Indoctrinating 'Holy Warriors'

A macabre video circulating in Pakistan shows the gruesome death of Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a front-ranking Taliban leader who was killed in a December 2006 air-strike in Afghanistan. The video, obtained by AP Television News in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan’s North West Frontierprovince, on April 17, shows a 12-year old boy slashing at Nabi’s neck until the head is severed. A voice in Pashto language identifies Nabi and his home at Kili Faqiran village in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The fanatical intensity with which the child – egged on by a group of adults chanting ‘Allah hu Akbar’ – demonstrates the tremendous dangers of the kind of psychological indoctrination to which Pakistan’s children are being subjected, and that has already produced armies of ‘holy warriors’ that are riding out to deliver death and disorder in the South Asian neighbourhood and across the world.

While Pakistan, in the words of John D. Negroponte, Director of US National Intelligence, "remains a major source of Islamic extremism and the home for some top terrorist leaders," it periodically seeks redemption through a promise – repeated incessantly since 9/11 – to clean up its seminaries, and to rid them of extremism and hatred. The claim is that this would strike at the base and root of Islamist terror. The promise has raised great expectations in the West and in South Asia. However, the state of play on the ground tells an altogether different story.

During a televised address to the nation as far back as January 12, 2002, President Pervez Musharraf had warned that the greatest danger facing Pakistan came, not from outside, but from Pakistan’s own home-grown Islamist radicals – "a danger," he said, "that is eating us from within." This danger, more than five years later, has assumed a menacing proportions. The rapid escalation of violence orchestrated by Islamist extremists across Pakistan in recent times and cumulative efforts to further radicalise the country have now led General Musharraf’s military regime to revisit the idea of madrassa (seminary) reforms.

Most of the officially estimated 13,000 seminaries (unofficial estimates range between 15,000 and 25,000, and in some cases go up to as much as 40,000) in Pakistan, with an approximate enrolment of 1.5 million students, have squarely rejected the tentative reforms – essentially requiring the registration of madrassas and the maintenance of accounts, including records of domestic and foreign donors, as well as the teaching of ‘secular’ subjects as part of the curriculum – initiated by thegovernment in 2003. They have opposed all changes, alleging that the reforms constituted a conspiracy to ‘secularise’ (that is, de-Islamize) the education system at the behest of the United States. The networks and support structures of Islamist extremism in Pakistan, painstakingly constructed through the Pakistan-Afghanistan arc, have little evident interest in engaging with the President’s ‘enlightened moderation’.

Speaking on the status of education in Pakistan, Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi disclosed, at the Civil Service Academy in Lahore in the first week of April 2007, that there were 5,459 madrassas in the Punjab province; 2,843 in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP); 1,935 in Sindh; 1,193 in the Northern Areas; 769 in Balochistan; and 586 in ‘Azad’ (Pakistan occupied) Kashmir; 135 in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA); and 77 in the capital, Islamabad.

A majority of the extremist seminaries that preach and support militant violence follow the Deobandi sect and are associated with the Wafaq-ul-Madaris, the main confederacy of seminaries. According to the International Crisis Group (ICG), "The two factions of the Deobandi political parties, JUI-Fazlur Rehman [Jamaat-e-Ulema-Islam faction headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman] and JUI-Samiul Haq [Jamaat-e-Ulema-Islam faction headed by Maulana Samiul Haq], run over 65 per cent of all madrasas in Pakistan." Rehman and Haq are widely considered to be the primary backers of theTaliban.

