Author:
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: October 30, 2003
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_440854,00050002.htm
The US should focus on reforming
radical madrassas, like those in Pakistan, that are a hotbed of Islamic
militants, an Indian counter-terrorism expert said at a Congressional hearing.
B Raman, former head of counter-terrorism
at the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence
agency, said this while testifying before a joint hearing of the subcommittees
on Asia and the Pacific and International Terrorism, Non-proliferation
and Human Rights.
The committees were chaired by Rep
Jim Leach and Rep Elton Gallegly, both Republican.
Stressing the need to counter madrassa-style
education, Raman said young students studying in the Islamic seminaries
in Pakistan were of special concern to the South Asia region.
He traced the dramatic rise in the
number of madrassas to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s
when jehadis were needed to fight.
Foreign money, especially from Saudi
Arabia and Iran, poured in to keep the madrassas going. After the defeat
of the Soviet Union, the clout of these schools rose, and many continued
to receive foreign funding.
There are currently up to one million
madrassas in Pakistan, a minority of which, perhaps 15 percent, indoctrinate
their pupils with Islamist vitriol and militancy.
Raman said the US should also use
its aid to ensure reform of school education in Pakistan. It should also
consider bolstering funding for "secular education" in Pakistan, he said.
Referring to Rep. Dan Burton's questions
on why India had shied away from the UN resolution to hold a plebiscite
in Kashmir, Raman said it was Pakistan that had violated the UN resolution
by not withdrawing from its occupation of Kashmir.
He also quoted UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan to say that after 56 years, the UN resolutions "had become irrelevant".
He said all the problems in Jammu
and Kashmir were not due to militancy but due to large-scale infiltration
from the Pakistani side. These mercenaries operating in the region adhere
to the ultra-orthodox Wahabi-style of Islam.
He also quoted extensively from
the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism" to drive home his
point that the remnants of the jehadis of the Afghan war have now found
a new mission in Jammu and Kashmir -- to create instability through violence
with the full backing of Pakistan.
Others in the panel who made their
presentations were Zachary Abuza, assistant professor of political science
and international relations, Simmons College; Timothy Hoyt, associate professor
of strategy and policy, US Naval War College; and Robert Oakley, fellow,
Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defence University.
All of them spoke of the rise of
radical Jemiah Islamiya - ideologically affiliated to the Al Qaida - in
Southeast Asia and the threat it posed in notably the Philippines, Thailand,
Cambodia and Malaysia.
