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