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