One of the principal instruments of reform and government regulation of madrassas was the proposed registration process. Equally important is the content of subjects taught to students. Aimed at mainstreaming these religious schools, thegovernment had initiated efforts to introduce subjects like English, General Science and Maths, etc. The ulema (religious leaders), however, claimed that the registration process was intended to curb the ‘independence and sovereignty’ of madrassas and was, consequently, not acceptable. Five years after its inception, the Madrassa Reform Project has been an unambiguous failure. While there is far too much resistance at the ground level, ambivalence and a reluctance to implement the reforms dominates the state’s agencies and initiatives. According to the ICG’s Report of March 29, 2007, "This is best demonstrated in Sindh Province and its capital, Karachi. After three years of efforts by the Sindh Education Department to help "mainstream" the province’s madrassas by including secular education in them, Islamabad asked provincial education authorities in mid-2006 to return more than $100 million in unspent Federal money." The Project did not have any significant impact since most madrassas refused to take thegovernment’s help. Incidentally, Pakistan’s record in utilising funds for the socio-economic sectors remains abysmal and, according to one report, 92 per cent of the funds (PKR 51 billion) earmarked for the five-year Education Sector Reforms Programme (2001-2006) has remainedunutilised.

In a detailed verdict on August 29, 2005, the Supreme Court of Pakistan had observed that madrassas were not providing students with general education that could enable them to come into the mainstream of society and compete with the educated class for employment or other purposes, including elections. The Court noted, further, that not a single religious educational institution had included subjects like English, Urdu and Pakistan Studies in its curriculum, even though the Inter-Board Committee of Chairmen had recommended this. In a scathing criticism of the educational system in its September 1, 2005-editorial, Daily Times opined:

…the seminaries in Pakistan enlist a million pupils and throw up thousands of ‘graduates’ every year with nothing much to do except set up new mosques to earn their livelihood… Pakistan cannot produce young people who can propel the economy forward. What kind of young men does Pakistan produce? In a word, warriors. The truth is that there is nothing secular in Pakistan Studies, English and Urdu, either, if you take a close look at the textbooks that the students have to mug up.

The madrassa, as a medium of radical Islam, knows too well that the Pakistani state is fragile. For instance, reports indicate that intelligence agencies have warned thegovernment of potential suicide attacks if any military action is initiated against the pro-Taliban Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and the Jamia Hafsa seminary in Islamabad. A report submitted to the Federalgovernment disclosed that

these two buildings host a large number of trained suicide bombers and a reasonable stockpile of arms...

if any action is taken, they may retaliate with suicide attacks, resulting in heavy casualties… Maulana Abdul Aziz, prayer leader of Lal Masjid and his brother Abdul Rashid Ghazi, head of Jamia Hafsa, enjoy the complete backing of at least 18 religious seminaries located in the Federal capital and receive constant support, in kind, from these seminaries.

The report also mentioned that suicide bombers involved in the January 26, 2007, attack on Hotel Marriott in Islamabad and the February 6, 2007, attack at the parking lot of the Islamabad International Airport, were linked to the seminary. Ominously, the report warns further that "The real cause of concern is that the number of would-be female suicide bombers is quite large compared to male students and, if action were to be taken, at least 150 casualties are feared." Unsurprisingly, President Musharraf has publicly ruled out the use of force to address the crisis generated by students of the Jamia Hafsa and the Lal Masjid. Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa are run by prominent clerics, Maulana Ghazi Abdul Rasheed and Maulana Abdul Aziz, sons of the slain cleric Maulana Abdullah (killed in 1998), who reportedly patronised several jihadi groups. Presiding over a high-level meeting in Islamabad on April 22, he asked the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) chief, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, to negotiate with Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Ghazi Abdul Rasheed for a ‘peaceful settlement’.

The Lal Masjid brigade, among others, is demanding: the rebuilding of demolished mosques in Islamabad; immediate declaration of Sharia (Islamic law) in Pakistan; immediate promulgation of Quran and Sunnah in the courts of law; and "immediate discontinuation to declaring jihad as terrorism by thegovernment as it is the great sacred religious duty of Muslims." The agitators also want thegovernment to close down brothels and music shops in Islamabad, and remove all advertisements depicting women. A large number of female students of the Jamia Hafsa have been occupying a Public Library building since February 2007 in protest against the Islamabad administration’s plans to demolish the seminary, which has approximately 7,000 students, but was illegally built on public land.

