Wednesday 11 July 2007 In the first place, General Musharraf should not have allowed so many armed militants to have gathered inside the mosque in those six months and then he should not have waited so long after the kidnapping of two policemen by the students of the Jamia Hafsa far back in February to launch an eviction programme through his party’s politicians.
General Musharraf had used the mosque issue to divert the attention of the people of Pakistan from the chief justice’s case which was going against the president and also from the two-day conference of the all opposition parties in London, “and at the same time he seemed to have successfully used the incident to persuade his friends in London and Washington to continue to support him rather than asking him to transfer power to a democratically elected government”.
The people of Pakistan by and large are against militancy and until the Americans started bombing Afghanistan they were all against terrorism that had taken a toll of so many innocent people on 9/11 in the US. “But since then they have convinced themselves to believe that the US is waging a war against Islam. The invasion of Iraq had reinforced their belief. And they see Musharraf as a foot soldier of the US protecting the American interests in this part of the world. That is the reason why they look with suspicion everything he does. And that was the reason why his actions in Waziristan and against Lal Masjid did not win him many friends inside the country”.
The Waziristan issue could have been solved through political dialogue, but being a military man Musharraf sent in 80,000 troops on the behest of the US and within two years after having hundreds of troops killed he had to sign a ‘document of surrender’ with the Waziris, but in the process he has alienated the tribal people for many years to comeSource: Dawn Newspaper
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