The Hindu : National : “Ghazi wanted safe passage for foreign militants”

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Wednesday, Jul 11, 2007
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“Ghazi wanted safe passage for foreign militants”

Nirupama Subramanian

The negotiations failed because of the cleric’s non-committal responses to the Government’s proposals

— Photo: AP

Anger over action: Religious students in Multan protest against the Army operation against Islamic militants at Islamabad’s Lal Masjid on Tuesday. Troops flushed out holdouts entrenched inside a women’s religious school after raiding the mosque.

ISLAMABAD: Operation Silence was anything but silent. When it began a little after 4 am, residents of neighbourhoods close to the Lal Masjid were woken up by a series of explosions and the sound of gunfire, indicating that the talks between a 13-member government delegation and Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the cleric leading the militants, in the mosque had broken down.

“I have never felt so dejected as I am feeling now. We negotiated with him for 11 hours. I personally pleaded with Ghazi in the name of God to let the women and children go, but he did not listen to me,” president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain told reporters shortly before 4 a.m.

“Now we have left it to Allah,” he said as he stepped back into his car. Seconds later, reporters heard the first shots and deep explosions that signalled the start of the operation and continued all through Tuesday. The security forces warned residents of the area not to step out or go out on their terraces as stray bullets could hit them.

The operation took many by surprise as, until late on Monday, there was optimism that the Government’s decision to pull back from its ultimatum of “surrender or die,” and to give talks a chance, may yield positive results.

But the negotiations, which Mr. Hussain and his team conducted with Ghazi by telephone and over loudspeakers from outside the mosque — the Government feared they would be taken hostage if they went inside — failed because of the cleric’s non-committal responses to the Government’s proposals.

The government team also hinted that Ghazi may not have been the final decision maker.

“He kept saying he will get back to us later. I don’t know if he had to consult someone, but he never got back,” said Mr. Hussain, adding that the team even made “such proposals for which we knew we would be criticised later.”

Among the proposals was an offer of house arrest for Ghazi, instead of being shipped off to prison. But there was some confusion over the conditions for this, with religious scholars accompanying the delegation said they had negotiated for Ghazi to live under house arrest with his family in his ancestral village Rojhan, in Dera Ghazi Khan, south Punjab. Other reports said Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf was categorical that the militant cleric would have to be arrested first.

For his part, Mr. Ghazi demanded that once everyone inside surrendered, the Government should release all those who were not wanted.

“But it seems that he was simply buying time, I don’t’ think the final decision was in his hands. I think he is hostage to certain elements inside,” Mr. Haq told Dawn TV, shortly after the operation began.

According to the Minister, several times during the negotiations Mr. Ghazi mentioned the presence of foreigners inside the mosque, and asked whether the Government was prepared to give them safe passage, but the delegation refused to consider this.

“We told him that everyone will be dealt with according to the law. He was categorically told that the women and children would be sent to their homes and the men would be dealt with under the law,” Mr. Haq said. As the clock ticked by, the team told him that he had 15 minutes to respond, and that he could call any of several phone numbers to convey his decision.

“But he did not come around to it,” said Mr. Haq.

According to Ghazi, the talks failed because the Government did not agree to his proposal that he and the others inside the mosque would surrender before a committee of religious scholars and media. In an interview to a television channel, Mr. Ghazi said he wanted the media to come in and see for itself the conditions inside the mosque, the number of casualties in the week-long standoff and how many weapons they had.

Reporters were shocked to see Maulana Fazalur Rehman Khalil, a well-known militant leader of a banned group, included in the delegation for the talks with Ghazi. He was spotted sitting inside Mr. Hussain’s car when the group returned for a second round of talks at about 1 a.m.

The founder of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and one-time associate of Mullah Omar, founder of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, Maulana Khalil, is a well-known jihadi with ties to the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, He fought in Afghanistan and meddled in Kashmir. According to the News, he was a signatory to a fatwa by Osama bin Laden in 1998 asking Muslims all over the world to kill Americans whenever an opportunity arose.

The Pakistan Government arrested him during a crackdown on extremists in 2004, but he was released by the courts six months later.

Maulana Khalil has family ties to Ghazi, and religious scholars reportedly convinced the Government that his inclusion would reassure the militant cleric that the Government was sincere about negotiations.

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