Moderate held after supporting anti-US protests By Philip Smucker in Peshawar and Ben Fenton in Washington (Filed: 02/11/2001)
PRESIDENT Pervaiz Musharraf yesterday ordered the arrest of the head of Pakistan's leading political party, the Muslim League, after it backed protests against his pro-US policies.
Mukhdoom Javed Hashmi, president of the moderate league, was arrested after a police raid on his Islamabad home. The league is still officially headed by the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, ousted by the general and now exiled to Saudi Arabia.
The arrest came a few hours before Osama bin Laden called on Pakistanis to defend Islam against "a Christian campaign". His message said the Pakistani government was "standing beneath the Christian banner" - a reference that threatened to deepen the rift in Pakistan over Gen Musharraf's pro-Western stance.
The league's spokesman, Sadiq ul Farouk, condemned the arrest as a sign of Gen Musharraf's growing isolation amid the anger over US-led air strikes on Afghanistan.
He told The Telegraph: "President Musharraf doesn't even enjoy the support of moderates in this country any more and that is why he is lashing out at them. This isn't an issue of fighting terrorism because there is no fundamentalist Islamic threat in this country. The West needs to stop supporting an unpopular dictator."
A statement by the league also condemned the early-morning arrest as "Gestapo tactics" aimed at suppressing freedom of expression.
Pakistan Muslim League officials insisted that their decision to join the protests against the Musharraf regime proved that even "Pakistani moderates" were against the bombing and the domestic policies that supported it.
A Pakistan government spokesman confirmed the arrest. Gen Rashid Quereshi said Mr Hashmi was detained for amassing "assets beyond his means," and was being held by the anti-corruption National Accountability Bureau.
Despite the growing conflict between Gen Musharraf and Islamists over Pakistani aid for the US war against terrorism, reports yesterday suggested that the Taliban was continuing to receive Pakistani backing.
The Washington Times said the Taliban was getting ammunition, fuel and other supplies. It was unclear whether such an operation would necessarily have the backing of Gen Musharraf. The reports said supplies were being organised by members of the Pakistani military and the security and intelligence service, ISI.
The newspaper said lorryloads of supplies were moving at night from Quetta to the border town of Chaman and from there to Kandahar, stronghold of the Taliban. An anonymous American official told the paper: "There are two border control regimes: one before sundown and one after sundown."
If confirmed, Pakistan would be contravening a United Nations embargo on arms supplies to the Taliban. Its credibility and good faith would also be severely compromised in Western capitals. A spokesman for the Pakistani embassy in Washington described the report as "certainly not true". He pointed out that the long border with Afghanistan was "porous".
There have been extensive reports that the ISI, which played a leading role in establishing the Taliban, had failed to make good Gen Musharraf's promise to hand intelligence about it to Washington.
Even if the regime is playing a double game, it faces a growing campaign from Islamists who have given Gen Musharraf until next Friday to bow to their demands, or face a broader campaign of strikes and roadblocks. Nonetheless, the decision by the league to back the anti-Musharraf campaign was condemned by moderate Pakistani analysts, who said that it had been driven by "political opportunism".
Imtiaz Alam, a Lahore columnist for the English-language newspaper The News, said: "The leaders of the Muslim League had been hoping for more political support by joining the protests without realising that they were falling into the lap of Islamic fundamentalists."
"What was demanded is that Musharraf not go the whole hog into the American camp," said Hamid Gul, a former Pakistani national intelligence chief, who is helping to organise the protests by the Afghan Defence Council.
Other leading members of the council, the Islamic clerics Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Maulana Sami Ul Haq, were put under house arrest at the start of military action.
Independent sources in Kabul said yesterday that an increasing number of Pakistani fighters arrived in the capital and took up positions in the Tapai Nadir Khan district of the city before coming under US bombardment.
More than 70 lawyers in Quetta said they would join the "holy war" against America by offering their legal expertise to the Taliban.