In the spring of 2007, as a 23-year-old afflicted with congenital cowardice, I took on a journalism job in Islamabad. I assumed it was going to be a cushy gig, involving little other than chatting up second-rate politicians and third-class bureaucrats. In the next few months, I was a hundred yards away from a suicide blast and witnessing (I don’t use the word reporting since I was rarely aware of what was happening) the cross-fire at the Lal Masjid became a daily routine. The day I left Islamabad, never to return, was, ironically, the day the Lal Masjid was re-opened – and suicide bombed.

Despite all my confusion and uncertainty about everything else, there was one point on which I never wavered: the Lal Masjid operation was justified and needed to be carried. Sure, I had minor quibbles even at the time. Like Macbeth, I believed, “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.” Despite Musharraf’s delay in ordering the operation, a period that was marked by fruitless negotiations, ultra-sensationalist media coverage and a phony war at the mosque itself, I stood firmly behind his decision to take military action – indeed, I saw no alternative to it.

Three years later, though, I’m not so sure. Sure, the operation was justified. There is no way a group of armed mullahs should be allowed to hold a city, a country and a government hostage to its demands. Just because something is justified, however, doesn’t make it the right course of action to pursue.

Consider this: Since the Lal Masjid operation, two new militant groups, the Junoodul Hafsa and the Ghazi Force have been created. Their sole aim is to avenge the Lal Masjid operation by carrying out attacks on military installations and personnel in Khyber-Pakthunkhwa and the Punjab. Most of those arrested from the Lal Masjid were freed by the courts and will have returned to militancy with greater fervour after their experience with the military. Those few who are still locked up – estimated to be no greater than 60 – will likely soon be released on the order of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, whose orders to free all clerics unjustly held by Musharraf is being interpreted by some as a statement of support for the Lal Masjd mullahs. Then, there has been a mushrooming of madrassas in Islamabad and fears that they may be a breeding ground for militants were proven true when an attack at Parade Lane in Rawalpindi was attributed to madrassa students in the capital. Musharraf might have been able to ‘cleanse’ one Lal Masjid but another 100 Mini-Me’s have sprouted in its place.

Here’s where I, and other supporters of the Lal Masjid operation, went wrong. We were so intoxicated on the righteousness of our belief, we dismissed the strong opposition of a majority of the political parties, and the country, as irrelevant. History is littered with examples of conflicts that went on for too long, and lost the public as a result. Had Musharraf taken quick, decisive action – cutting off power and water to the Lal Majid, followed by an assault would have taken no more than two or three days – it would have denied demagogues the oxygen to build up public opposition to the operation. As the situation dragged on, we should have realised that the divisions and negativity it would have caused in the country now far outweighed defeating the Lal Masjid clerics.

The Lal Masjid fiasco – I have changed my mind to such an extent that I think referring to it as a fiasco is appropriate – has become so pivotal to the fight against militancy that two WikiLeaks cables from November 2010, referring to the problem of terrorism in the region, saw fit to mention it. Whatever short-term benefit the country may have got from silencing the Lal Masjid clerics has now been obliterated by its lasting influence on a new generation of militants. And it has insured that I never live in Islamabad again.

Nadir Hassan is a journalist based in Karachi. He can be reached at nadir.hassan@gmail.com

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.