Frankenstein the CIA created - From Mujahideen to Al-Qaida , Takfiri Taliban ...

Mujahideen trained and funded by the US are among its deadliest foes, reports Jason Burke in Peshawar , theguardian.com, Sunday 17 January 1999
The consortium of terror:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jciyiL3CzwM

1. President Ronald Reagan Meeting Some Mujahideen - YouTube

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   Mar 5, 2009 - Uploaded by MadnessUponMadness

   President Ronald Reagan Meeting Some Mujahideen.

Ronald Reagan Dedicates Space Shuttle Launch To Taliban-Mujahedin Freedom Fighters - YouTube

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=06xI83Esc8I‎

May 22, 2011 - Uploaded by VexZeez

'In 1982, Ronald Reagan dedicated the Space Shuttle Columbia to the resistance ... We support the Mujahidin. ....   Ronald Reagan Meets In The White House The Afghan Freedom Fighters (And Mullah Omar?) 

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When Clement Rodney Hampton-el, a hospital technician from Brooklyn, New Jersey, returned home from the war in Afghanistan in 1989, he told friends his only desire was to return. Though he had been wounded in the arm and leg by a Russian shell, he said he had failed. He had not achieved martyrdom in the name of Islam.
So he found a different theatre for his holy war and achieved a different sort of martyrdom. Three years ago, he was convicted of planning a series of massive explosions in Manhattan and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Hampton-el was described by prosecutors as a skilled bomb-maker. It was hardly surprising. In Afghanistan he fought with the Hezb-i-Islami group of mujahideen, whose training and weaponry were mainly supplied by the CIA.

He was not alone. American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up.

Since the fall of the Soviet puppet government in 1992, another 2,500 are believed to have passed through the camps. They are now run by an assortment of Islamic extremists, including Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist.

Bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan from Saudi Arabia in 1979, aged 22. Though he saw a considerable amount of combat - around the eastern city of Jalalabad in March 1989 and, earlier, around the border town of Khost - his speciality was logistics.

From his base in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, he used his experience of the construction trade, and his money, to build a series of bases where the mujahideen could be trained by their Pakistani, American and, if some recent press reports are to be believed, British advisers.

One of the camps bin Laden built, known as Al-Badr, was the target of the American missile strikes against him last summer. Now it is used by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, a Pakistan-based organisation that trains volunteers to fight in Kashmir.

Some of their recruits kidnapped and almost certainly killed a group of Western hostages a few years ago. The bases are still full of new volunteers, many

Pakistanis. Most of those who were killed in last August's

strikes were Pakistani.

A Harkut-ul-Mujahideen official said last week that it had Germans and Britons fighting for the cause, as well as Egyptians, Palestinians and Saudis. Muslims from the West as well as from the Middle East and North Africa are regularly stopped by Pakistani police on the road up the Khyber Pass heading for the camps. Hundreds get through. Afghan veterans have now joined bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.

Some have returned to former battlegrounds, like the university-educated Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, a key figure in the Egyptian al-Jihad terrorist group. Al-Zawahiri ran his own operation during the Afghan war, bringing in and training volunteers from the Middle East. Some of the $500 million the CIA poured into Afghanistan reached his group. Al-Zawahiri has become a close aide of bin Laden and has now returned to Afghanistan to work with him. His al-Jihad group has been linked to the Yemeni kidnappers.

One Saudi journalist who interviewed bin Laden in 1989 remembers three of his close associates going under the names of Abu Mohammed, Abu Hafz and Abu Ahmed. All three fought with bin Laden in the early Eighties, travelled with him to the Sudan and have come back to Afghanistan. Afghan veterans, believed to include men who fought the Americans in Somalia, have also returned.

Other members of al-Quaeda remain overseas. Afghan veterans now linked to bin Laden have been traced by investigators to Pakistan, East Africa, Albania, Chechnya, Algeria, France, the US and Britain.

At least one of the kidnappers in Yemen was reported to have fought in Afghanistan and to be linked to al-Quaeda. Despite reports that bin Laden was effectively funded by the Americans, it is impossible to gauge how much American aid he received. He was not a major figure in the Afghan war. Most American weapons, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, were channelled by the Pakistanis to the Hezb-i-Islami faction of the mujahideen led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Bin Laden was only loosely connected with the group, serving under another Hezb-i-Islami commander known as Engineer Machmud. However, bin Laden's Office of Services, set up to recruit overseas for the war, received some US cash.

