Prominent Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid -- author of Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia -- talks to Democracy Now! about the Red Mosque, Pakistan's shiny new/old plutonium plant and whither Musharraf?
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you explain what you understand happened at the mosque?
AHMED RASHID: Well, the real questions that are being asked now is simply -- first of all, this crisis erupted in January when these two mullahs, religious leaders of the mosque, two brothers, defied the central government and said they would take action to impose Sharia, Islamic law, in Islamabad. And it has been escalating ever since. And worst of all, over the last few months, in the mosque they have been accumulating huge amounts of arms, ammunition, money, mobile phones, etc. They set up a network in which they were trying to mobilize madrassas, religious schools and mosques all over the country. And this was happening literally within half a mile of the headquarters of the ISI, that is the Inter-Services Intelligence, the premier intelligence agency, which is cooperating with the CIA in the war on terror, and about a mile from the house -- from the official residence of the president and right next to the diplomatic community, the US ambassador, etc. So the fact that this was happening right in the middle of Islamabad, next to all these things, raises the question of, why were these people being allowed to do all this, and what was Musharraf's aim in allowing, you know all this to escalate until you had the need to actually go in and kill perhaps 150-200 people? ...
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist based in Lahore. I wanted to ask you about something else you have written about, Ahmed. New evidence has emerged suggesting that Pakistan is planning to expand its nuclear weapons arsenal. A leading Washington think tank says satellite photos show Pakistan is close to completing a third previously unknown plutonium production reactor. David Albright, I believe, the former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, said the plant would give Pakistan the ability to build a new generation of nuclear weapons. Your response?
AHMED RASHID: Well, I think it's very clear that, you know, there is very little information about this, and, of course, when this report was released in the American papers, Pakistan properly denied that it was anything new and said it was just part of an old reactor that had been built. The fact is that there is an arms race going on with India, and there’s no doubt that India is making its nuclear weapons arsenal far more sophisticated now, being able to put it on submarines and aircraft carriers and land and sea capability and second-strike capability. And the Pakistanis are trying to match them, if not in numbers, but certainly in terms of quality, as it were. I think most Americans experts agree now that a missile-mounted nuclear warhead has been perfected by Pakistan, whereas India is still a bit behind on that. So I think, you know, what -- we are seeing an arms race. I mean, there's no doubt in the subcontinent. ...
AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed Rashid, do you see the general, President Musharraf, falling? And who are the major forces arrayed against him?
AHMED RASHID: Well, what -- I think, you know, Musharraf really has a choice now: is he going to now go after these fundamentalists and extremists and at the same time gather political support around him, in other words, put out the wide indication that he wants to have a free and fair election and get political support with him for those elections, in which case, there would be political support from moderate secular parties for actions he would have to take against the extremists, or is he going to go down the same road that he has pursued since 9/11, which is this double-dealing road of satisfying the Americans with a bit al-Qaeda, a bit of Taliban here and there, but essentially allowing the Taliban and these extremists who exist in Pakistan and to be able to launch attacks inside Afghanistan? So I think, you know, he's faced with a critical fork in the road. Which way he goes, we still have to see.