Pakistan Update

Lal Masjid is issuing threats after Musharraf’s speech (see yesterday’s update,) and it appears that yet another kidnapping was foiled by police. The self-appointed “Ummahzons” are still rattling their canes, but ineffectively. Previous articles on the crow-hatchery here.

Here’s a recap of just the problems they’ve caused this week:

Unmindful of the fallout of their action on the country’s decades long relations with China, the male and female vigilantes forced their way into the building, seized the ‘prostitutes’ and their ‘clients’ by the lock and dragged them out in the open.

With no police and Rangers in sight, the young seminarians thrashed the ‘sinful’ folk to their heart’s content. The cries of the victims pulled in many from the neighbourhood including security guards, but seeing the situation they preferred to stay away. The drama of punishing people with ‘bad morals’ on the spot lasted for almost half an hour before they were bundled into vehicles and taken to Lal Masjid.

After listening to the moral lessons for more than 12 hours, the hostages were set free. However, the Chinese women were wearing burqas when they got out of the seminary.
The incident horrified the foreigners based in Islamabad prompting their governments to push Islamabad for an action against the students of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa.

kabul-destroyed.jpg

<<<  Kabul: Destroyed by Hekmatyar and the Taliban before the US ever attacked. 

Since that incident hundreds of Chinese have left Islamabad, and closed business’, which cannot be good for the economy of Pakistan. If Lal Masjid continues unchecked soon then someday Islamabad will look like Kabul after Hekmatyar’s rocket attack for no good reason, and it will be muslims killing muslims again. Left unchecked they will be dragging people to the closed soccer stadiums and shooting them in the head. Is this really what Pakistani Muslims desire?

Here is an interesting video of the earlier incidents with Jamia Hafsa / Lal Masjid, and you can see Imran Khan dismissing it, and like the leftists in america with Bush, equating it to a plot by Musharraf. As the situation has gone steadily worse since then, and now we know that Jamsh-e-Mohammed members are in the mosque and the children are human shields, does Imran perhaps have another opinion now? I doubt it. Nobody wants to believe the extremists mean anything until it is too late. Remember the advance on Kabul of the Taliban, and how many thought it was a good thing until they found out later that 10,000 died?

In other news from FATA, fighting has once more heated up in the 2 year ongoing fight between tribals and the Taliban in FATA over control of some illegal “toll-checkpoints” that happen to be on smuggling routes. From Daily Times:

Two persons were killed and ten others wounded, including a woman and two children, in an armed clash between rival groups in Khyber Agency on Saturday.

The fight started when the Namdar group attacked the house of Shiekhmal Khel tribe’s supreme commander Haji Maveez. The five-hour clash left Lal Bagh, brother of Maveez, and Haji Pathang dead and one person injured. A Skiekhmal Khel tribesman told reporters that five persons of the rival group were also injured. He said a mortar shell, fired on a house, injured a woman and two children.

Both sides of this fight are extreme, and several peaces have been brokered in the past via Jirgas, but the ire between them remains as their illegal FM stations counter-broadcast each other.