The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [70]
Onstage various people gave speeches, but the highlight of the night was definitely the lawyers, who sporadically burst into dancing conga lines, tossing rose petals in the air. This felt like a party, but no one was drunk.
Chaudhry finally took the stage at 2 AM. He looked at his notes, gave five minutes of thank-yous, and said he would make no political statements. Instead he put on his glasses and diligently read a fifteen-minute speech about the value of an independent judiciary and the equality of law. He looked down at his notes and occasionally seemed close to whispering. He reminded me of Andy Kaufman’s character Latka on the sitcom Taxi, avoiding the hand-waving theatrics essential to any popular Pakistani speaker.
It didn’t matter. The crowd roared.
This had been the longest day I had ever spent in Pakistan. It felt like one of the longest days of my life. But despite the assault on my rear flank, I had never had more fun here. Never before had I actually felt that strange rising-up sensation in my chest about Pakistan—not indigestion but hope. After Afghanistan, I had vowed not to get too attached to a country. And here I was, falling in love again. I was such a chick, endlessly fooling myself that this time a country would be for keeps. Maybe the NATO guy was right: Maybe I was just naïve.
Despite all the noise, U.S. diplomats were predictably quiet. In any other country such an obvious slap in the face of democracy like suspending the chief justice would lead to some level of censure, some comment by the U.S. administration. In any other country, such a spontaneous movement for an independent judiciary would draw praise. But in Pakistan, the United States still banked on Musharraf, one-stop shopping for support in their war on terror. Complaints about Musharraf’s behavior were muted, halfhearted, vague. One top U.S. diplomat said he brought a message to Pakistan of “strong friendship” and “excellent partnership.” All our eggs remained in the same basket, with Musharraf, who had just shot himself in the foot and was bleeding all over the place.
CHAPTER 14
HIGHWAY TO HELL
As the lawyers danced, the Red Mosque boiled. The mosque-and-madrassa compound increasingly resembled an Islamic militant training camp in the heart of Islamabad, a city known more for its ability to incite sleep than jihad. Young men patrolled the high walls carrying long sticks. They burned piles of threatening videos like Free Willy because they were supposedly against Islam. Young female students, referred to as “ninjas” because of their all-encompassing black garb, kidnapped alleged prostitutes and dragged them to the compound for deprogramming. The Red Mosque’s leaders talked of Islamic law, of all-out war.
The government threatened to shut down the Red Mosque; the Red Mosque clerics threatened holy war.
But this was no simple story. Some of the savviest Pakistanis I knew believed that the establishment had engineered this militant uprising in the capital to divert everyone’s attention from the chief justice’s movement—especially in the West, easily distracted by militants waving shiny things. The brothers who ran the Red Mosque were certainly old friends of the ISI, since the time of the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
So two groups vied for the nation’s attention—the lawyers and the zealots. The lawyers said the spy agencies created the zealots. The zealots said they were defending Islam.
In the middle of that tug-of-war of July 2007, as the lawyers and the zealots threatened to pull Pakistan apart, I decided to go on vacation. I figured I could get away with a short trip to Greece. I was so very wrong. Within those two weeks, everything would be over. Kind of.