Another victory for hardliners in Pakistan

Back in 2007, the government of General Pervez Musharraf was involved in a four-month long standoff with the clerics of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) that proved to be a harbinger for the end of his rule. 

Already weakened after removing the popular chief justice of the Supreme Court, Musharraf’s raid on the mosque was a sign of his loosening grip on power and a clear demonstration of the nuisance value held by extremist clerics willing to resort to violence.

Ten years later, another government—this time weakened by the removal of its prime minister by the Supreme Court—was involved in another impasse with an extremist group.

For three weeks, the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan occupied the Faizabad interchange in Islamabad, sealing off the main entrance to the capital city. The group, led by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, belongs to the Barelvi school of thought which has often been mistakenly associated with classical Sufism, although it has generally been less extreme than the Wahabi-inspired Deobandis. 

Khadim and his outfit have gradually become more active over the last year, even placing third behind the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in a by-election in Lahore for former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s vacant seat.

The Tehreek-e-Labaik protest centred on Law Minister Zahid Hamid and a minor change in election law. All Muslim parliamentarians have to take an oath declaring their belief in the finality of the Prophethood, stating that they do not consider the Ahmadi community (referred to in the oath disparagingly as Qadianis) to be Muslim. The wording of the oath was changed from “I solemnly swear” to “I believe.” 

Even though the original clause was immediately reinserted by Parliament, Khadim Rizvi and his followers began their protest demanding the resignation of Hamid and the filing of criminal charges against him.

What sparked the protests?

The election oath was little more than a MacGuffin for Rizvi’s real agenda of imposing his brand of extremism on the country. His bizarre speeches were peppered with unprintable profanity and demands that the government demonstrate its piety by publicly hanging all Ahmadis.

The son of Mumtaz Qadri—the man who killed then Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer for supposed blasphemy—was trotted out as a prop. Khadim wanted the imposition of Sharia—as defined by him, of course—in the country. 

Throughout all this the government, wary of the lesson of Lal Masjid, gave the protestors a wide berth. Despite instructions from the courts to disperse the demonstrators, it refrained from violence.

All that changed on Saturday. Finally boxed into a corner, the government took action. Police used teargas and water cannons to clear the crowd. The protestors fought back and took out violent demonstrations in all major cities of the country. On Monday, the government all but caved in. An agreement signed with the Tehreek-e-Labaik said Hamid would resign and that all arrested workers of the party would be released without charge in return for an end to the protests.

While the agreement, despite essentially representing a government surrender, might seem to have brought an end to the issue, the ramifications of what happened this weekend will continue to be felt.

The government resorted to banning private electronic media channels and blocked access to social media sites for 36 hours. Rizvi and his followers have a strong Facebook presence and there was fear they may use the site to coordinate protests. 

Local TV news channels have an unfortunate habit of giving away law enforcement movements when operations are imminent and some channels were even outright sympathising with the message of the protestors. But surely the government was also motivated by a desire to keep what had turned into an embarrassing debacle off Pakistani television screens and Twitter feeds.

It's lonely at the top

The powerful army, which has often been accused of trying to undermine civilian governments, played a curious role throughout. Normally the first to jump into any domestic law enforcement issue, the paramilitary Rangers were deployed in Islamabad but reportedly stood on the sidelines, reluctant to take any action.

A statement put out by the army spokesperson said the Chief of Army Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa urged the government to handle the issue peacefully and try to avoid violence from “both sides”. 

This was interpreted as a clear sign that the military was drawing a moral equivalence between the elected government and the extremist protestors. It was reminiscent of when US President Donald Trump said violence needed to be condemned on both sides after Nazi protestors killed an Antifa demonstrator in Charlottesville.

The army was also a signatory to the agreement with Rizvi, showing that the government possesses such little power that the protest could only be brought to an end with the assurances of the army.

No one knows who funds Rizvi or whether he was put up to the protest by anti-government forces within the state structure. But destabilising protests in Islamabad against the elected government have become the norm. 

In 2014, opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf joined hands with Tahir-ul-Qadri—a Canadian preacher who visits Pakistan every summer for the stated intention of bringing down the government—to shut down Islamabad. Then, as now, there was a widespread belief that the army was working behind the scenes to encourage the protests. 

This time around, the Tehreek-e-Insaaf's parliamentary leader Shah Mehmood Qureshi joined the protestors and the party put out a statement calling on the government to step down, giving the impression that it too was allying—whether out of convenience or otherwise—with Rizvi.

The Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan, despite contesting elections, knows it will never be a strong electoral force. As a street force, its appeal has also been limited until now. Its protest initially drew only a couple of hundred people before mysteriously swelling a few days in.

Figures like Khadim Hussain Rizvi are useful tools to put pressure on the government and steer policy in a direction that is conducive to the permanent deep state. Using that metric, the protest has inflicted a heavy defeat on the government.