Kuwait Times

Published Date: July 13, 2007
By Danny Kemp

As troops cleared bodies and booby traps from Pakistan's Red Mosque, the question arose: how could Islamic radicals build a fortress under the noses of intelligence agencies in the capital? At least 73 militants and nine soldiers died in two days of fierce room-to-room fighting at the complex in the heart of Islamabad, where insurgents had built bunkers and trenches to hold off the army commandos.

Rebels used heavy weapons including rocket launchers and machine guns to combat government forces. A decapitated head indicated there had been a suicide attack during the raid and an unexploded suicide belt was also found. Many residents have asked how the radicals were able to amass this arsenal. "It looked like a real fortress," Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azeem told AFP during a visit to the scene on Thursday, adding that an acrid burning smell permeated the mosque and an adjoining girls' Islamic
school.

Officials have said that militants linked to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network and the Taleban, including some foreign rebels, were among those who had been holed up in the compound. Yet the mosque is only about a kilometre away from foreign embassies and the residence of President Pervez Musharraf, who has led a bloody campaign against Islamic extremists in the wake of 9/11.

It was the biggest intelligence failure," said Munir Malik, the president of Pakistan's Supreme Court Bar Association, who is representing the country's chief justice in a fight against his suspension by Musharraf in March. "How come the intelligence agencies were not aware of the happenings in the mosque?" Mutahir Ahmed, a professor of international relations at Karachi University, said the failures were not just about the presence of weapons. "It's also about the presence of pro-Taliban militants. The p
ublic has a right to ask these unanswered questions," Ahmed told AFP.

Pakistani authorities, however, defended their record. "The resistance was definitely unexpected but intelligence agencies were getting reports for some time that the cleric brothers were collecting arms and weapons," a senior security official told AFP. "The intelligence services were a bit complacent because the two brothers had previously been cooperating. But the president himself pointed out the presence of heavy weaponry inside the mosque in his recent briefings to media.

Attention has inevitably focused on the known ties between the two brothers who ran the mosque - surviving Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was buried Thursday - and Pakistan's shadowy intelligence agencies. Aziz was captured fleeing the complex in a burqa last week while Ghazi was shot dead after saying that he would rather die than surrender.

In the run-up to the mosque raid there were conspiracy theories that Musharraf had egged on the brothers to play up tensions and remind his US allies of his supposed indispensability in the fight against militancy. The clerics and their late father, who founded the mosque, were proteges of Pakistani intelligence during Afghanistan's 1979-89 anti-Soviet jihad and later in supporting the Taliban rise to power there, officials said.

Some sections of the intelligence network later continued to provide clandestine support to the clerics despite their hostility towards Musharraf, according to a security official and reports. Pakistan's spy agencies have frequently been accused - not least by neighbouring Afghanistan - of links with militants and of using "jihadi" fighters to further their foreign goals.

There was also alarm at the involvement in final government negotiations with Ghazi of Fazlur Rehman Khalili, a well known jihadi leader from the feared Harkat-ul-Ansar, a group which has fought in Kashmir and Afghanistan. Residents also said Musharraf had a lot to explain when he makes an address to the nation that is expected on Thursday evening. "Ghazi is dead and so are his close comrades," said Mohammad Usman, an Islamabad travel agent. "But the government has to answer many questions as to how rocket
launchers, hand grenades, explosives were stored there for years." - AFP