On Martyr Row

When Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman raised a point of order on the day (November 16) the National Assembly was convened, diplomats in the visitor's gallery began to squirm in their seats. The reason: Rehman wanted the House to offer prayers for Mir Aimal Kansi, the 38-year-old Baluch whom the US had executed on November 14 for killing two CIA agents in Virginia.

The Speaker could scarcely disallow the hallowed religious custom of offering prayers for the dead, more so because of the Opposition's strength in the lower House. The prayer, however, set the pace for the mma to launch a blistering attack on the US. Rehman demanded an immediate reversal of Islamabad's pro-US policy. Another mma leader, Hafiz Hussein Ahmed, was scathing: "God, destroy those who handed him (Kansi) over to America. God, his murderers, whether in America or Pakistan, may they meet the same fate."

This display of atavistic passion may have been deeply embarrassing for the diplomats. But the mma leaders were essentially giving vent to the rising tide of anger against the execution of Kansi—and US policies. To recapitulate: on August 5, 1993, Kansi shot dead two CIA agents in Virginia and subsequently fled to Pakistan. He was convicted on November 10, 1997; in that very year he was arrested in Pakistan and deported to the US. Once appeals against his death sentence were set aside, Kansi was administered a lethal injection on November 14 this year.

Four days later, when the plane carrying his dead body touched the Quetta airport, a veritable sea of humanity burst out shouting, 'Allah is great'. With his coffin draped in a cloak inscribed with Quranic verses, the cortege wended its way through Quetta, making it easily the biggest funeral procession Baluchistan had ever witnessed. Anti-America sentiments and radical Islamic feelings mixed and bubbled over in a heady demonstration of fervour for Kansi.

The following day, on November 19, a mammoth crowd gathered at the funeral venue. In a rare display of altruism, autorickshaws and buses ferried people to the funeral free of charge. Their refrain: "This is the least we can do for a shaheed (martyr) and proud son of Baluchistan." Even official Pakistan thought it judicious to pay obeisance to Kansi—there was the Corps Commander of Quetta, Lt Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch; Governor of Baluchistan Amirul Mulk Mengal; Pakistan's ambassador to Washington; high court judges and several other government officials.

Indeed, a cult of devotion seems to have sprung up around Kansi. People throng his grave daily and carry earth from there. Says Kansi's brother, Hamidullah, "Every morning when we go to his grave, we find the soil covering his grave awfully reduced; we have to consequently make the bulge (of the grave) afresh." Pashto poets have now taken to writing elegies for Kansi, hailing him as second only to Osama bin Laden in the popular pantheon of Muslim heroes.

The foreign office was at a loss to explain the presence of officials at Kansi's funeral. It, however, justified the presence of the ambassador on the ground that he belongs to Quetta and was in the city to visit his ailing mother. A former federal minister says the response to Kansi's execution persuaded the intelligence agencies to free Dr Amer Aziz, the doctor whom the fbi had been interrogating for his links with bin Laden.

Stories about Kansi now abound. Many claim Kansi decided to shoot CIA agents in retaliation to Washington's hypocrisy, that its indifference to the butchering of Muslims in Palestine and Kosovo was the impulse for what is seen here as his act of protest. Kansi, they exclaim in awe, refused to plead forgiveness and cheerfully courted death.

Some of these stories are apocryphal; a few, though, are true.Says Hamidullah, "When we requested Aimal that we wanted a photo of his in the red dungaree he wore to death row, he agreed only on the promise that we'd never cry after his death. When he was walking to the death chamber, he stopped to thank his jail warden of five years, 'we had a good time together'." Hamidullah pauses, adding, "The jail warden used to torture my brother, often teasing him that his food had pork in it. In protest, Aimal would go on hunger strike. On his way to death row, Aimal could have said anything to the warden. But he didn't."

As Pakistan, and particularly Baluchistan, swoons over the memory of Aimal Kansi, Musharraf and the US have yet another evidence that the war of terror has failed to engage the Muslim mind.