ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan, Sept. 14 – Every Friday at 1 p.m.,
hundreds of Muslim men and boys in white cotton clothing and
skullcaps hurry to the Red Mosque to pray and hear their
imam, or mosque leader, deliver his weekly message.
Today, the message was
about the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and
it was unforgiving.
"This is the wrath of
Allah," said the imam, his voice ringing out over a
loudspeaker across the silent stone patios. "You Americans
commit oppression everywhere, in Kashmir, in Palestine, and
you do not see the blood spilled." No Arab country had the
means to launch such attacks, the voice declared. "But when
Allah catches hold of you, there is no escape."
Afterward, worshipers
spilling out of the mosque seemed confused, anxious and
angry. Many said they were sorry so many Americans had been
killed and felt the attacks were wrong. Yet they also
expressed bitter resentment against the United States and
said it would be equally wrong to retaliate against
Afghanistan, home to Osama bin Laden, the purported
terrorist U.S. officials call the prime suspect in Tuesday's
suicide hijackings.
"If America attacks
Afghanistan, I myself will kill George Bush," vowed Zikria
Agha, 18, his eyes and voice cold with conviction. "The
Muslims of the world are united. We are the real superpower.
If America attacks, it will be the beginning of World War
Three."
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While not shared by all
Pakistanis, the intense, defiant emotions stirred here in
the wake of the terrorist attacks half a world away partly
explain why the government of Pakistan now finds itself in a
dilemma as U.S. officials press its leaders to cooperate in
a manhunt for bin Laden and possible military strikes
against Afghanistan.
For years, Pakistan has
been a society with a split personality. The majority of its
140 million people are poor, devout Muslims with little hope
of bettering their lives and little faith in their political
rulers. Instead, they have increasingly turned to Islam, and
to an identification with suffering Muslims in other
countries, whom they view as victimized by Israel and the
West.
On the other side is a
minority of more educated, religiously moderate Pakistanis
who see their country's future as dependent on improved
economic and political ties with Western powers. They fear
that if Pakistan is tarred with the Islamic extremist label,
it will risk economic collapse, international isolation and
a bleak future.
Until now, the clash
between these two Pakistans has been mostly rhetorical. The
government of President Pervez Musharraf, an army general
who seized power in October 1999, has tried to placate
influential Islamic groups at home while seeking credibility
among Western governments and lending institutions abroad.
But the terrorist attacks
in the United States, and the enormous pressure now being
brought to bear on Musharraf to cooperate with U.S.
intelligence gathering and possible military actions, have
crystallized these contradictions in the starkest possible
terms, and they may well force him to choose between risking
domestic upheaval and international isolation.
"This is a defining moment
for Pakistan and a critical choice for Musharraf," said
Rifaat Hussain, a professor of strategic and defense studies
at Quaid-I-Azam University here in Pakistan's capital. "Do
we swim with the current of world opinion against terrorism,
or do we condemn ourselves to being on the wrong side of
history? There is really no choice, but it will be a very
difficult one for Musharraf to handle."
The government's dilemma
is not a simple confrontation between religious sentiment
and pragmatic politics. It is also deeply intertwined with
Pakistan's troubled history of shifting international
alliances, failed democratic governance, ambivalent
relations with Afghanistan and nuclear rivalry with India –
a much larger, Hindu-dominated country from which Muslim
Pakistan was split off in 1947.
During the 1980s, Pakistan
was squarely aligned with the United States against the
Soviet Union, which occupied Afghanistan for a decade.
Pakistan's military ruler at the time, Gen. Mohammed Zia
ul-Haq, was a ruthless dictator and an ardent supporter of
Islamic militancy, but also a clever Cold War strategist who
worked closely with Washington to assist and arm the Afghan
resistance movement.
From 1979 to 1989, the
United States spent $3 billion arming and equipping the
Islamic guerrillas who eventually drove the Soviet army from
Afghanistan. They fought mostly in the high mountains and
isolated valleys that characterize the Afghan landscape, but
their support base was in Pakistan, where the CIA funneled
weapons and supplies through Pakistan's security services.
Once the Soviets withdrew
in 1989, however, the scenario changed abruptly. The U.S.
money and involvement evaporated, leaving Afghanistan to
slip into violent civil conflict and Pakistan to cope with
the growing influence of militant Islamic movements that had
been nurtured with U.S. dollars.
Out of this volatile
situation emerged the Taliban, the Islamic militia that now
controls 95 percent of Afghanistan and harbors bin Laden as
a Muslim "guest."
The Taliban, which has
imposed a harsh system of governance and justice based on
its own interpretation of Islamic laws, has been condemned
by the West and sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council for
sheltering bin Laden and violating human rights. Only
Pakistan and two other countries recognize the regime as a
government.
