The blood red mosque

Violence ended Pakistan's confrontation with radical Islamabad mosque yesterday -- but was violence inevitable, asks Graham Usher in Islamabad

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Women surrender soon after Pakistani troops stormed the Red Mosque

The week-long siege on Islamabad's Lal Masjid or Red Mosque ended as most feared it would -- with an earthshaking explosion and Pakistani commandos scaling the walls of the mosque, library and madrassa that together comprise the Red Mosque complex. At the launch of the operation early Tuesday army officers said it would be over in "no time". Fifteen hours later the battle for the mosque was still raging. At least 58 soldiers, madrassa students and militants had been killed, including, finally, the mosque's chief cleric Abdul-Rashid Ghazi.

So ended a confrontation between the Pakistan state and a Taliban-inspired version of Islam that had been simmering for six months. In January Ghazi and his brother, Abdul-Aziz, directed their madrassa students to take over a public library. From there they preached and practised a literalist brand of Islam, attacking video stores, kidnapping women, police and foreigners for "un-Islamic behaviour" and finally, a week ago, staging a pitched battle with the police. Pakistan Presdient Pervez Musharraf ordered his army to lay siege to the mosque.

On Monday last ditch negotiations were held between Ghazi and a government delegation of political leaders and religious scholars. It ended in deadlock. "Ghazi closed the phone at 3.30am and that was that," said an army officer. Thirty minutes later Musharraf approved the "final operation on Lal Masjid". At first it went to plan. The army rapidly took control of the library and the mosque. But it met fierce resistance inside the madrassa, a seminary housing 75 rooms. In the words of one army officer, militants and students fought the army "room by room, corridor by corridor, desk by desk" using a mix of pistols, machine guns and grenades. The army -- in some places outnumbering their foes ten to one -- used stun bombs, sharpshooters and heavy barrages of gunfire. Ghazi was holed up in a basement, spewing defiance, with militants and an unknown number of innocents. Four times he was offered to surrender, four times he refused. He was killed when soldiers stormed his redoubt after the fourth.

In the melee 30 women and children were "rescued" by the army and 86 surrendered, including the wife and daughter of Abdul-Aziz who, like him last week, left the mosque defeated in Afghan- style burka. It is unclear how many women and children remain in the mosque or how many have fallen in the battle. But many fear the worst. "It's a big mess", said an ambulance driver. "We've been told to go in and get the wounded. We've also been told there are many dead." Was military might the only solution? The government's answer is yes.

Ministers say the negotiations snagged on Ghazi's demand that Islamist militants inside the mosque be granted amnesty, including foreign fighters with ties to Al-Qaeda. The government refused.

But Rehmatullah Khalil, a religious scholar and member of the government delegation, tells a different story. He says a draft agreement had been reached with Ghazi but Musharraf "sabotaged" it. The Pakistan leader "changed almost all the clauses of the agreement", he said.

Much depends on who will be held responsible for the carnage, especially as the death toll is expected to rise. Up till now most Pakistanis had supported Musharraf's handling of the crisis, with its calibrated tactics of force, guile and negotiations. But should the perception grow that a peace deal was on the table only to be torn up by the president, then Musharraf's recently acquired kudos will fall away -- and not only among the Islamists.