'Musharraf had to tackle mosque for Pak future'
Afp, Islamabad
al-Qaeda-linked militants in control of an Islamabad mosque posed a threat to the very fabric of Pakistan and President Pervez Musharraf could not allow such a challenge to his authority. Analysts said the fight for the Red Mosque in the centre of the capital Islamabad, just a few kilometres from the seat of government and foreign embassies, had become a battle for the future of the extremist-hit nation. Dozens of people were killed when troops stormed the radical Red Mosque in at dawn on Tuesday at the end of an eight-day siege. Analysts said Musharraf faced a crunch decision -- take on the most serious militant threat to the country in years at the risk of a bloodbath or to bow to the militant strain in Pakistani society and thereby strengthen it. Rasool Bakhsh Raees, professor of political science at the Lahore University of Management and Sciences, said the mosque symbolised a wider confrontation. "The trend (of extremism) has been more than menacing, it has been genuinely threatening the internal security of the country," Raees said. He added that it was "suicidal" of the mosque to challenge the strength of the state in the national capital. "Doing it in the heart of city was an extremely irrational thing," he said. The mosque's hardline presence in the moderate city of one million people came to embody widespread concerns about the spread of militancy from the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
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