Masada Redux?

It is very hard to read the Reuters dispatches about the siege of the Red Mosque, such as the one just filed from Islamabad by Faisal Aziz, without thinking about the final chapter of Josephus' Jewish War. This is the chapter about, among other things, the last stand at Masada, where those who held out preferred martyrdom to arrest, a spirit now reflected by the cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi, leader of those who have chosen to remain in the mosque. Actually Josephus did not attach very much significance to the engagement at Masada, which is given only a few paragraphs in a chapter whose title was translated by G. A. Williamson as "Cleaning-up Operations" and whose content deals with events following the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman forces. Masada was held by the Sicarii, described by Josephus as "brigands who took their name from a dagger carried in their bosoms." However, contemporary Israelis do not think very much of Josephus and prefer to see Masada as the last stand of faithful zealots. The Israeli attitude is thus a paraphrase of an old slogan by Barry Goldwater: Extremism in defiance of the Roman Empire is no vice.

Ghazi's extremism is described as "Taliban-style" in Aziz' dispatch; so many Israelis (and probably quite a few others) are likely to chafe at this analogy, particularly in light of what the Taliban did in Afghanistan. The point of the analogy, however, is that the long-term consequences of a mass martyrdom at the Red Mosque may be just as dire as those of the withdrawal of Pakistani government forces. No matter which point of view you choose, Islamabad is now in a mess of staggering proportions, only exasperated by an attempt to assassinate Pervez Musharraf (also part of Aziz' report). By now all the involved parties are too much in the thick of things to apply that old strategy of asking how they got into that mess. Besides, it is hard to ask that question without tripping over proposed answers that have a lot to do with the presence of the United States (Empire?) in that part of the world!