Author: Julian West
in Peshawar
Publication: The Telegraphy,
UK
Date: August 27, 2000
AID workers in Pakistan's
North-West Frontier are being attacked by the country's growing army of
Taliban-style mullahs. One, Maulana Zia ul Haq, has published a fatwa
ordering any "Anglo-Saxon" entering his territory to be killed. He
has also warned Pakistani women working for a British-funded aid agency
that they will be kidnapped and forcibly married to "keep them at home,
where they belong". The area, known as Malakand, north of Peshawar
on the Afghan border, is scenically beautiful and Pakistan had been hoping
to develop it as a tourist destination.
Maulana Zia ul Haq said:
"Infidels have prevented Osama bin Laden from travelling. Why should
they be able to travel here?" Other aid workers in the district have also
been attacked, with the support of the local administration and the backing
of local landlords.
The mullahs, who accuse
the workers of "peddling anti-Islamic Western philosophies such as women's
rights", have formed an organisation to enforce the Taliban's brand of
Shariah law. Recently, several Western-based aid agencies have been
forced to leave.
Concerned by the spread
of such incidents, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a British human rights
organisation, has launched an international campaign warning of growing
extremism in Pakistan. Catherine Field, a CSW spokesman, said: "The
initial hope of minority groups that Gen Pervez Musharraf was going to
use his rule to curb the drift toward Islamic fundamentalism is gradually
being eroded."
Elsewhere in the North-west
Frontier, mullahs have ordered their followers to smash televisions, video
recorders and cassette players in shops and restaurants. Cable television
operators' offices have been sealed and television cables and satellite
dishes have been torn down.
Last month, private television
operators in Peshawar were given a deadline to close or risk having their
cables cut. "The mullahs have entered into a pact with local landlords
and the district administration," said Maryam Bibi, who runs Khwendo Kor,
a British-funded teaching organisation, which has been attacked.
"The landlords feel that we're challenging their power structure because
we work at a grassroots level, and the mullahs have their own agenda."
The fatwa against women
working for Khwendo Kor, or Women's Home, was issued earlier this month.
Khwendo Kor is funded by the British Government and some European aid agencies.
It provides primary school education for girls as well as boys in a mountainous
area near the Afghan border.
In his fatwa, the mullah
claimed that the teachers, who are all from villages in the area, were
"offering people chickens, honey, goats and pocket money to convert them
to Christianity" and that the women were "being taken to dens of iniquity
like Peshawar and Islamabad, where they were being offered wine".
Since then, school teachers
and schoolgirls have been harassed and workers from the organisation were
prevented from visiting villages by the local district commissioner because
angry mullahs and their supporters, carrying assault rifles, had blocked
the road.
Last week, the mullah,
who refuses to talk to foreigners even over the telephone, was unrepentant.
"I stick to my stand," he told a local journalist. "I've ordered
my people to pick up any woman working for a non-governmental organisation
and marry her. They're visiting villages, meeting our women and teaching
them their rights."
Khwendo Kor, which has
its headquarters in Dir, a picturesque town on a route once taken by Alexander
the Great, has established 40 village schools with the help of parents
in the past two years and now teaches 1,500 girls. Before 1969, there
were no schools in Dir.
The area is deeply fundamentalist,
providing large numbers of "jihadis" or holy warriors to fight in Kashmir
and Afghanistan. The roadsides are spattered with graffiti slogans
such as "Go for Jihad, crush India".
Shekila Naz, who works
for Khwendo Kor in Dir, said: "This area is the root of fundamentalism,
it even exports it abroad. The mullahs are angry because they think
we're challenging their power, but the communities support us. Besides,
in Islam a woman has to consent to marriage. This fatwa is against
Islam."
The rapid spread of Taliban-type
fundamentalism in Pakistan is alarming the country's more moderate population,
which fears that as the economy worsens extremism will take root.