"In an ironic reversal of
roles, it is this militancy, born in the crucible of the
Cold War and baptized in Afghanistan by the U.S. itself,
which the U.S. now proclaims as its principal enemy,"
columnist Ayaz Amir noted in the Dawn newspaper today. "Osama
is not the cause but the consequence" of American arrogance
and bias, he wrote, suggesting that Washington needs to
reflect on the "fury of despair" that motivates Muslim
terrorists to commit extreme acts. "Thus do demons come to
haunt their own creators."
Many Pakistanis have
little love for the Taliban or bin Laden, viewing both as a
threat to Pakistan's stability at home and credibility
abroad. Yet even middle-class professionals, while
expressing deep concern for the loss of life in Washington
and New York, said they understand why some Pakistanis and
other Muslims would find grim satisfaction in the assaults
on American symbols of power.
"People here do not favor
what happened, but there is so much poverty here and in
Afghanistan, and any American attack on Osama would hurt so
many innocent people too," said a communications company
manager named Ardeshir. "Instead of going after one man, the
U.S. should try to find out the root causes."
In some conservative
mosques and Islamic schools, the Taliban is viewed as a
movement of admirable, "pure" Muslims, and bin Laden as a
symbol of heroic defiance against the West. In fact, many
Taliban members were raised in the refugee camps and Islamic
schools, known as madrassas, of Pakistan's northwest
frontier province, a rugged region bordering Afghanistan,
where much of the population is of Afghan origin and where
Muslim traditions are deeply conservative.
Since the end of the
Afghan war, many Pakistani Islamic groups that provided
fighters against the Soviets have maintained strong
ideological ties to the Taliban, but have turned their
religious and military attention to a different so-called
holy war – the armed Muslim insurgency in Kashmir.
The insurgency erupted in
1989 in the Indian portion of Kashmir, the disputed
Himalayan border region divided between India and Pakistan
and claimed by both. It has been publicly championed and
covertly aided ever since by Pakistan, which views Kashmir
as the vulnerable Achilles' heel of its arch-rival.
For years the Kashmir
conflict gained little international attention, in part
because both India and Pakistan were under civilian control
and there seemed little risk of full-fledged war. But in
1998, India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons,
sharply raising the stakes. Then in 1999, Pakistan-backed
fighters invaded India's Kargil mountains and Pakistan's
unpopular prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was overthrown by
the army, raising further international alarm.
Since taking power,
Musharraf has tried to establish his regime as friendly to
Western governments and investors, whose favor is crucial to
reviving Pakistan's ailing economy. Yet he has persisted in
twin foreign policies that are popular among many Pakistani
Muslims but widely condemned abroad: overt support for the
Taliban in Afghanistan and covert support for the Kashmir
guerrillas.
Although Musharraf is
widely viewed as a moderate Muslim and well-intentioned
leader, he has largely been held hostage by the influence of
conservative Islamic groups in Pakistan, who have access to
weapons, command passionate support from a vocal minority of
Muslims, provide crucial support for the Kashmir conflict
and have close ties to some segments of the military.
In the aftermath of this
week's attacks on the United States, Musharraf has condemned
terrorism and said he will cooperate with U.S. authorities,
while Pakistani officials have continued to insist that they
prefer to "engage" with the Taliban and have little
influence over their actions in any case. But day by day, as
the American case for targeting bin Laden gains momentum and
world support, Pakistan's contradictory policy becomes
increasingly untenable.
"If Musharraf handles this
right, he has an opportunity to turn a perilous situation
into a grand opportunity. The question is how much he can
concede to the Americans before he feels the domestic heat,"
said Najam Sethi, publisher of the Friday Times, an
influential weekly newspaper here.
"The public mood is very
anti-American right now, but people will probably not be too
upset if Pakistan ditches Afghanistan. The army is
pragmatic, and they know Pakistan faces economic ruin if it
does not stand with the United States on this," Sethi said.
"But if the Americans want to go after the larger umbrella
of Pakistani groups that are linked to Kashmir, it will
create enormous problems."
Musharraf reportedly has
met with Islamic leaders here this week and told them not to
make provocative statements or threats on the Afghan
situation. But if Musharraf does agree to collaborate with a
U.S. attack on Afghanistan, today's message from the Red
Mosque suggests he could face more than wrathful rhetoric
from the disaffected, desperate and devout Muslims of
Pakistan.
"America is against Osama
because he is a true Muslim and a defender of Islam, not
like our Pakistani leaders who are so-called Muslims," said
Mohammed Rafiq, 50, shaking with rage as he stood in a crowd
outside the mosque. "The Americans bombed Hiroshima, and
they can do it to Afghanistan now, but history will never
forgive them."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
EDITORS
AND PUBLISHERS ARE FREE TO REPRINT THIS ARTICLE IN ITS
ENTIRETY AS LONG AS THE BYLINE REMAINS INTACT.
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