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

Frontline Pakistan
Jemmah Islamiyah and the brother of Hambali, the mastermind of the
2002 bombing in the Indonesian holiday resort of Bali in which more
than 200 people died. The Indonesian, who was captured along with
11 other Southeast Asian students, had spent four years at the seminary
under a fake identity. 19
Hambali, who was arrested in Thailand in 2003, had contacts with al-
Qaeda’s top leaders Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
both of whom were apprehended in Pakistan. 20 It was the first indicator
of a terrorist sleeper cell operating in Pakistan’s main commercial hub.
Gunawan was granted admission to the Jamia Abu Bakr Islamia in
1999. He was among 15,000 students from Muslim countries who came
to Pakistan to study in Pakistani madrasas during the 1990s. Founded
in 1978, the seminary had a large number of foreign students mainly
from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and African countries. 21
The arrest of Gunawan provided some indication of the strong links
between Islamic seminaries and the international terrorist network. His
arrest was followed by a series of raids less than a kilometre away from
the Abu Bakr seminary. Another eight Southeast Asian students were
arrested from the Jamia Darasitul Islamia, a seminary run by Jamaatud
Da’awa, the political wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba. This connection
compelled investigators to explore Jemmah Islamiyah’s links with
Pakistan’s militant groups. Pakistani intelligence agencies suspected
that Gunawan was instrumental in channelling funds provided by
al-Qaeda to the Jemmah Islamiyah. 22 Despite the government’s
crackdown, many madrasas continued to provide safe haven to al-
Qaeda sleeper cells.
Over the past several years, there had been a visible rise in the
number of madrasa students belonging to families of the expatriate
Pakistani community, particularly those living in the USA and Britain.
Fired by the desire to become ‘true Muslims’, hundreds of secondgeneration
expatriates joined Pakistani seminaries each year. Most of
them from prosperous middle-class families, they took time off from
their schools to learn about their faith. While the majority of the boys
confined themselves to Islamic learning, dozens of them got involved
in jihadist activities under the influence of militant groups that operated
inside some of the madrasas.
It was one such radical madrasa where Shehzad Tanweer, one
of the suicide bombers involved in the 7 July 2005 terror attacks in
London, spent time during his last visit to Pakistan. Twenty-two-yearold
Shehzad, who blew himself up on a subway train near Aldgate