Musharraf Deflects Concerns

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Under pressure to deliver on promises to root out Islamic militants, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf sought in a speech Thursday to shift some of the blame to Britain and the United States.

In an address televised nationwide, Musharraf said Pakistan faced “a very critical situation” amid allegations of its link to the July 7 bombings in London. But, he added, those attacks showed that Britain must confront problems within its own borders.

Musharraf said he was concerned by “aspersions in the media being cast on Pakistan.”

Then, switching from Urdu to English, he told listeners he was speaking directly to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government.

“We certainly have a problem here [with Islamic extremism], which we are trying to address very strongly,” Musharraf said. “But may I say that England also has a problem, which needs to be addressed.”

Three of the four London bombers were Britons of Pakistani descent who traveled to Pakistan last year, authorities here have confirmed. Relatives of one said he had visited a madrasa, a religious school, near the eastern city of Lahore.

But the fourth bomber was of Jamaican heritage, Musharraf noted. “Where did the Jamaican get his indoctrination?” he asked.

On Monday, Musharraf acknowledged in a speech to a national youth convention that some madrasas in Pakistan were involved “in extremism and terrorism.”

The best strategy against terrorism, he said in his speech Thursday, is for allies “to encourage and support each other, rather than speaking against each, and blaming each other, and weakening the overall cause.”

Since the London attacks, Pakistani police and intelligence agents have detained more than 300 people in a crackdown on extremists in mosques and madrasas, where indoctrination into radicalism sometimes occurs, as well as on publications accused of promoting sectarian hatred.

Musharraf’s latest move against Muslim extremists is the third in as many years and has been met with skepticism by pro-reform critics who believe he is playing a dangerous double game. They say he is making alliances with Islamic parties, some of which support the Taliban militia, and sidelining mainstream political parties.

“Musharraf has demonstrated once again that he has two faces,” said Farhatullah Babar, a lawmaker and spokesman for exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.

“From one face, he wants to project ‘enlightened moderation’ to the world. From the other, he wants to chase and victimize the moderate voices in the country,” Babar said.

Musharraf announced no new measures Thursday night to eradicate Islamic militancy, which the Pakistani leader vowed to end three years ago.

He said existing regulations banning militant groups and “hate sermons in mosques” and the possession of unauthorized weapons would be strictly enforced. All madrasas must register with the government by the end of the year, he added.

More than 10,000 madrasas have registered with Pakistan’s government, which estimates that 20,000 have not done so.

A minority of the schools are suspected of having direct links to militants.

In the past, the Pakistani military’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency purportedly used madrasas as recruitment and training centers for militant groups such as the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan and guerrilla groups fighting Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region.

Musharraf, an army general who took power in a bloodless coup in 1998, is still commander of the armed forces and therefore has direct responsibility for the ISI.

Leading human rights lawyer Asma Jehangir charged that Musharraf acted against extremists only when there was foreign pressure after incidents such as the London bombings. “The government knows which are the training camps,” Jehangir said from Lahore. “They may be surrounded by a madrasa to hide the actual location of the training camp, or they may not be.”

Musharraf said he strongly condemned the terrorist attacks in Britain and vowed “to stand together in the fight against terrorism right to the end, until we emerge victorious against them, and we eliminate them.”

In a 45-minute speech, Musharraf said Pakistan’s problems with Islamic militancy were rooted in Afghanistan’s mujahedin war against Soviet troops in the 1980s. He pointed out that it was the U.S. that supplied covert aid and encouraged foreign fighters to come to the region.

“Anarchy began in the region in 1979, and the West and U.S. started a jihad against the Soviet Union,” Musharraf said. Foreign powers brought 20,000 to 30,000 fighters to Afghanistan, “and they were trained, equipped and financed through us,” he added.

Militant and intelligence sources confirmed Wednesday that Pakistani agents were interrogating a man suspected of being involved in the July 7 bombings. He was identified as Haroon Rashid Aswat, a Briton of Indian descent.

The Pakistani government has not confirmed the arrest and some officials deny that anyone directly linked to the London attack has been arrested here.

Musharraf, who has escaped two assassination attempts, has taken a tough stand against foreign Al Qaeda militants. But other militant groups still operate in Pakistan largely because his government relies on some of them as foreign policy tools in places such as Afghanistan and the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, his critics allege.

Despite Musharraf’s campaign for “enlightened moderation,” Pakistan is becoming a more conservative society as innocent people are targeted in sweeps that are supposed to root out extremism, rights lawyer Jehangir said.

“At every roundup, they do pick up a few relevant people,” she said. “But the point is they [also] pick up a lot of irrelevant people. They’re not meeting their objective.”

Instead, the raids are stirring up anger among ordinary people while failing to put militants out of business, Jehangir added.

In the previous crackdowns, in 2002 and 2003, Pakistani authorities detained several thousand people, most of whom were released without charge, often after signing promises of good behavior.

Police on Wednesday released 14 scholars detained in a Tuesday night raid on a madrasa at Lal Masjid, a mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. Several people were injured in clashes with police during the raid.

An alliance of Islamic parties, which forms the opposition in Pakistan’s parliament, has called a nation-wide protest today against the latest arrests. Complaints of heavy-handed police raids in mosques and madrasas, including a girls’ school, have already led to the firing of three top police commanders in the capital.