Lal Masjid: Cleanup or Cover-up?

The Government of Pakistan, on the offensive over the last few days, has denied any (and all) allegations of abuse or cover-up with the Lal Masjid fiasco. The early decision (at the very beginning of the Lal Masjid seige) to keep out media, independent observers, family members, and anyone else for that matter hasn’t helped the Pakistani government’s case much. Here is my 1 cent (as opposed to 2 cents since I’m broke) on the whole Lal Masjid fiasco:

1. Now that the cleanup cover-up stage of the Lal Masjid operation massacre is completed: Will there be an independent public inquiry into exactly what went wrong throughout the entire Lal Masjid ordeal? Likely answer, NO.
2. Where were the foreign fighters that the Pak government informed us about?
3. Where were all of the well trained militants that we were informed of? If they were so well trained…shouldn’t they have put up more of a fight?
4. Why didn’t the militants students use the “heavy” weapons that they supposedly had? Ans: Because they only had 14 or 15 Ak-47 assault rifles. Could it be that the government of Pervez Busharraf planted weapons at the site? Never!
5. Where were the suicide bombers?
6. Where were the hostages that were supposedly being held in the school and used by the “terrorists” as human-shields?
7. Why did the so-called Islamic Republic of Pakistan (a damn near laughable title) bring war upon a Masjid of all places?
8. This operation massacre reminds of me of Waco (1993). Except for the fact that the US Government gave Xtian cult leader David Koresh 51 days of negotiation to end the standoff — despite the fact that his followers were admittedly well armed and had already killed (and wounded) two FBI agents.
9. If the school was indeed surrouned by the Pak military…why not just wait out the remaining holdouts inside the compound in order to fully exhaust all means of peaceful resolution?  Ans: It’s just easier to kill the “terrorists.”
10. The coverage & response from the Muslim blogosphere has been pathetic! Suddenly, everyone became a Sheikh or an on-sight reporter and just “knew” about everything going on throughout the entire crisis.  Accusations of “terrorists” … “lunatics” … and “extremists” were made by the usual crowd (our “moderate” brothers and sisters in Islam) and others couldn’t get off the whole “burqa” issue. I wonder what the response would be if a Pakistani blogger sitting in Islamabad were to make generalizations about a particular subset of Muslims living in West, for example.  As an American Muslim…I find myself becoming more and more irritated by the sheer arrogance and judgemental nature of Muslims living in the West (convert or otherwise) — particularly Americans. I realize that this kind of nonsense is only furthered by a lack of religious knowledge…however it can be quite frustrating to deal with. The problem is that these kinds of folks (with their cultural baggage and perpetuating jahiliyyah) are ALWAYS given positions of authority and a bully pulpit from which to speak. This includes everything from your local Masjid to national Muslim Organizations and even Muslim schools.  Since I find myself getting annoyed — just writing about this issue — I think I’ll have to expand upon the topic in a future post, inshallah.  Anyway, check out the article below:

Pakistan quick to clean the blood from Red Mosque

By Andrew Buncombe in Islamabad

Published: 13 July 2007

Shattered minarets, smouldering buildings and bullet-scarred walls reveal the bitter battle waged between Pakistani troops and armed militant students for Islamabad’s Red Mosque.

As Pakistan’s military authorities finally granted access to the ruined complex, known locally as Lal Masjid, it became immediately clear they had done everything they could to sanitise this battle scene in the heart of the nation’s capital in which at least 108 people were killed. For all the blackened walls, for all the hundreds of spent cartridge cases heaped together in a pile, there was not a glimmer of the human cost of the battle. In the time since the authorities captured the mosque they had been able to ensure that the public would not see one drop of blood, not a scrap of tissue.

“It has been cleared of bodies and we have cleaned the blood. We have cleaned it out,” said Major-General Waheed Arshad, the army’s spokesman, as he led the way through the sometimes choking rooms. “We did not want to show grisly things.”

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2765582.ece