Surrendering to the militants

MAULANA Fazlur Rahman, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly and overlord of a radical clerical establishment, and Bashir Ahmad Bilour, chief of the country’s avowedly largest secular party, both suspect that the Lal Masjid-Hafsa affair is being stage-managed by the government. So does Prof Ghafoor, a cool-thinking leader of a regimented ideological party.Their reasons differ and relate to the political orientation of their parties. The maulana suspects that by encouraging, or conniving at, the delinquent behaviour of the Lal Masjid clerics, the government is preparing for a crackdown on the institution of the madressah as a whole which it had been long planning but holding back for fear of provoking a public outrage.Mr Bilour, on the other hand, alleges that the government has engineered it all to divert public attention from the lawyers’ protest against the suspension of the Chief Justice and the public dismay at the humiliation inflicted on him.The suspicions, or allegations, of the leaders find credence in the manner in which the administration has conducted itself all along. The forcible and continuing occupation of a children’s library by the Hafsa women and their raid on a private home to kidnap its female inhabitants and an infant child (whatever the motive or inspiration) both constitute serious and cognisable crimes under the country’s penal laws.The government at the ministerial level, however, is treating the behaviour of the women and their master clerics as a political issue. The spectre of bloodshed is raised at any observation that the women could be forcibly dislodged from the public building and prosecuted for trespassing and kidnapping.There is no evidence that the women carry arms other than bamboo staves. Even if they do the police should use the minimum possible force without worrying about its attendant risks. The indications are that a forceful intervention would be welcomed by civil society and not resented by religious circles. Water hoses should suffice unless the women and their wardens are the first to use firearms which they are unlikely to do.Chaudhry Shujaat, rushing back from America in the midst of his medical treatment to talk to the Lal Masjid-Hafsa clerics, has lifted the crime of trespassing and kidnapping, entirely and formally, to a political plane. The press account of his dialogue with the clerics shows the latter to be unrepentant and unwilling to yield any ground. Still Chaudhry Sahib hopes to keep negotiating till the clerics and their enraged wards are pacified.After the meeting he assured a BBC correspondent the problem would be resolved soon and amicably. The writ of the state doesn’t matter, the approaching election does.Chaudhry Shujaat may be the chief of a political party but is in no way a part of the law and order administration. He has no power or right to negotiate a compromise in a criminal offence. Trespass and kidnapping constitute crimes which are not compoundable, not even by a court of the highest jurisdiction. His intervention is, thus, illegal and, at the same time, tends to undermine the authority of the administration and the courts.It would be an exasperating experience for any professional administrator not to be able to enforce the rule of law even when the complainant (ruling party) and the aggrieved (the kidnapped and humiliated women) are too scared to report the crime and then follow up the investigation to a just conclusion in a court of law.It remains the duty of the state to pursue the case to the end even if the victims, for whatever reason, give in or give up. The offence first is against the state and only then against the individuals.It is a case that cries out for suo motu action by the superior courts. If the courts do not act on their own to enforce the law in this case and right the wrong, will they do so later? To punish crime and to dispense justice is the ultimate responsibility not of the government, not even of the president, but of the courts. But these days the judges have other worries and priorities and the lawyers are shouting on the streets instead of pleading in the courts.It is hard to find a reason for the hesitation of the government to do its basic duty. No political party, not even of sectarian character, is backing the defiant clerics of Lal Masjid or its unruly students. Almost every political leader of any worth, Altaf Hussain above all, has condemned them in terms as no religious establishment has ever been condemned.So have the heads of madressah boards. The custodians of Lal Masjid and Hafsa have confirmed what the world community has been alleging — that Pakistan’s mosques and seminaries raise terrorists and not scholars.Minister Ijazul Haq, who was the first to be intimidated into laying the first brick to rebuild the mosque the authorities had demolished for encroaching on public land, has now chosen to inform the public that the two clerics (Aziz and Rashid) were hauled up for harbouring terrorists not long ago. He came to their rescue when they undertook not to indulge in illegal activities again. Yet to appease them Chaudhry Shujaat is reportedly agreeing to rebuild all the demolished mosques and that too at public expense.Moreover, the education minister has now chosen to disclose that the entire complex — the mosque, madressah and hostel — was raised by encroaching on public land in the last four or five years while this enlightened government looked the other way. To top that, the two clerics are employees of the Islamabad administration and, apparently, bound by its discipline like all other employees.Despite all this, the decision to surrender to them or to punish them is to be made by the president aided by his civil and military advisers. A governor of better times, Mustafa Khar, is rightly piqued. This decision should have been made much earlier by the district magistrate of Islamabad in consultation with the superintendent of police. The politicians should have been kept at bay including head honcho Chaudhry Shujaat.On assuming power, Pervez Musharraf, though inspired by the ideals of Kemal Ataturk’s statecraft, was driven into the arms of the politicians who were Ataturk’s antithesis. Musharraf then had no other choice for those closer to his political thinking were in the dock for graft or treason. As a modernist relying on the reactionaries to make a political career for himself he is anathema to both, having left the country rudderless politically.Now, after more than seven years when tamed ambitions and dulled vendettas offer new opportunities to forge more natural alliances, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain has stepped in once again. Speculation about the future has never been gloomier. If conciliating the militants and criminals becomes public policy it will not remain confined to the clerics and the Hafsa women, nor would Chaudhry Shujaat be the last politician to run the conciliation shuttle. The country is once again headed for the politics of brimstone and gunfire.