Moderate-turned-militant with Kalashnikov at his bedside

ISLAMABAD, Saturday (AFP) - As a student, teachers said he showed no signs of Islamic militancy. Now Pakistani cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi sleeps with a Kalashnikov by his bed and has vowed to die in his besieged mosque. The bespectacled, articulate 43-year-old has led hundreds of pro-Taliban followers since his elder brother Abdul Aziz, the head of Islamabad's Red Mosque, was caught trying to flee the complex in a burqa.

Ghazi's early schooling was at a boys-only Islamic seminary but he never opted for the madrassa lifestyle until the murder of his father in 1998 turned his life upside down.“He was a normal, moderate student who was well adjusted to a co-educational system,” Naim Qureshi, Ghazi's teacher at the history department of Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, told AFP. Ghazi did his masters in history in 1987-88, and a photo of him and his colleagues still hangs on the department's wall.

“In studies he was okay but I don't remember his grades. I remember that he had a normal beard,” he said, comparing it with the bushy, grey, Islamist-style beard that Ghazi now sports. His teacher said there was little sign of militancy back then. “People do change their lifestyle, after all it's 20 years on now, but it did surprise me,” Qureshi said. Ghazi later married into a moderate family and lived a relatively westernised life. He got a government job in the education ministry and also worked with UNESCO, the UN's culture organisation.

“Ghazi used to share jokes, often spoke in English, moved in mixed company and was an active student,” said a university friend who asked not to be named. His father, Abdullah Aziz, who headed the mosque, was so angry with his lifestyle that he handed over his property to his brother. But Ghazi was not unhappy, the friend said.

However, he completely changed after his father was shot dead inside the mosque by a lone gunman, thought to be from a rival Islamic group. Ghazi joined his brother, who took over the mosque in 1998 and nominated him as his deputy.

Ghazi also acquired links with Pakistani intelligence services, who earlier used his father and brother to help foster Islamists. The services wanted the Islamists to support the anti-Soviet “jihad” in Afghanistan and the subsequent rise to power of the Taliban.
By the time of 9/11, friends said there was no trace left of the “old”Ghazi. But he also began to move away from his state sponsors.

Security sources said he had close links with pro-Taliban militants and agitated against President Pervez Musharraf's decision to back the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Colleagues said that in 2004 he survived an attempt on his life and since then had always carried a Kalashinkov with him.“You always find an AK-47 in his car, with him in the madrassa and even at his bedside,” one colleague said.

By 2007 Ghazi and Aziz had become implacably committed towards turning Pakistan into a Taliban-style Islamic state.“We are not only challenging Musharraf, we are challenging the system,” he told AFP in an interview at the mosque in May. Their students raided music stores and brothels and kidnapped people allegedly involved in “vice”. Disastrously for them, these included seven people from Pakistan's closest ally and biggest military supplier, China.

At least 19 people have now died since clashes erupted at the mosque and security forces surrounded it on Tuesday. Ghazi at one point offered to surrender if he could stay at the mosque with his sick mother. But by Friday he was vowing that he would rather be “martyred” than give in to the government, which alleges that he is holding women and children in a basement with him as human shields, a charge he denies.

“Ghazi is a changed man now, more determined and rigid in his ideas. I doubt he will surrender now,” the colleague said.