The Red Mosque Massacre

By Muhammad Taimoor – Islamabad August 8, 2007

More than a year ago Pakistan’s dictator General Musharraf called a Corps Commander`s meeting to discuss a growing problem in Pakistan’s capital. The problem was the mounting number of girls at a religious school named “Jamia Hafsa” (Hafsa University), a part of Lal Masjid, otherwise known as the Red Mosque. Run by donations and providing a free education, the Red Mosque had a dress code that stipulated that girls wear a black burqa or veil.

For poor people who could not afford a private education the Hafsa University was an apparent godsend, providing good education for free.

However, Gen Musharraf had other ideas and his meeting concluded: "We cannot tolerate such a large number of veiled girl students in the heart of the capital"

Both before and after Musharraf’s meeting, the Red Mosque had been raided by police who claimed they were looking for weapons in the mosque.

Originally established by a religious scholar in 1965 – who was later assassinated, allegedly for criticizing the then government’s pro-American policies – the Red Mosque was run by his two sons Abdul Aziz and Abdur Rasheed..

Abdul Aziz, a religious scholar ran the mosque while Abdur Rasheed also a religious scholar and holder of a masters degree in International Relations, ran the administrative affairs of both the Mosque and the university.

The beginning of the crisis

Since the beginning of 2007, Musharraf’s regime demolished seven mosques in different parts of Islamabad when Hafsa University was also circled with a red line and scheduled for demolition. According to Musharref’s regime, part of Red Mosque was built illegally and so it too had to be demolished.

The demolition orders were a serious threat to an institute with at least ten thousand students. But the institute was more than a school and university it was also an orphanage where thousands of orphan girls, widows and their children were given food and shelter. After the 2005 earthquakes in Kashmir and northern Pakistan, students and wives of both Abdur-Rasheed and Abdul-Aziz went to the affected areas and brought back thousands of orphaned children and girls.



Ghazi addresses a news conference with his little daughter (now missing).


When it became obvious that Musharref’s regime was intent on demolishing the mosque, male students started gathering at the Red Mosque from different parts of the country. They announced, “If the government tried to attack our sisters we will sacrifice our lives to defend them.” However, the government’s response was yet more provocation as they demolished another mosque named Masjid Al-Safa in Islamabad.

The “Writ” of A Despot

The gathering of thousands of students at the mosque became a solid excuse for General Musharraf who described it as “Challenging the Writ of the Government”. In response he called in thousands of troops and police from all over the country for what he said “Ensuring the Writ of the Government”.

The girl students occupied a children’s library adjacent to the university in protest. Male and female students could be seen guarding the Mosque, University and the occupied children’s library with bamboos in their hands. The bamboos, they said were just a symbol of protest. A demand was made by Lal Masjid authorities that all the demolished mosques should be rebuilt. In response Musharraf’s regime demolished yet another mosque in I-8 sector of Islamabad.

Thereafter, a number of male students were abducted by Musharref’s security men from different parts of Islamabad while in retaliation students dragged four cops along with their vehicle into the mosque, where they were held hostage before being released unharmed.

Tensions mounted still further when students from the mosque confronted a mother and daughter who had been running a whore house in a nearby neighborhood and forced them to leave the city. While a Chinese whore house in an up market neighborhood was also raided by students from the mosque.



Troops and police seal off the area around the Red Mosque


On 20th Feb. 2007 General Musharraf announced operation “Red Day”. More police from Punjab province were called in to bolster the siege. While male students dug trenches as political leaders from various parties tried to mediate between students and the authorities.

Nonetheless, Musharraf remained adamant: the mosque had become a symbol of opposition to his authority, it had to go.

The Killing Begins

On July 4, 2007 Musharref’s police and troops clashed with students at the mosque. Tear gas, batons and rubber bullets were quickly replaced by live ammunition, which claimed the life of a CNBC cameraman with three bullets in his head.



The bullet riddled wall of the Jamia Hafsa office of education.


More were killed as armored vehicles moved in and a curfew was imposed in the areas surrounding the Red Mosque. In addition to the curfew, journalists were excluded from the area and news reports were dependent on official pronouncements from Musharref’s spokesmen.

Consequently a less than balanced picture began to emerge on events inside the Red Mosque.

For example, Musharref’s spokesmen claimed that students were being held against their will inside the Red Mosque. Yet students with cell phones inside the mosque told a different story. Phoning friends and relatives outside they told of how each time they tried to leave police and soldiers would open fire on them.

Under constant fire and with little food or water, the siege had turned into an ordeal for those still trapped inside the mosque.

The Inhuman Siege

Water, power, gas and food supplies were cut not only to Lal Masjid but to the whole area surrounding it. Students told from inside Jamia and Masjid how they ended up eating leaves: adding starvation to the gun fire, shelling, tear gas and explosions of unknown bombs.

