The Monday Massacre in Bajaur was staged to show the destructive and overwhelming power of the state and to raise a smoke screen to hide the true nature of the madrassahs from Prince Charles and through him from the western world. But, in fact, it ended up exposing its haplessness in the face of growing restiveness in Pakistan against the policies of Musharraf and Bush governments.
The carnage of Chingai was also vivid proof of rapidly diminishing options for Gen. Musharraf. His abrupt and sudden shifts in policy towards pro-Taliban Pakistanis in the NWFP, and his vacillation between capitulating peace deals and pitiless massacres also show he is under a lot of pressure and is losing control.
The American news channel ABC has reported that it was the a U.S. unmanned fixed-wing drone aircraft - Predator - that initiated air raid on Madrassah in Bajaur in which 80 innocent young students were killed.
Three Pakistani helicopter gunships joined the operation 15-20 minutes later to mow down 15 men who survived the two hellfire missiles fired by the drone. The rest of the dirty mop up work was done by the Pakistani ground troops. This Madrassah was the only educational institution of any kind in the village of Chingai. The government has refused to release the names of those killed to the public and has thrown a strict cordon around the area, to prevent the mainstream media from knowing the truth. Some local journalists who managed to smuggle out video footage showing burnt copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, desks reduced to rubble, and the charred remains of students and teachers, have been arrested by the army. They had also reported that most of the victims were under the age of 15, including a six years old.
If it was indeed an American operation and the Pakistani forces just joined it to cover up then, I believe, the American target was the nascent peace deal, between Musharraf's military and the Taliban of Bajaur. The attack came only hours before tribal leaders and Pakistani military officials were scheduled to sign the peace agreement. Pervez Musharraf had been under increasing pressure from the United States to to stop the movement of Taliban and al-Qaida militants into Afghanistan whcih had increased threefold after a similar deal was signed by the Pakistani military with the Taliban of North Waziristan back in September. The peace agreement, had it been signed, would have resulted in the grant of a pardon to the two most wanted militants, Maulana Faqir Mohammad and Maulvi Liaqat. Both had been charged with harbouring and providing shelter to Al Qaeda operatives. The latter was killed in the attack.
Musharraf was under a lot of pressure from within the army to make deals with local militants, whose power is on the rise, to save Pakistan from sliding into the same situation as we have in the southern Afghanistan.
Washington, on the other hand, does not like those deals.
A congressional report was prepared by Alan Kronstadt, an Asian specialist at the Congressional Research Service which does research for the US Congress at the same time when the Madrassah was destroyed and 80 innocent young – some as young as 5 years old – were murdered.
Nato’s top military commander General James Jones at the end of his three day visit to Afghanistan was telling reporters at the Bagram Air Base, two days before the Monday Massacre, that the movement of militants from Pakistan into Afghanistan has increased since Islamabad signed a deal with tribal elders along the border last month. ISAF (Nato-led International Security Assistance Force) commanders were due to meet with the Pakistan military in the coming weeks, he said, with the Nato-led force wanting to remove militant sanctuaries in the region and stop the crossborder movement of fighters.
America's ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann, in an interview with the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph on October 25 (five days before the attack), was criticizing the British peace deal with the Taliban of Afghanistan in Musa Qala in Helmand province.
How will Musharraf get out of his predicament? Does he want to?
