Musharraf goes on the offensive
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - After seemingly paying lip service to moving against suspected terrorist organizations, the Pakistan government is acting with undue haste to silence critics now that its very survival is at stake.
Mukhdoom Javed Hashmi, acting president of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) (Nawaz group), the country's leading political party, was arrested in a pre-dawn raid in the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday.
After keeping its options open for some while, the PML said this week that it would join Islamic groups in protesting against President General Pervez Musharraf's pro-United States policies.
A major disobedience campaign is due to begin on November 7 with a call for nation-wide strikes, protests and civil unrest. It is being spearheaded by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of the religious political party Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) that has toppled a number of previous governments by fomenting popular unrest.
A government spokesman said that Hashmi had been arrested for amassing "assets beyond his means", and was being held by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), which investigates corruption. He is also charged with abusing his powers when he was a minister in the government of Nawaz Sharif that was toppled by Musharraf in 1999.
However, documents seen by Asia Times Online clearly indicate that although the NAB had been investigating Hashmi for a long time, and had found nothing to pin on him, they rushed through the charges in view of the upcoming protests. Charges against him involve property that he acquired long before he held office, or which is owned by members of his family.
Hashmi hails from a spiritual family in Multan, a city in southern Punjab, and his family was counted among the big landlords in that area even before the partition of British India in 1947. Hashmi was health minister in the Sharif government. When Sharif was sent to Saudi Arabia in exile, he was appointed acting president of PML by the departing leader.
A central leader of the PML and a prominent human rights activist, Syed Nehal Hashmi, told Asia Times Online from Peshawar that if the charges were true, the government could have arrested him years ago.
Sources say the government now plans to arrest top leaders of different religious parties and opposition political parties before November 7 to leave the protesters without effective leadership.
According to reports, the Ministry of Interior on Thursday sanctioned provincial authorities to use special powers to crush any violators of the law. In addition, a plan is under review to charge with treason a number of people who have called on the army to turn on Musharraf. These include Qazi of the JI and leaders of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam.
The situation in Pakistan is becoming more tense and volatile daily. Many parts of the country are lawless, and for all practical purposes Islamabad has lost all control of the tribal belt in North West Frontier Province that borders Afghanistan and where thousands of volunteers have pledged support for the Taliban.
The heat has also been raised following the release of a statement attributed to Osama bin Laden in which he criticizes the government for standing "under the banner of the cross" and calls on Pakistanis to "make Islam victorious".
Excerpts from the signed statement were broadcast on Thursday on the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite channel. Addressing "civilian and military Pakistanis", the statement calls for the overthrow of Musharraf. "The Pakistani government has stood under the banner of the cross [US],'' the statement says, adding that "adherents to Islam, this is your day to make Islam victorious".
To date, Pakistan has been slow in helping the US in its war on terrorism. The Pakistani-based Al-Rashid Trust, the ostensibly charitable organization that Washington has labeled as a terrorist outfit, is a case in point. Its offices in Karachi, for instance, are fully operational, although its buildings are heavily guarded by disciples of the trust's spiritual scholar, Mufti Abdul Rashid, the most respected figure of the Deobandi school of Islamic thought.
According to the daily Islam newspaper, which is an organ of Al-Rashid Trust, every week the trust sends more than US$1 million worth of goods, food, medicine and other relief items into Afghanistan. Recently, it set up 650 camps for 60 families in an area near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, which has been heavily bombed by the US. The newspaper even published a photograph of trucks carrying goods from Karachi to Afghanistan openly displaying Al-Rashid Trust banners.
Similarly, soon after US authorities named the Jaish-i-Mohammed a terrorist organization, some of its leaders were arrested. However, the group then renamed itself the Tehrikul Furqan, and the arrests and raids came to an abrupt halt. However, following the recent murder of 18 Christian worshippers at Bahawalpur, the home town of Tehrikul Furqan's leader, Masood Azhar, some of their activists have been rounded up.
In another development, sources say that tribal Islamic scholars have partially opened up the part of the Silk Route between China and Pakistan that they have blockaded for several days. The protesters, who reject Musharraf's cooperation with the US at the expense of the Taliban, say that if the government has not reversed its policy by November 7, they will resume the blockade.
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