The report also mentioned that suicide bombers involved in the January 26, 2007, attack on Hotel Marriott in Islamabad and the February 6, 2007, attack at the parking lot of the Islamabad International Airport, were linked to the seminary. Ominously, the report warns further that "The real cause of concern is that the number of would-be female suicide bombers is quite large compared to male students and, if action were to be taken, at least 150 casualties are feared." Unsurprisingly, President Musharraf has publicly ruled out the use of force to address the crisis generated by students of the Jamia Hafsa and the Lal Masjid. Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa are run by prominent clerics, Maulana Ghazi Abdul Rasheed and Maulana Abdul Aziz, sons of the slain cleric Maulana Abdullah (killed in 1998), who reportedly patronised several jihadi groups. Presiding over a high-level meeting in Islamabad on April 22, he asked the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) chief, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, to negotiate with Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Ghazi Abdul Rasheed for a ‘peaceful settlement’.
The Lal Masjid brigade, among others, is demanding: the rebuilding of demolished mosques in Islamabad; immediate declaration of Sharia (Islamic law) in Pakistan; immediate promulgation of Quran and Sunnah in the courts of law; and "immediate discontinuation to declaring jihad as terrorism by thegovernment as it is the great sacred religious duty of Muslims." The agitators also want thegovernment to close down brothels and music shops in Islamabad, and remove all advertisements depicting women. A large number of female students of the Jamia Hafsa have been occupying a Public Library building since February 2007 in protest against the Islamabad administration’s plans to demolish the seminary, which has approximately 7,000 students, but was illegally built on public land.
The Wafaq-ul-Madaris, Pakistan’s main and influential confederacy of seminaries, which runs approximately 8,200 institutions, has supported the extremist programme of the Lal Masjid brigade. The confederacy’s Secretary-General, Qari Mohammad Hanif Jhalandari, announced on April 15, 2007: "We are in complete support of their four demands – to enforce the Shariat [Islamic law] in Pakistan, have thegovernment rebuild all the mosques it destroyed, close down all dens of vice across the country and change the Women’s Protection Act in line with the Quran andSunnah."
There is mounting evidence of the military regime buckling under pressure from the Islamist extremists. For instance, thegovernment was reportedly contemplating moving the madrassas out of Islamabad amidst the standoff with the Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa. The Islamist extremists have, however, always rejectedgovernment attempts at interference with their ‘sovereignty’. On April 17, 2007, thegovernment was again on the back-foot when it provided land for two of the seven mosques demolished by the Islamabad administration (The Capital Development Authority has reportedly declared 87 mosques in Islamabad to be illegal). Land for the remaining five demolished mosques is to be provided as early as possible. Most of the illegal mosques were reportedly built without the submission of proper building plans while some were constructed on state land.
In his ‘leaked memo’ of October 2003, then US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld had raised a critical question: "Are we capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the seminaries and radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?"
For long, global aid programmes from the United States and the West have underwritten the military regime’s agenda in Pakistan. According to the March 2007 Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report for Congress (K. Alan Kronstadt, Pakistan and Terrorism: A Summary), "Annual instalments of $ 600 million each, split evenly between military and economic aid, began in FY 2005… In the years since September 2001, Pakistan has received nearly $ 1.5 billion in direct U.S security-related assistance… Some 80% of Defense Department spending for coalition support payments to "Pakistan, Jordan, and other key cooperating nations" has gone to Islamabad. At $4.75 billion to date, averaging more than $80 million per month, the amount is equal to more than one-quarter of Pakistan’s total military expenditures." The George W. Bush administration has reportedly requested an additional $1.7 billion for year 2008 claiming that coalition support payments to Pakistan have led to "a more stable [Pakistan-Afghanistan] border area," a claim that is roughly as true as the proposition that Iraq is now peaceful. In addition, Pakistan has received, for instance, USD 14 million in funding and technical assistance for a ‘legislative strengthening programme’ in Pakistan; USAID has provided approximately USD 3 million in education assistance to the Balochistan Province alone since 2002, and has funded a USD 6 million project to the province for food security and poverty alleviation in arid agriculture. Additionally, USAID has given over USD 2 million in assistance for health activities provided to Balochistan since 2003.
There is a danger that liberal military and developmental financing by the international community may lead to the worst case-scenario of further radicalization since "each dollar of ‘development aid’ or ‘financial relief’ to Pakistan releases a dollar of domestic resources for further militarization, radicalization and extremist religious mobilization." The USgovernment, according to Pakistani scholar Husain Haqqani, repeatedly makes the mistake of defining as ‘moderate’ those authoritarian Muslim rulers who fulfil America’s foreign policy goals. But, "These strategic American allies are not the force for ideological moderation that would change the Muslim world’s long-term direction… Authoritariangovernments in the Muslim world do not want democracy as that would amount to the potentates giving up their power. "
Western aid, as experience has shown in South Asia, has largely been focused on short-term security interests. The experience in Pakistan has shown that reliance on civil society projects to promote democracy under what are essentially authoritariangovernments is, at best, problematic. No accountability exists for such regimes as far as their domestic policies are concerned. And since most aid is being routed through increasingly militarised state channels, capacity-building and attempts to promote democracy, consequently, are bound to suffer. The use of stringent conditionalities can temper the diversion of aid to unintended recipients, and economic sanctions, if necessary, may have to be imposed against such regimes, since aid accountability is vital.
The collapse of the seminary reform project is a clear indication that Islamabad is either apathetic or clearly does not have the capacity to dismantle the extremist infrastructure across the country. Summing up his country’s mood, Shafqat Mahmood, a former member of Parliament, aptly notes: "Quiet seriously, we are in a terrible mess."