Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

0 Frontline Pakistan
Madrasas were basically conservative institutions before they were
radicalized during the 1980s Afghan jihad. The growing army of extremists
fought the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad alongside Arabs and Afghans. They
later served the cause of jihad from Kashmir to Chechnya to Bosnia,
Egypt and Yemen. At the height of the Afghan jihad – 1982–1988 –
more than 1,000 new madrasas were opened in Pakistan, mostly along
the borders with Afghanistan in the North West Frontier Province and
Balochistan. Almost all belonged to hardline Sunni religious parties like
Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), which were Zia’s
political allies as well as partners in the Afghan jihad. 10 Their location
in the two border provinces, which had close cultural, linguistic and
sectarian affinities with Afghan Pashtuns, made it easier to motivate the
pupils to fight for their brethren in distress.
These madrasas did not conduct military training or provide arms
to students, but encouraged them to join the ‘holy war’. The purpose
was to ensure a continued supply of recruits for the Afghan resistance.
The message was simple: all Muslims must perform the duty of jihad in
whatever capacity they could. It was the responsibility of the Pakistani
military, particularly the ISI, to provide training to the recruits in camps
inside Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal region. As the Afghan jihad
progressed, so did the influence of the jihadists coming out of these
madrasas. The USA indirectly – and sometimes directly – promoted
militancy, the culture of jihad and supported the clergy in its war
against communism.
Special textbooks were published in Dari and Pashto by the
University of Nebraska-Omaha and funded by USAID with an aim to
promote jihadist values and militant training. Millions of such books
were distributed at Afghan refugee camps and Pakistani madrasas,
where students learnt basic maths by counting dead Russians and
Kalashnikov rifles. 11 The same textbooks were later used by the
Taliban in their madrasas.
As General Zia attempted to consolidate his authority through
Islamization at home and jihad in Afghanistan, the madrasa system
was profoundly transformed. The Islamization process nurtured
many, often mutually hostile, varieties of fundamentalism. In a society
where many sects coexisted, the measures representing the belief of
the dominant sect acted as an identity marker, heightening sectarian
divisions and promoting sectarian conflicts. As a result, sectarian
divisions were militarized. The zealots began to look inwards and fight
a new jihad against sectarian rivals, particularly Shias. The madrasa