Finally in early July politicians and Abdur Rasheed Ghazi reached an agreement which was announced in the media. The whole nation breathed a sigh of relief but that was not to be the end of the ordeal for those still inside the Red Mosque, for a short while later word came from Musharraf that was quite contrary to the agreement.

When he heard this one religious scholar and a member of parliament cried: “Musharraf wants something other than peace”.

Indeed he did.

On 10th of July as heavy weapons were brought into position, an order banning the media from hospitals was issued.

On 11 July 2007 before dawn unabated machine gun fire and heavy bombing started that broke the windows kilometers away. All the media could do was show distant shots of explosions and clouds of black, and sometimes white smoke drifting around the mosque. While in a live call to the TV Abdur Rasheed said that his ninety year old mother had been severely wounded and was now dying inside the mosque.

The same day Abdur Rasheed Ghazi was himself also killed.

Repeated explosions and gunfire continued to be heard throughout the day: a consequence of the hard resistance they were meeting in the mosque, the army claimed. But still no one knew what had happened to the male and female students inside.

On 12 July 2007, some media were given a guided tour of parts of Lal Masjid by government spokesmen. Inside they found a strange smell, smoke burnt walls, scattered girls clothes, burnt Qurans and last letters written by the girls just minutes before death. Together with all this there was a dark, satanic atmosphere of horror and brutality. While throughout the guided tour military spokesman kept assuring the media about the “victorious war against terror”.



Hafsa University compound still smoulders 40 hours after the end of the assault.


Even 40 hours after the shelling and gunfire had ended many parts of the building were still smoldering. On the second floor thick black smoke could be seen coming from areas barred to journalists. Despite all the destruction and gunfire not a single spot of blood could be seen however, only a harsh smell of burnt commodities and human flesh. In some areas the smoke and the smell was so intense that it was hard to take a breath.

The armed troops who were guarding the forbidden parts of the Red Mosque kept telling the touring media to move forward quickly.



A soldier stands ouside the deserted university, guarding the crimes of his comrades?


Before getting killed, Ghazi said on a live telephone call to the local media that the government was lying about sophisticated weapons being inside the mosque. Moreover, he warned that should he and his friends be martyred, the government could easily plant weapons in the Red Mosque.

As it happened, after the siege General Waheed the military spokesman took journalists to a room inside the mosque where there were machine guns, hand grenades, rockets, antitank mines, suicide bombing jackets and even night vision devices. Yet according to surviving students only three or four licensed weapons had been on the premises previously and these had belonged to security guards employed by the university.

Using Chemical Weapons

A military source later told of the use of White Phosphorus at the Red Mosque. This was later confirmed by Ejazul Haq, Minister for religious affairs and son of the former dictator General Ziaul.

For those still unaware of its properties, White Phosphorus is a banned weapon, an incendiary whose flames cannot be extinguished with water.



Room where iron cabinets have been melted by extreme heat


According to Abdul Aziz there were 4700 students in the mosque and those who came out during the initial operation were in the hundreds; leaving a total death toll possibly in excess of 4,000.

Although the military took enough time to remove all the bodies from the mosque, we may never know what the exact death toll was. Musharref’s government did finally issue a list of those killed at the mosque, numbering less than one hundred.

Astonishingly the list did not contain a single female among the dead.

When one paramilitary was asked why there was constant firing from the mosque even when everyone inside was presumed dead? He answered that the high command had ordered them to disfigure the faces of the dead with bullets making them unrecognizable. Then as if on cue, a few days later a government official said that some of the dead bodies were not recognizable and many were believed to be foreign elements belonging to Al Quaida.

These dead bodies reminded me of Falluja massacre in Nov.2005 when the US had used the same chemical agent Willy Peter.

Once when the siege started some of our journalists had an opinion that Lal Masjid will end like Sikhs` Golden Temple of India, but I had said, “ It will rather end like Waco”.

In the final analysis it was a massacre of the innocent, like Waco, with the guilty covering their crime beneath veils of disinformation.



No one knows how many of these young girls who were inside the Red Mosque are still alive?


Only 1250 of 6000 would come out alive, the rest including mother of Ghazi and the 10 years old son of Abdul Aziz are gone forever, there are no students with bamboos in their hands and no female students in black burqas with hi-pitched slogans of jihad against the tyrant regime of General Musharraf. The most pious, the cleanest and modest girls of whom I keep saying, “They came from heavens and went to heavens, nobody even saw their faces.”

Muhammad Taimoor taimoorguru@hotmail.com or mythbreaker26@yahoo.com

Last updated 12/08/2007