Siege of Lal Masjid

01The stand-off

Through early 2007 students of Lal Masjid and its women’s madrasa Jamia Hafsa occupied a children’s library, raided shops and seized people they accused of immorality, and the clerics who ran the mosque, the brothers Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi, demanded the imposition of their version of Sharia. On 3 July gunfire broke out with the security forces, who then surrounded the complex. Over the next days many students came out; Abdul Aziz was caught on 4 July trying to leave disguised in a burqa.

02Operation Silence

Talks with Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who stayed inside with armed followers, broke down. Before dawn on 10 July commandos of the army’s Special Service Group stormed the complex and fought room by room for more than a day. Ghazi was killed in the basement of the madrasa. The government’s figures for the dead were disputed. In the months that followed, militant groups in the north-west declared war on the state in revenge, and the Pakistani Taliban movement took shape later that year.