But according to one American official, concentrating on bin Laden is a mistake. 'The point is not the individuals,' he said last week. 'The point is that we created a whole cadre of trained and motivated people who turned against us. It's a classic Frankenstein's monster situation.'

Others point out that the military contribution of the 'Arabs', as the overseas volunteers were known, was relatively small. 'The fighting was done by the Afghans and most of them went back to their fields when Kabul fell to the mujahideen,' said Kamaal Khan, a Pakistani defence analyst. 'Ironically, the bulk of American aid went to the least effective fighters, who turned most strongly to bite the hand that fed them.'
http://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/17/yemen.islam 
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/17/yemen.islam

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US history - "How Jimmy Carter & I Started the Mujahideen" 

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor 1977-1981 (Jan.1998)

"Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries."

* There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the perhaps sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version sent to the United States is shorter than the French version, and the Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version.

The above has been translated from the French by Bill Blum author of the indispensible, "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II" and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower"

Interview of Zbigniew Brzezinski Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*

http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html

Taliban/Al Qaeda Machinator?

In a 1997 interview for CNN's Cold War Series, Brzezinski hinted about the Carter Administration's proactive Afghanistan policy before the Soviet invasion in 1979, that he had conceived.

Interviewer: How did you interpret Soviet behavior in Afghanistan, such as the April revolution, the rise of... I mean, what did you think their long-term plans were, and what did you think should be done about it? 

Brzezinski: I told the President, about six months before the Soviets entered Afghanistan, that in my judgment I thought they would be going into Afghanistan. And I decided then, and I recommended to the President, that we shouldn't be passive. 

Interviewer: What happened? 

Brzezinski: We weren't passive. 

The National Security Archive, Interview with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, for CNN's Coldwar Series, June 13, 1997 

7 months after the interview for the CNN series, Brzezinski, in a interview for the French publication, Le Nouvel Observateur, was more forthright, and unapologetically claimed to be the mastermind of a feint which caused the Soviet Union to embark upon a military intervention to support their client government in Kabul, as well as training and arming extremists, which later became the Taliban government.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today? 

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. 

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists? 

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? 

Le Nouvel Observateur, Interview with Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paris, January 15-21, 1998, translated by Bill Blum - 

Source: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a13_1240427874

Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a13_1240427874#m8ryIeFBMQX6sFsD.99

1. US Sec. of State, Regarding the Mujahideen (ie, Al-Qaeda) - YouTube

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   Mar 19, 2013 - Uploaded by DidderBodder

   U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Regarding the Mujahideen (ie, Al-Qaeda; wecreated them) - April ...

1. CIA AND ISI NURTURED MUJAHIDEEN AND TALIBAN

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   therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option...‎
   

   
   

   Jul 31, 2010

   And joining us again are Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, ... who we know was involved originally in the '80s in helping create the Taliban.

1. The Haqqani Network: The Background

   Dr. Charles G. Cogan | Posted 11.13.2012 | World

   Read More: Cia, Haqqani Network, Haqqani, Mujahideen, World News
   

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   The network of Jalaludin Haqqani was "a leading recipient of CIA money" during the Afghan mujahidin struggle against the Soviet Union. While this was basically the case, a few clarifications are in order.

   Read Whole Story  ...

US history - "How Jimmy Carter & I Started the Mujahideen"

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Apr 22, 2009

Create Account | Log in | ... US history - "How Jimmy Carter & I Started the Mujahideen" - Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/17/yemen.islam
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/17/yemen.islam

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The consortium of terror:
http://goo.gl/tt10tX
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Left wing, right wing, broken wing: Short history of Terrorist Groups in Pakistan

         

Most major operations of the Pakistan Military in the last decade or so have almost entirely concentrated on such groups stationed in the tribal areas near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and also in certain more well settled parts of the region, such as Swat.

The immediate rationale behind the emergence of extremist groups in these areas has to do with the permissive policies of the Ziaul Haq dictatorship (1977-88) that allowed the proliferation of non-conventional religious groups across Pakistan during the war that erupted between Afghan insurgents and the Soviet-backed government in Kabul in the 1980s.

