Official Calls Mosque Rebels 'Terrorists'

Religion Minister Indicates Some in Islamabad Standoff Are Foreigners

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 9, 2007; A09

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 9 -- A day after the death of a senior Pakistani commando, government officials said Sunday that the fighters holed up inside an Islamabad mosque are well-trained and well-armed radicals with connections to known terrorist groups.

The fighters are "terrorists, militants, who are wanted within, and outside, the country," said Religious Affairs Minister Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq. Ejaz-ul-Haq suggested that at least some are not Pakistani and that the fighters, not firebrand cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, were in charge at the Red Mosque.

Without getting into specifics, Ejaz-ul-Haq said that a few of the terrorists were "very renowned, very well known."

The standoff at the mosque entered its seventh day Monday, and neither side seemed inclined to back down or make a decisive move. Although Pakistani television stations reported that the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, signed off on a plan for a final raid of the mosque late Sunday night, it had not occurred by daybreak Monday.

The siege began last Tuesday, when radicals and army rangers engaged in a pitched gun battle. But the controversy has been building for six months, as the two brothers who ran the mosque -- Ghazi and Maulana Abdul Aziz -- used students from their madrassas to carry out a vigilante anti-vice campaign. The students abducted alleged prostitutes and made them confess to crimes. They also harassed music store owners and kidnapped police officers.

No one outside the mosque knows for sure who is within or how many remain. Before the standoff began, Musharraf had said he believed that rebels with the radical group Jaish-e-Mohammed were inside. The group, which battles Indian forces in Kashmir, has been linked to al-Qaeda. Abdul Aziz was arrested Wednesday while trying to flee, disguised as a woman.

The government believes that women and children are also inside the mosque and are being held hostage by the militants. Government officials say that's why they have held off on raiding the compound, despite a massive buildup of security forces that includes thousands of army rangers and commandos.

One of those commandos, a lieutenant colonel, died Saturday night as he was leading an operation to blast holes in the perimeter wall of the mosque so that hostages could escape. A major was injured in the same operation.

Musharraf, himself a former commando and the current army chief of staff, attended funeral services Sunday.

The confirmed death toll from the standoff is 24, although Ghazi said Sunday that 300 of his followers had been killed. Government officials disputed that claim.

The area around the mosque was eerily quiet Sunday, following explosions and a frenzied exchange of fire overnight Saturday.

Late Sunday evening, there were intermittent gun battles, and journalists who had been covering the siege for days were pushed away from the compound by government officials. But there was no evidence of a full-scale assault.

Musharraf said over the weekend that rebels faced a choice. "If they don't surrender, I'm saying it here, they will be killed," he said. He emphasized that there would be no negotiation, and last-ditch mediation efforts by religious leaders failed.

Ghazi has said that he and his followers would rather be martyred than give in to the government and that he hopes his death sparks an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.

Pakistan has been battling a homegrown extremist threat in recent years. The fighting began in areas along the border with Afghanistan and has spread eastward, but the Red Mosque standoff has shown that it even infects the leafy streets of the capital, a generally cosmopolitan city.

Many moderate leaders blame Musharraf and the military he leads for feeding Islamic radicalism to achieve geo-strategic goals in India and Afghanistan. Musharraf, considered by Washington to be a critical anti-terrorism ally, has been roundly criticized for not taking on the Red Mosque's clerics sooner, although his government has received relatively positive reviews from most since the siege began.

Elsewhere in Pakistan on Sunday, three Chinese citizens were killed and a fourth wounded in an attack in the western city of Peshawar. There was no immediate explanation for what prompted the attack.

Special correspondents Shahzad Khurram in Islamabad and Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.