BackShifting attitudes put Pakistan’s Islamic extremists on defense
The child slaughter in Dec, coupled with the exit of US troops in the region, has bolstered the view that the Taliban are an existential threat to Pakistan
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Islamabad: For 17 years, Maulana Abdul Aziz used his position as head of Pakistan’s most influential mosque to defend suicide bombing, condemn the nation’s army and praise Osama bin Laden — all while keeping his finances secret.
That’s now changing after Taliban militants killed 134 students in December, emboldening Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to push for greater oversight of funds for Islamic religious schools known as madrassas.
“Their target is madrassas because they’re scared of Islam," Aziz, who has run a seminary adjoined to Islamabad’s Red Mosque since 1998, said in an interview in which he blamed “the West" for pressuring Pakistan to take action. “This foreign agenda to shut madrassas will never be accomplished. There were many who tried in the past but did not succeed."
Sharif’s move signals a shift in attitudes toward the Taliban, which long engendered some sympathy as Islamic warriors justly fighting US occupiers in neighbouring Afghanistan even while 50,000 Pakistanis died in terrorist attacks since 2001. The child slaughter in December, coupled with the exit of American troops in the region, has bolstered the view that the Taliban are an existential threat to Pakistan.
The public’s “soft spot" for the Taliban over its fight against the US in Afghanistan began to harden when talks with the government collapsed last year and the group initiated more violent attacks, said Rashid Ahmad Khan, head of the international relations department at the University of Sargodha in Punjab province. “The perception has changed."
Child massacre
An opinion poll conducted in January by Gallup Pakistan found that 52% of respondents saw the Taliban as a greater threat than neighbouring India. That contrasts with a Pew Research Center survey released last year in which respondents picked India as the nation’s primary security threat by a margin of two to one over the Taliban.
In December, seven Taliban militants walked into an army- run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar and killed more than 150 people, the bulk of them students. Some were lined up and shot in the head. The group warned of more attacks as it fights to impose its version of Islamic law.
Sharif, who won a 2013 election after pledging to negotiate with the Taliban, went on the offensive. He extended an army assault against militants and unveiled a 20-point action plan that included registering Islamic religious schools, a move aimed at undercutting the small percentage of them that serve as an ideological breeding ground for militant groups.
Extremism incubators
Right now nobody knows how many madrassas are in Pakistan, with estimates ranging from 10,000 to more than 30,000. The schools, which have been around since the country’s founding about seven decades ago, proliferated in the 1980s when the US and Saudi Arabia funneled money into Pakistan to encourage students to help neighbouring Afghanistan repel the Soviet Union.
After terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, the 9/11 Commission said some of Pakistan’s schools had become “incubators for violent extremism." The Bush administration pressured Pakistan to take action.
In 2005, then President Pervez Musharraf issued an order that required all seminaries to register and submit an audited financial statement. It made little impact. Lawmakers refused to back the measure and it lapsed a year later.
One of the world’s worst public education systems prompts many parents to look for an alternative to government-run schools. Most who send their kids to madrassas can’t afford private schools and appreciate that they’ll be housed, fed and given an education that includes learning about the Koran — all at no cost.
Saudi role
While most of Pakistan’s madrassas don’t encourage violence, the ones that do pose a grave threat if left unchecked, according to A.H. Nayyar, a former visiting research scientist at Princeton University who has analyzed the country’s education policy.
“They create a sensibility among children that later turns into a big support base for extremist and sectarian views," Nayyar said. “You have to take radical action under which all seminaries must provide details of their financial matters."
Already Sharif’s moves are facing resistance. Religious school leaders haven’t decided yet whether to agree to disclose funds, according to Hanif Jalandari, a senior leader with Wafaq ul Madaris al-Arabia, which says it represents 18,000 madrassas, including the one run by Aziz. He’s set to meet with government officials to discuss the topic on 18 February.
Foreign support is under particular scrutiny. Saudi Arabia on 9 February sought to counter media reports that it’s “funding the extremist mindset in Pakistan" by giving money to religious seminaries, saying that the government vets all recipients. Pakistan’s foreign ministry the next day said that unvetted private donations are also being watched more closely.
Cash-filled suitcases
Most of the funds for madrassas come in suitcases full of cash when religious leaders go abroad, according to Imtiaz Gul, executive director at the Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. In any case, he said, Sharif should be more concerned about what students are learning at school.
