ISLAMABAD, 8 July 2007 — As a student, teachers said he showed no signs of militancy. Now 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-Taleban 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 madrasa 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, said.
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, gray 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 Westernized life. He got a government job in the Education Ministry and also worked with UNESCO, the UN’s culture organization.
“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 gunmen, thought to be from a rival 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. They wanted the Islamists to support the anti-Soviet “jihad” in Afghanistan and the subsequent rise to power of the Taleban.
By 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-Taleban militants and joined protest rallies 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 Kalashnikov with him.
By 2007 Ghazi and Aziz had become implacably committed toward turning Pakistan into a Taleban-style 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.
