explosions.
The blasts, which started before dawn, were thought to be military artillery or explosives used to break down the high walls of the fortified compound as Pakistani forces continue trying to force out hundreds of radical students holed up inside.
Militants in the mosque exchanged rifle and automatic gunfire throughout the day with the army and paramilitaries who had penned them in and cut off all supplies. Military Cobra helicopters hovered overhead, drawing occasional fire from the besieged compound.
Government officials and aid workers, who entered the mosque to bring out the dead, said the remaining students, were being held hostage by increasingly desperate clerics.
"Some of the students are wounded and still the clerics are not allowing them out to get medical care," said Nisar Hasnain, a relief worker with the Khubaib Foundation, who went into the mosque compound to attend to the wounded and bring out the dead.
Hostile to Aid Efforts
He said the religious leaders were hostile to their aid efforts, but eventually allowed his team to remove the bodies of 10 men. "The doctor said one of the dead bodies was more than 12 hours old," Hasnain said, shocked that the clerics had broken a fundamental Islamic law stating the dead should be buried as quickly as possible.
The violence in the Pakistani capital is only the most recent chapter in a months-long conflict simmering between the Red Mosque and the government of President Pervez Musharraf. Mosque leaders would like to see the establishment of an Islamic theocracy similar to that created by the ousted Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan.
Musharraf, a close ally of the United States in the war on terror, is currently facing both a growing militancy movement in Pakistan as well as rising pressure from pro-democracy activists enraged at his attempt to fire the country's chief justice in March. Liberal politicians have pressed the president to crack down on the two cleric brothers in charge of the mosque. Meanwhile, there are concerns abroad about a growing Taliban-like movement.
On Thursday, though, immediate concern was for the children trapped inside the mosque. Parents, who had sent their children to the seminary for a well-reputed education, begged and argued with soldiers to be let through to the mosque despite outbreaks of gunfire and tear gas in the air.
"My girl is only 18 and she is scared", said one mother, wiping tears from her face with the corner of her brightly colored headscarf. "I managed to speak to her on the telephone and she begged me to come and get her out," she said, preferring not to give her name. "But that was at 10 this morning and I haven't heard anything since. I need to get in there to get my daughter out."
Unable to Bring their Children Out
Other parents argued with police, pushing to get past the barbed wire and being restrained by the heavily armed men. "Inside the conditions are very poor, the students are really hungry and they have nothing to drink," Hasnain sympathized.
But Colonel Ali, head of the paramilitary Rangers, said he had allowed some parents in, but they had been unable to bring their children out.
"When the parents come back out, they tell us that the boys and the girls are not being allowed to come out by the people in the mosque," he said. "It is terrible and pathetic."
The number of people left in the mosque was difficult to ascertain, but Col. Ali estimated it to be 400, half of them women. He said interrogation of around a thousand people who left voluntarily revealed that a hundred armed men remained inside. On Thursday, Pakistani Interior Minister Afftab Sherpao estimated that there were around 60 radical Islamists inside armed with Kalashnikovs, hand grenades and Molotov cocktails.
As night fell on the capital, a plume of smoke from another massive explosion rose on the horizon obscuring the Red Mosque's minaret.
Suicide Attacks?
With the next dawn would come Friday, the Muslim holy day, and expectations of increased tension with sensitive afternoon prayers. But, the decision to raid the holy building, even on the Sabbath, was not something the government would shy away from, an official told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
"That is not an issue, the military will go all out," said a senior government official, requesting to remain anonymous. "The only restraining factor is the women and children," she added. "Then, there will be no inhibitions."
Nonetheless, fears remained of a massive reaction to any image of armed soldiers entering the sacred ground. While public support for the Red Mosque comes from a very limited section of Pakistan's population, the violation of the holy site would doubtlessly create problems for Musharraf.
Tension was further increased as the extremist religious students and their teachers threatened suicide attacks on the military if they attack the sacred site.
"I don't know, there may be suicide bombers but it is not definite," Col. Ali said. "There are many hostages in there, but there is also the hardcore who is left. The government is thinking on different options, but we will not know until the time comes how it will play out."
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Pakistani female religious students after they surrendered to authorities outside the Red Mosque in Islamabad. DPA
PAKISTAN'S RED MOSQUE SHOWDOWN
Jihadists Using Girls as Human Shields?
Security forces are laying siege to the Red Mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan, where at least 800 radical students are holed up -- most of them women and girls. There are now concerns that some of the children are being kept there as human shields.
The simmering tensions between the radical Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, and the authorities in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, finally boiled over this week. Pakistani forces have been laying siege to the mosque following violent street battles on Tuesday, and are trying to persuade the radical students inside to give up. Around 1,200 students and children decided to leave the building on Wednesday, but there are still hundreds inside, mostly women and girls. There are now concerns that some of the children are being kept there as human shields.
In an interview broadcast on state television Thursday, the mosque's head cleric, Abdul Aziz, who left the compound on Wednesday, said there were still 850 people in the building, 600 of whom were women and girls. He insisted the young girls were not being used as human shields, but had been persuaded to stay behind by female teachers at "a time of sacrifice." "We only give them passion for the jihad," he said.
However, Colonel Masha Allah of the paramilitary forces at the scene said that some of the children who had already left had said they had been locked in a room.
A 12-year-old girl, who left the mosque on Thursday, said there were between 35 and 40 students of her age still inside. And a young woman who also left Thursday told Reuters she had seen four bodies in the mosque, two of which were girls.
The siege began after running battles between the students and security forces on Tuesday, during which at least 16 people were killed. The battles are taking place in the center of Pakistan's administrative capital, a stone's throw from the government district and presidential palace.
On Thursday the security forces set off a series of eight explosions outside the Red Mosque before dawn in an attempt to persuade those still holed up there to surrender. Security forces said they had also fired a series of "warning blasts," at the mosque and broken open a door to the building. The students were then asked by loudspeaker to leave.
'We Are Not Terrorists'
The initial response was around 20 minutes of gunfire but by mid morning around 60 students had left the complex, which includes the mosque and an adjoining girls madrasa, or religious school.
Abdul Aziz said that 14 men in the mosque had Kalashnikovs, but he asked those still there to give up peacefully. He said "if they can get out quietly they should go, or they can surrender if they want to." Aziz was arrested Wednesday trying to flee the mosque in a woman's burqa. He was spotted by a female police officer because of his height and large stomach.
Aziz, who was still dressed in the burqa he had used as a disguise during his interview, denied that his movement had links with al-Qaida, though he said his mosque had a "relationship of love and affection with all jihadist organizations."
His brother, the mosque's deputy head cleric, Abdul Rashid Gazi, is still inside the building. Speaking to Reuters by telephone on Thursday he said "We are not criminals. We are not terrorists that we should surrender. ... We have said that we are ready for dialogue."
'They Only Want Martyrdom'
The Red Mosque has been in conflict with the Pakistani government for months. Its leaders want to establish an Islamic theocracy similar to the ousted Taliban regime in Afghanistan. President Pervez Musharraf, who is regarded as a close ally of the United States in the war on terror, is currently facing both a growing militant movement, primarily near the Afghan border, and a pro-democracy movement enraged at his attempt to fire the country's chief justice in March. Liberal politicians have pressed the president to crack down on the two brothers in charge of the mosque. Meanwhile, there are concerns abroad about a growing Taliban-like movement in Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons.
While the Red Mosque has a long history of support for militancy, things really escalated in January of this year after female students occupied a library to protest the destruction of mosques illegally built on state land. The students at the school have since carried out a number of provocative acts, including kidnapping alleged prostitutes and police officers as part of an anti-vice campaign.
A security official told Reuters that a small hardcore in the mosque were unlikely to surrender. According to one student who had decided to leave the mosque, 15-year-old Maryam Qayyem, those who stayed inside "only want martyrdom."
"They are happy," she told the Associated Press Wednesday. "They don't want to go home."
smd/ap/reuters
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