[wvns] Abdul Rashid's Last Words

Last Words
Abdul Rashid, Pakistan
Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who led the Lal Masjid confrontation perished in a
pitched battle with the Pakistan Army. Here are his last words, as
reported in Daily Jang, Pakistan's leading Urdu daily [my translation]:

I am about to be martyred, Journalists take note
Speaking on the phone for the last time, after the start of
Operation Silence in Jami'a Hafsa, Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi called
Naji TV and said: The commandos are near my doorway. I will not be
alive much longer. In this matter, some political ulema have not
behaved decently and they will answer to God about that. My wish was
to give this entire matter into the hands of our religious scholars,
so that everything is clear and the journalists can examine
everything...how many we are, how much ammunition we have.

We gave them a tough time. We wrote history. Just as they achieved
their goal with trickery in Wana, Waziristan, so they did with me
here. They said that we have 25 fighters. We only have 11 klashnikovs.
I am commanding myself. I want to give the message that we will surely
be gone but the people will seek justice from you. Some religious
leaders dealt very strangely with this problem and tried to get us
killed. They used Tear Gas. The Operation started at the time of the
morning prayer. The first bullet was fired just as I had finished
talking to them. I had wanted things to be transparent but they don't
want that. If truth had come out, it would have been very bad
propaganda for them.

Waziristan is the proper context in which we should examine the
aftermath of Lal Masjid. Surely, militants will try and strike back in
major metro areas but it is the Baluchistan issue that can re-ignite.
Musharraf may have walked away a winner if the siege had lifted
without Abdul Rashid's death. The arrest - in a burqa - of the elder
brother Abdul Aziz was surely the finest piece of political theater
anyone could have dreamed up. But, now, the distaste of 70 deaths -
including the elderly mother of these brothers - will quickly sweep
across any PR gains he had made recently.

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