Pakistan played the role of a facilitator in the war, channelling the funds and arms received from the US and Saudi Arabia to various insurgent groups who increasingly saw their battie against the Kabul regime as a holy struggle.

Pakistan also provided indoctrination facilities to these groups. The indoctrination was largely undertaken by radical clerics who till the late 1970s had been on the fringes of society.

It is correct to suggest that such manoeuvres by the state of Pakistan were instrumental in turning large swaths of Pakistan`s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province into areasthat became increasingly infested by a number of religious militant outfits (many of which eventually turned against the state of Pakistan).

But there are some political scientists who suggest that the anti-Soviet insurgency in the 1980s was just one reason that triggered the appearance of religious militancy and insurgencies in KP.

They suggest that some of the earliest fighters (from Pakistan) who joined the Afghan insurrection at the start of the anti-Soviet insurgency in early 1980 were actually first radicalised by certain militant leftist groups that had been active in KP in the 1970s.

In Beyond Swal (edited by Magnus Marsden), anthropologist Charles Lindholm in his paper based on his on-field study in Swat in the 1970s suggests that young men in Swat com-ing from less well-to-do families were first radicalised by the socialist message of former prime minister and chairman of the PPP, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Lindholm informs that young Swatis voted in droves for the PPP in the 1977 election (that were declared void by the Zia dictatorship after that year`s military coup).

These young Bhutto enthusiasts worked actively against religious parties and non-religious conservative groups whom they accused of being in league with the landed elite of Swat.

Interestingly Lindholm then goes on to inform that in the 1980s, when polities based on religious populism began to peak and was welded with right-wing militant groups that had begun to crop up during the Zia regime, young men from Swat`s working and lower-middle class backgrounds who had been radicalised by Bhutto`s populist and leftist rhetoric, started to colour their angry stances with an equally angry `Islamist` point of view. Lindholm saw this trend unfold during his stay in Swat between 1977 and late 1980s.

There is weight in this observation.

Because ever since the 1980s incidents have come to light in which some early recruits of religious militant outfits in Swat once had links with either polities of the radical left or with the equally radical Pakhtun nationalist tendencies.

One of the most prominent examples in this respect is of the renegade leader of perhaps the most belligerent factions of the Pakistani Taliban, Mullah Fazalullah.

As a teen in Swat in 1990, Fazalullah is reported to have been attached to the politics of the student-wing of the Pakhtun nationalist party, the Awami National Party (ANP), whereas other reports claim that he was associated with the youth wing of the PPP.

On the surface this may suggest an inherent extremist moving from one extreme to another.But in his study, Lindholm treats the phenomenon (in Swat), as being about a generation that was made aware (by Bhutto) of certain overpowering economic and political discrepancies and it expressed its discontent through an idea that was at the time promising radical change (socialism). But sections of this generation then moved to another promising idea (militant faith) once the earlier idea withered away from popular imagination.

If so, then those discrepancies are still present. And recently with the kind of battering the second radical idea has suffered (after it turned against the state and eventually on itself with its anarchic violence), what shape has the shifting radical tendency that (according to Lindholm) has been present in Swat since the 1970s, taken now`? Something similar also happened elsewhere in KP. For example, most scholars on religious militancy in Pakistan points to the fact that one of the first Pakistani recruits to volunteer to take part in the Afghan conflict of the 1980s, were members of the student wing of the right-wing Jamaat-i-Islami (JI).

Indeed, but what gets missed in this regard is the fact that some of the very early recruits from Pakistan who joined the conflict were actually men who had first taken up arms against the government in the early 1970s.

Between 1969 and 1974 the hilly Hashtnagar area in KP was the scene of several peasant uprisings and insurgencies against landlords (Khans). The insurgency was initiated and led by the Mazdoor Kissan Party (MKP).

The MKP was a far-left/ Maoist outfit that had broken away from the mainstream left-wing party, the National Awami Party (NAP) in 1968.

MKP cadres travelled to Hashinagar with Urdu and Pashto translations of radical Marxist and Maoist literature and then with light weapons. They began a programme of indoctrinating the poorest peasants of the area, and then trained them in guerrilla warfare.

A number of landlords were driven out and their lands occupied by MKP led peasants. However, by 1974 the movement was crushed when it began to spill into villages of (South) Punjab.

