|
|
|
WHILE the Indians have been telling the world that Pakistan is the mother of terrorism in the region, the scare of Islamic fundamentalist forces becoming unmanageable and posing a threat to the status quo in and around Pakistan has been causing anxiety in the western capitals. The Americans, in particular, have been warning Islamabad against letting the religious warriors a free hand to pursue their agenda.
Among the preconditions set by the US for Pakistan's honourable conduct is to rein in the activities of the Islamic extremist groups, some of whom have been specifically named as terrorist outfits. However, the Americans do not yet see eye to eye with the Indians on the question of Pakistan sponsoring terrorism in the region, since their perception of a 'terrorist threat' is substantially different. This is precisely the reason why the Americans have not been willing to buy New Delhi's prescription and go for declaring Pakistan a 'rogue state.'
So long as the Islamic militant groups in Pakistan are primarily engaged in joining ranks with freedom fighters in Kashmir their outcries of Jihad do not raise alarm in the West. But given their fixation with the extradition of Osama bin Laden, the Americans can hardly overlook the Taliban factor in the movement for Islamic revivalism in Pakistan. Much of their concern is rooted in the apprehension that if the religious extremists are not cut down to size now, it may be a little too late to stop the process of 'Talibanization' in Pakistan.
How real is the threat of Islamic fundamentalists seizing power in Pakistan, or holding the existing state apparatus to ransom has been the subject of an unending debate among Western scholars, some of whom have been projecting a doomsday scenario for civil society in Pakistan. A Harvard University scholar, Jessica Stern, has been studying the phenomenon she calls 'Pakistan's Jihad Culture.' According to her, the 'madrassahs are the schools of hate which provide readymade material for recruitment as religious warriors.' 'Madrassahs are the supply line for jihad', a sectarian leader was quoted to have told her.
Taking a charitable view of the concept of jihad which she says should not be equated with terrorism, it has been misunderstood, or wilfully distorted. Jessica argues that the Islamic warriors produced by the madrassahs have no qualms about killing innocent people, or human rights abuses. She wonders how trustworthy is the government's intent to take remedial measures, even though interior minister Moinuddin Haider himself acknowledged that some, in the garb of religions training, are busy fanning sectarian violence, poisoning people's minds.
Tracing the rise of madrassahs to Ziaul Haq days, she attributes their proliferation to the military dictator's political compulsions, in particular his need to garner the religious parties' support for his rule, but also to recruit troops for the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan.
Initially financed by the government from the Zakat fund, more and more religious schools have now secured private sources of funding at home and abroad, freeing themselves of whatever control the government once had or could have had now.
Between 40,000 to 50,000 religious schools are now operating in Pakistan, offering free education, free food, housing and clothing to their students, and in some cases a subsidy to the poor parents.
In the absence of any government supervision, these schools are free to preach a 'narrow and violent version of Islam' and send their cadres to militant training camps.
The government's reform plan, announced by the interior minister some months ago, envisaged registration of all madrassahs, expansion of their curricula, disclosure of their financial resources, no admission of foreign students without the government's permission, and a ban on sending students to militant training camps. Little wonder it met with tough resistance from the concerned religious quarters.
According to Jessica Stern, 'if madrassahs supply the labour for Jihad, wealthy Pakistanis and Arabs around the world supply the capital.'
The militant groups, she says, employ several methods to raise funds but the bulk comes in the form of 'anonymous donations sent directly to their bank accounts.' For instance, the Lashkar-i-Tayabba, which raises funds on the Internet, has managed to collect so much money, mostly from sympathetic wahabis in Saudi Arabia, that it was reportedly planning to open its own bank.
Jessica was told by some Pakistani critics that jihad was a lucrative business for some 'who were in this for the loot'. She was invited by a militant group's leader to his mansion which she found 'staffed by servants and filled with expensive furniture.' Quoting Milt Bearden, the CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, she says the US and Saudi Arabia 'funded some 3.5 billion into Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Afghan war' making 'jihad' along with guns and drugs the most important business in the region.
Many irregulars who fought in Afghanistan are now fighting in Kashmir and are likely to look for 'new jihads to fight' - even against Pakistan itself, says Jessica.
In the interviews, she had with several irregulars she came across, responses such as 'we won't stop even if India gave us Kashmir... We will also bring jihad here. There is already a movement here to make Pakistan a pure Islamic state. We want to see a Taliban-style regime here.'
Some irregulars are financially dependent on what they consider jihad, others are spiritually and psychologically so, but criminals are also often hired to do the dirty work. They tend to be less committed to the group's purported goals and more committed to violence for its own sake or for the money.
The Pakistani militant groups, says Jessica, are now exporting their version of jihad all over the world. She was told by the 'chancellor of Khudamudeen madrassah' that the school was training students from Burma, Bangladesh, Nepal Chechnya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Mongolia and Kuwait, and out of 700 students at the madrassah 127 were foreigners.
Similarly, Darul Uloom Haqania, the madrassah that created the Taliban, has more than half Afghans in its student body, and is also training students from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Russia and Turkey. Many of the militant groups associated with the madrassahs have been regularly proclaiming their plans to bring jihad to India proper as well as the West which they believe is run by Jews.
Lashkar-i-Tayyaba, she says, has announced its plan to 'plant Islamic flags in Delhi, Tel Aviv and Washington,' and its website includes a list of purported Jews working for the Clinton administration.
The jihad against the West may be rhetorical, at least for now, says Jessica, but the ten-year-old sectarian war between Pakistan's Shias and Sunnis is real and deadly. Sectarian clashes have killed or injured thousands of Pakistanis since 1990, as the largely theological differences between Shia and Sunni Muslims have been transformed into a fullfledged political conflict, with broad ramifications for law and order, social cohesion and governmental authority.' 'An impotent Pakistani government,' she says, 'has essentially allowed Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran to 'fight a proxy war on Pakistani soil, with devastating consequences for the Pakistani people.'
Pakistan, according to Jessica Stern, is a weak state, and the government policies are making it weaker still. Its disastrous economy, exacerbated by a succession of corrupt leaders, is at the root of many of its problems.
Yet, despite its poverty, Pakistan is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on weapons instead of schools and public health.
The US wants Pakistan to crack down on militant religious groups and close down certain madrassahs - a task which, according to Jessica, is not easy to accomplish.
"Does America expect us to send in troops and shut the madrassahs?" a Pakistani official asked her, as he called jihad a mindset which developed over many years during the Afghan war.
According to her, the most important contribution the US can make is to help strengthen Pakistan's secular education system. Assisting Pakistan, she says, will make the world a safer place, as conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is one of the most likely triggers of nuclear war in the world today.
In conclusion, the Harvard
scholar sounds a note of warning to Pakistan saying it must 'recognize
the militant groups for what they are, dangerous gangs whose resources
and reach continue to grow, threatening to destabilize the entire region.'
Pakistan's continued support of religious militant groups, according to
her, suggests that it does not recognize 'its own susceptibility to the
culture of violence it has helped create.'
Back to HVK Home Page
 |
||
|
||
|
||