“The government is flogging the wrong horse," Gul said. “The actual problem is what’s taught in the madrassa, because that curriculum breeds hatred, violence and legitimizes violence against non-Muslims."
Regular suicide bombings and terrorist attacks have fueled perceptions that Pakistan is too risky. It was the only one of eight Asian frontier economies to see growth average below 5% in the past decade, according to Deutsche Bank AG.
Sluggish investment
Financial investors benefited last year when Pakistan’s currency and stock index were among the world’s best performers, but companies have been more reluctant to put down cash. Foreign direct investment averaged $1.4 billion from 2010 to 2013, less than a third of what it drew in the previous four years, according to the World Bank.
“Law and order is the biggest headwind to investment," Sajjad Anwar, chief investment officer at NBP Fullerton Asset Management Ltd., which manages $543 million, said by phone in Karachi on 12 February. Closer ties between Sharif and top army generals, whose relationship had been strained after his ouster in a 1999 coup, are “very much positive," Anwar said.
Not everyone is convinced that much is changing. Sharif’s government, weakened by political protests last year, had little choice but to go along with the army after the massacre, according to Hasan Askari Rizvi, a security analyst.
Moving slowly
“This government’s problem is that its support base is right-wing Islamists," said Rizvi, who formerly taught at Columbia University. “Their rhetoric is very strong and they are making the army happy by making statements, but its actions are slow."
Although Sharif lifted a moratorium on executing terrorists since the massacre and said he’d ban militant groups, it remains unclear if that includes organizations that have been used by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies for strategic goals in Afghanistan and India. Hafiz Saeed, leader of the anti-Indian group Jamaat-ud-Dawa, held a press conference in Karachi in January to promote a free ambulance service.
Aziz, the Red Mosque’s chief cleric, embodies Pakistan’s ambivalence toward Islamic extremists.
In 2007, troops stormed the mosque to disrupt a group of armed men who sought to impose their version of Islamic law in the capital. The incident prompted Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader killed in Pakistan four years ago, to call for the nation to rebel against Musharraf.
Angry students
At least 100 people were killed in the raid, including Aziz’s brother. Pakistani authorities found Aziz trying to escape dressed in a woman’s veil and brought him into custody.
Two years later, he was released on bail to cheering supporters. Eventually he was acquitted of more than 20 charges, including murder, kidnapping and incitement through hate speech.
Not long afterward he became one of three negotiators representing the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, in talks with the government. He also named a library after bin Laden, and his female seminary released a video calling on Islamic State militants to help avenge his death.
After TTP militants took credit for the Peshawar massacre, however, Aziz has faced unusual scrutiny. In December, police issued an arrest warrant after he refused to condemn the killings on a television show.
About a dozen people then held a protest outside the Red Mosque, a rare display of public anger against Aziz. Jibran Nasir, a lawyer who led the demonstration, went ahead with it even after receiving a phone call from a Taliban-affiliated militant group warning him to stay away.
No end
“I can see change in youths, especially students who are angry and frustrated with militancy," Nasir said. “They think about Pakistan and are doing something for it."
In the 11 Feburary interview, Aziz sat on the floor outside of his office in the female section of the madrassa. A bearded man carrying an AK-47 stood guard nearby.
Aziz said he admired the Islamic State and hoped a similar caliphate would be established in Pakistan. He also reiterated his view that suicide bombings are valid in some situations, though declined to comment on a report that one of his former students blew himself up at a police checkpoint last month.
“We have been successful in our mission, as whoever completes her or his studies goes to their village and sets up a madrassa," Aziz said. “Our duty is shaping minds."
Calling the registration process “a trick," Aziz said Sharif’s office had asked some of his donors to stop financing the mosque’s activities. Musadiq Malik, a spokesman for Sharif, said he had no information about Aziz’s allegations.
“What’s happening now is that donors don’t have their names recorded," Aziz said. “They pay cash and say ‘Don’t write down my name or give us fake names.’ We can’t force them."
Aziz warned that whatever steps the government takes to control religious schools will eventually fail, indicating that the battle of ideas in Pakistani society is far from over.
“Western propaganda against madrassas basically has encouraged people to set up more such schools," he said. “There will be no stop to it." Bloomberg
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