A battle for the soul of Pakistan neared resolution last night as militants holed up in a besieged mosque in central Islamabad agreed to lay down their weapons in return for amnesty after three days of fierce fighting with government forces.

As dusk fell Pakistani troops blew holes in the perimeter wall surrounding the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, as US-made helicopter gunships hovered overhead and a barrage of mortars struck the compound.

Inside about 60 die-hard militants, many said to have been schooled in guerrilla warfare at mountain training camps in Kashmir and Afghanistan, held dozens of women and children in an underground storeroom.

Hundreds of police and soldiers, backed by armoured personnel carriers, took up positions around the complex and imposed an indefinite curfew on the neighbourhood.

Water, gas and electricity supplies were cut to the militants, who had hoped to impose Sharia on the capital, bringing Islamic rule from remote tribal regions on the Afghan border.

In an indication that the militants were at last prepared to concede defeat to President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led War on Terror, the leader of the rebels said that he was ready to surrender and abdicate his position if given amnesty.

Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the deputy cleric of the Red Mosque, said that he wanted to avoid further bloodshed. However, Pakistani authorities insisted on his unconditional surrender.

Mr Ghazi is the younger brother of the chief cleric of the mosque, who was captured on Wednesday as he tried to slip through the military cordon dressed in a burka and high heels.

In an interview broadcast on state television, Maulana Abdul Aziz asked his followers to give themselves up.

The cleric began the interview by lifting the black veil he was wearing to reveal a bushy grey beard. Smiling through much of the interview Mr Aziz urged his followers to leave, but some women teachers had persuaded many students at a female seminary inside the mosque compound to stay. He said that it would be damaging for students to stay put any longer. “They should leave, if they can, or surrender,” he said.

Despite his belated attempts to forge a resolution Mr Aziz was charged with 25 criminal offences including kidnapping, incitement to murder and firearms offences. He was remanded for seven days in police custody. His daughter, who fled the mosque with him, was also taken into custody. But his call to surrender went unheeded by his wife, who is also the head of the Madrassa Hafza attached to the mosque. She told a local television network that she had no intention of giving herself in to the security forces.

Umme Hassan, in her late 30s, whom many regard as more radical than her husband, has mobilised hundreds of young women who formed the nucleus of the Red Mosque’s movement for enforcement of Sharia. The burka-clad, stick-wielding women known as the Hafza Brigade, had assumed the role of a self-styled vice squad, raiding houses and dragging out women alleged to be involved in prostitution. They are alleged to have kidnapped seven Chinese nationals who they accused of running a brothel from an acupuncture clinic. They were also seen stopping women and reprimanding them for not covering themselves with Islamic headscarves.

Many of the 3,000 students at the country’s largest female Islamic seminary are the children or relatives of militants killed fighting Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir. Umme Hassan has boasted that she trained many of them to become suicide bombers.

About 100 students, however, managed to escape yesterday, defying their leaders. Aftab Khan Sherpao, the Federal Interior Minister, said that a large number of women and children were being held hostage by armed men in a room. He said that Mr Ghazi was hiding in the basement of an attached madrassa with 25 “women hostages”.

Another militant leader who was holed up in the compound claimed that 27 female students had been killed by the Government’s bombardment and that fires were raging inside the seminary. “It’s total chaos here. There is smoke everywhere and a fire in the room where we were keeping dead bodies,” said Abdul Qayyum.

The Government has set several deadlines for surrender and used scare tactics, including warning explosions and bursts of gunfire to weaken the resolve of the mosque’s occupants. The death toll from the violence that began on Tuesday rose to at least 17 after a security officer said that a student was killed in predawn firing. A burka-clad woman who left the mosque said that she had seen four bodies including those of two girls.

The mosque has a history of militancy but the latest trouble flared in January when the clerics challenged General Musharraf by insisting on the adoption of Sharia in the capital.

General Musharraf’s authority has been weakened by the spread of militant Islam from tribal areas. His decision to sack the country’s chief justice, who is believed to have opposed constitutional changes proposed by General Musharraf, heightened the political crisis ahead of elections later this year.

Gordon Brown telephoned General Musharraf yesterday to discuss the crisis and praised his efforts to curb militancy in the country.

Clash timeline

27 March Students of the mosque’s Jamia Hafsa madrassa clad in burkas seize three women they allege manage a brothel. They are freed when they ‘repent’

30 March Authorities in Islamabad close down an illegal radio station established by Jami Hasfa students for its incitement to extremism

6 April Abdul Aziz, the mosque’s hardline leader, exhorts his followers to become suicide bombers if his Islamic vigilantism is suppressed

18 May Four policemen are abducted by students demanding the release of eleven imprisoned comrades. The policemen are later freed

23 June Six Chinese women and three Pakistanis are kidnapped for allegedly running a brothel. They are held in the mosque compound for 17 hours then released

29 June Pakistan’s President Musharraf says he believes suicide bombers with al-Qaeda links are sheltering in the mosque

4 July Aziz is caught attempting to flee the compound disguised in a burka. Students begin to surrender in large numbers

Source: Times archives; www.lalmasjid.org

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