Author: Esther Oxford
Publication: The Independent
Date: April 29, 2001
Pakistan's military leader General
Pervez Musharraf has declared that 99 per cent of the country is being
"held hostage" by religious extremists who constitute just one per cent
of the population. That has caused concern among diplomats and politicians
in the West, fearful of a "Talibanised" Pakistan.
Their fears were confirmed by Pakistan's
hosting a conference for 1.2 million Islamic fundamentalists, during which
the Taliban leader Mullah Omar addressed a rapturous crowd via a tape-recording,
and the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden wrote a letter urging them to throw
their support behind the Taliban. Chants of "Koon Bachai Ga Pakistan, Taliban!
Taliban!" ("Who will protect Pakistan? The Taliban!") could be heard several
miles away.
Fundamentalists accuse the general
of betraying Pakistan's "Islamic dream" with his liberal policies on women
and refusal to implement Shariah law. Liberals say he is "pandering to
religious forces" by not curbing extremists who take the law into their
own hands.
Pakistan was the birthplace of the
Taliban. Camps for Afghan refugees have acted as recruiting grounds for
extremists since the Afghan-Soviet war. In 1996 Pakistan exported this
"student militia" to Afghanistan, where they seized power. Now the movement
has been re-exported. Pakistani villages on the border with Afghanistan
have become Talibanised. Television and music are banned, women are obliged
to wear the all-enveloping burkas, and men to sport beards. An estimated
5,000 madrassas (religious schools) provide a Taliban education to Pakistan's
children.
In public, General Musharraf distances
himself from the Taliban. "They are fiercely independent", he told Herald
magazine, a Pakistani weekly. "We are certainly not for their thoughts
on gender issues. I think we are a moderate Islamic country and 99 per
cent of our population is moderate. "The unfortunate part is that this
one per cent extremist element is holding the 99 per cent hostage."
But his key supporters, the army
included, are conservative. They want to preserve the status quo "in the
name of Islam". Yet instinctively General Musharraf is quite progressive.
He has set aside 33 per cent of parliamentary seats for women and implemented
literacy programmes to teach the disfranchised how to vote. He is also
pragmatic: Pakistan needs recognition from the West if it is to attract
investment and aid from overseas. So his stance on the Taliban remains
undecided.
Two weeks ago he astonished the
UN by sending a message of condolence to Mullah Omar on the death of his
deputy, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani. The message said that Rabbani, one of
the key players behind the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddahs, had been
a "loyal friend of Pakistan". Just weeks before, General Musharraf had
denounced the destruction of the Buddahs.
