Basti Abdullah, Pakistan – A week after being caught fleeing in a woman’s burqa, a radical cleric on Thursday gave a fiery funeral oration for his slain brother, predicting the bloody siege at Islamabad’s Red Mosque will bring “Islamic revolution” to Pakistan.
Hours later, President Pervez Musharraf went on national television to vow that his government will crush extremists across the country and move strongly against religious schools like those at the Red Mosque that breed them.
Musharraf also said security forces along the border with Afghanistan will get tanks and other modern weapons soon to bolster the campaign against militants. The frontier region is a haven for al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and the U.S. has been pushing Pakistan to root them out.
“Extremism and terrorism will be defeated in every corner of the country,” Musharraf said.
In an apparent backlash to the eight-day army siege at the Red Mosque that left 108 people dead, a suicide bomber attacked the office of a top government official near the Afghan border Thursday. Thousands of angry tribesmen mourned three of the militants killed at the mosque.
The army’s assault on the Red Mosque militants has given hard-liners a new rallying cry and sparked calls from al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders for revenge attacks. But the crackdown also has raised Musharraf’s standing among moderate Pakistanis worried about extremism in their nation.
Army commandos captured the Red Mosque in a 35-hour battle that ended Wednesday. Among the 85 people killed during the final assault was cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who led the mosque’s violent vigilante anti- vice campaign in the capital.
According to official reports, 108 people died in eight days of fighting around the compound. The government hasn’t given precise figures but says most of the dead were armed extremists.
Some opposition figures claim the death toll was higher, but none has offered any evidence. Prayers were offered for Ghazi in the eastern city of Lahore by more than 2,000 lawyers and opposition activists who hold weekly protests against Musharraf’s attempt to fire the country’s chief justice.
Many of the protesters chanted “Go, Musharraf, go” and “Musharraf is a dog.”
