 Days after he was caught fleeing Islamabad's Lal Masjid in a burqa, its captured chief cleric gave an incendiary funeral oration at the village burial of his slain brother, predicting the bloodshed would drive Pakistan toward an "Islamic revolution."
| Doesn't seem to be in jug anymore, despite Perv's crackdown on extremism. |
But hours later, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf vowed to crush extremists throughout Pakistan and move against religious schools, like the Red Mosque's, that breed them.
| He just won't do it by keeping the guys running the jihad in the clink. |
In a nationwide television address, Musharraf also said within the next six months security forces along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border would be equipped with modern weaponry, including tanks, to bolster a counterterrorism push. "Terrorism and extremism has not ended in Pakistan. But it is our resolve that we will eliminate extremism and terrorism wherever it exists," he said. "Extremism and terrorism will be defeated in every corner of the country."
| "But the people running it won't." |
In an apparent backlash to the weeklong army siege that left 108 dead, a suicide bomber attacked the office of a top government official near the Afghan border, while thousands of angry tribesmen mourned three of the fallen militants. The bloodshed at the mosque has given hardliners a rallying point and new martyrs to mourn, and has sparked calls from Al Qaeda and Taliban for revenge attacks. |