The Wafaq-ul-Madaris, Pakistan’s main and influential confederacy of seminaries, which runs approximately 8,200 institutions, has supported the extremist programme of the Lal Masjid brigade. The confederacy’s Secretary-General, Qari Mohammad Hanif Jhalandari, announced on April 15, 2007: "We are in complete support of their four demands – to enforce the Shariat [Islamic law] in Pakistan, have thegovernment rebuild all the mosques it destroyed, close down all dens of vice across the country and change the Women’s Protection Act in line with the Quran andSunnah."

There is mounting evidence of the military regime buckling under pressure from the Islamist extremists. For instance, thegovernment was reportedly contemplating moving the madrassas out of Islamabad amidst the standoff with the Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa. The Islamist extremists have, however, always rejectedgovernment attempts at interference with their ‘sovereignty’. On April 17, 2007, thegovernment was again on the back-foot when it provided land for two of the seven mosques demolished by the Islamabad administration (The Capital Development Authority has reportedly declared 87 mosques in Islamabad to be illegal). Land for the remaining five demolished mosques is to be provided as early as possible. Most of the illegal mosques were reportedly built without the submission of proper building plans while some were constructed on state land.

In his ‘leaked memo’ of October 2003, then US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld had raised a critical question: "Are we capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the seminaries and radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?"

For long, global aid programmes from the United States and the West have underwritten the military regime’s agenda in Pakistan. According to the March 2007 Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report for Congress (K. Alan Kronstadt, Pakistan and Terrorism: A Summary), "Annual instalments of $ 600 million each, split evenly between military and economic aid, began in FY 2005… In the years since September 2001, Pakistan has received nearly $ 1.5 billion in direct U.S security-related assistance… Some 80% of Defense Department spending for coalition support payments to "Pakistan, Jordan, and other key cooperating nations" has gone to Islamabad. At $4.75 billion to date, averaging more than $80 million per month, the amount is equal to more than one-quarter of Pakistan’s total military expenditures." The George W. Bush administration has reportedly requested an additional $1.7 billion for year 2008 claiming that coalition support payments to Pakistan have led to "a more stable [Pakistan-Afghanistan] border area," a claim that is roughly as true as the proposition that Iraq is now peaceful. In addition, Pakistan has received, for instance, USD 14 million in funding and technical assistance for a ‘legislative strengthening programme’ in Pakistan; USAID has provided approximately USD 3 million in education assistance to the Balochistan Province alone since 2002, and has funded a USD 6 million project to the province for food security and poverty alleviation in arid agriculture. Additionally, USAID has given over USD 2 million in assistance for health activities provided to Balochistan since 2003.

There is a danger that liberal military and developmental financing by the international community may lead to the worst case-scenario of further radicalization since "each dollar of ‘development aid’ or ‘financial relief’ to Pakistan releases a dollar of domestic resources for further militarization, radicalization and extremist religious mobilization." The USgovernment, according to Pakistani scholar Husain Haqqani, repeatedly makes the mistake of defining as ‘moderate’ those authoritarian Muslim rulers who fulfil America’s foreign policy goals. But, "These strategic American allies are not the force for ideological moderation that would change the Muslim world’s long-term direction… Authoritariangovernments in the Muslim world do not want democracy as that would amount to the potentates giving up their power. "

Western aid, as experience has shown in South Asia, has largely been focused on short-term security interests. The experience in Pakistan has shown that reliance on civil society projects to promote democracy under what are essentially authoritariangovernments is, at best, problematic. No accountability exists for such regimes as far as their domestic policies are concerned. And since most aid is being routed through increasingly militarised state channels, capacity-building and attempts to promote democracy, consequently, are bound to suffer. The use of stringent conditionalities can temper the diversion of aid to unintended recipients, and economic sanctions, if necessary, may have to be imposed against such regimes, since aid accountability is vital.

The collapse of the seminary reform project is a clear indication that Islamabad is either apathetic or clearly does not have the capacity to dismantle the extremist infrastructure across the country. Summing up his country’s mood, Shafqat Mahmood, a former member of Parliament, aptly notes: "Quiet seriously, we are in a terrible mess."

Kanchan Lakshman is Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management; Assistant Editor,Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal.