When tanks strolled into the Pakistani capital Islamabad to take on the radical Red Mosque clerics, many residents sighed with relief. The clerics had been brutally imposing Taliban-style social edicts on them for months. But as coverage of the spectacular news story dominated the domestic and international media, suspicions arose. It seemed all too convenient for Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf to divert attention from his falling stature as a key ally in the US-led war against terror.
In January this year it was clear that female students from the adjoining Jamia Hafsa seminary broke the law by occupying the public children’s library next door. It was a protest against the government’s demolition of illegal mosques in the capital city. One of the elder students, who left the seminary on the third day of the siege, 23-year-old Ayesha Yousaf, said that the situation was still very much under control then.
This soon changed. The seminary saw a series of government negotiators arrive, from federal ministers to prominent religious scholars. Law enforcement was out of sight. Emboldened by the government’s laid back approach, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, vice-president of Jamia Hafsa and his elder brother Abdul Aziz Ghazi, head of the Red Mosque, demanded enforcement of strict sharia law.
Vice patrol squads, consisting of armed male and female students, threatened video and music store shopkeepers, and kidnapped policemen and alleged brothel owners and prostitutes. The elder Ghazi brother claimed to have 100 suicide bombers up and ready to respond if an operation was carried out against them. Intelligence reports stated that militants had flocked towards the mosque and seminaries.
The breaking point was the kidnapping of six Chinese women accused of being prostitutes. China has been a great contributor to Pakistan's infrastructure expansion and the two countries enjoy a strong military cooperation. China serves as a counterweight to Pakistan’s arch rival India. Pakistan apologised for the kidnapping, but China asked for better protection of its resident workers.
A week later, on Tuesday 3 July, security forces clashed with the militants of the Red Mosque. Both sides claimed to be retaliating. The next day the area was sealed, Black Hawk helicopters scanned the area and armed military forces with gas masks were heard firing througout the day. The seminary for boys, Jamia Faridia, had been captured and the outer wall of Jamia Hafsa blown up. At least 20 people died.
The timing of the operation provoked suspicion. Why did the