Red (Mosque) Herring

Musharraf always seems eager to present his credentials as an "enlightened moderate" and as the only choice the west has in Pakistan to stem the growing tide of extremism. The west has bought this line of argument in its totality, without any questions asked.

At the same time he does whatever he can to keep his cronies in various places stoking the fires of extremism according to his needs, a la carte. To pay back he keeps them on payroll and in the news.

He has been doing it successfully in Islamabad for the last six months with the help of two brothers of the Red Mosque. If you ask him why he is not eliminating this threat to the writ of the state he says there are little girls and boys there and he is not cruel, notwithstanding he has incinerated scores of little boys in other madrassas in the North Western Frontier Province and in the tribal areas.

The other excuse he gives is that there are also present in the Red Mosque militants linked with Al-Qaida. It should make the elimination more urgent and not less.

The real reason he keeps these pseudo mujahideen in the news is that these stage-managed provocations help him scare the west into keeping him in power and billions of dollars coming.

If he is so enlighted a moderate as he claims to be then why was he not bothered by the kidnappings of women and the harassing of businesses at the hands of Red Mosque students for months until they bit more than they could chew by kidnapping seven Chinese?

Chinese came down hard on him and he in turn came down hard on his red herring. The timing also suited him fine as the Chief Justice movement as well as All Parties Conference in London got buried in his botched and prolonged operation in Islamabad.

The way the operation is being conducted shows poor planning and execution. 24 people have been killed so far in 5 days. The inhabitants of two neigborhood of Islamabad have virtually become hostages in their houses without water, electricity, gas and other provisions. They cannot come out of their houses because curfew is imposed. They cannot go onto their roofs and cannot open their windows because they could get killed with stray bullets. They have to stay in their rooms in this hot weather. They don't know when their ordeal is going to end.

The operation is also an embarrassment for a professional army. I hope our enemies are not watching otherwise the professionalism, discipline and efficiency of our armed forces will be amply exposed and will threaten our national security.

The question is who is Musharraf helping by blocking the way of the mainstream political parties' way into free, fair and transparent election by stacking his cards while giving free hand to his extremist cronies, including MQM?

Not Pakistan!