Dozens of young peasants who had taken part in the fighting (under a red flag), then became some of the earliest Pakistanis to join the first Afghan Islamic insurgent groups who were allowed set up shop in KP soon after the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet forces.

In 2002 when American planes began bombarding the Taliban-held Afghanistan, I happened to bump into one Ilyas in Islamabad. Ilyas, a Pakhtun living in Peshawar, was distributing posters of Osama Bin Laden (along with his cousin), and protesting against the US bombing. He was then in his early 40s and claimed to have fought for MKP in 1973 as a young man.

He told me that after the MKP movement collapsed, he was befriended by a group of young clerics (in 1980) who sent him to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets. He returned in 1984 and vowed to fight for an `Islamic revolution` in Pakistan.

In 2002 he told me he was again preparing to go to Afghanistan. In 2006, I managed to meet his cousin again who now claimed that lllyas did go to Afghanistan, but this time did not return. 

By Nadeem F Priacha Dawn.com

One size may not fit all - by Hasan Abdullah

Only a few years ago, he was studying at a madressah. Then one day, his family was informed that he had died in a suicide bomb blast. He was the suicide bomber, as confirmed by the propaganda video recorded prior to the attack. His younger brother says the family is still finding it hard to come to terms with the incident.

`He was funny. He used to make others laugh and was known in his friends circle as a champion of the game of snake on the mobile phone,` says his brother Amin. Their real names have been withheld upon their request.

So was it the madressah that turned a jolly young man into a suicide bomber`? His family appears reluctant to answer this question. `We don`t really know,` says Amin`s father.

Some religious-political parties such as Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam have been trying to play down the role of religious seminaries in fostering extremism, with their representatives sometimes making outlandish claims of entirely denying any role of seminaries in the radicalisation of people.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan says the overwhelming majority of madressahs have nothing to do with violence in the country. While that may be the case with the majority, there is little doubt about the dubious role of some madressahs in promoting militancy.

`It is a fact that some religious seminaries are acting as a supply line of suicide bombers. They may say that their `produce` is just for Afghanistan but once out of the conveyor belt, one doesn`t always have control over where the bomber ends up,` says Tariq Habib, a journalist who has reported on militant groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On top of that, Habib says, there is `inherent sectarianism in the curriculum. Madressahs can deny as much as they want, but if you go through their fatwas, it is clear that they have declared many Muslim sects as disbelievers. From there starts the legitimisation of their killing.

Nearly seven decades after the creation of Pakistan, the leadership has for the first time, formulated a National Internal Security Policy (NTSP) that seeks to `protect national interests of Pakistan by addressing critical security issues as well as concerns of the nation. It is based upon principles of mutual inclusiveness and integration of all national effort.

According to Saleem Safi, a senior journalist and Islamist militancy expert, the task is far more difficult than perceived. `Real challenge for the NISP and the political leadership is to construct a national narrative. It is very difficult to bring a society, divided on multiple lines, under one narrative on terrorism and extremism.Raza Rumi, Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, says the government has much to do when it comes to reforming madressahs.

`There are three issues of main importance: first the registration and regulation. They have to adhere to a regulatory framework. Second, the curricula that needs to be updated and modernised. No point in teaching Fatawa-i-Alamgiri or such other outdated texts. More importantly, sectarian hate that goes into teaching has to be curbed and discontinued.

Third pertains to foreign students and teachers that become part of madressah networks without the necessary permission of the State,` says Rumi. He says that for madressah reform two imperatives need to be considered: first, the `extremist mindset flows out of the theological interpretations which are man-made and sectarian and they need regulation and debate. Second, terrorist activity is limited to only a few. And in the past the Pakistani state has used them as recruitment grounds for jihad abroad. These places and handlers are well-known and can be nabbed.

However, scores of teachers and students at various madressahs have expressed frustration at what they view as being singled out and targeted for their beliefs.

`The 21st amendment clearly discriminates between religious and secular elements of the society. Even on the streets, we are noticing the change in attitude of policemen who use derogatory language and try to humiliate every bearded person,` says Mufti Muhammad Zubair, Naib Muhtamim (Vice Principal) at Jamia Suffa in Karachi.

Bilal Hashim Siddiqui is a marketing graduate from Institute of Business Administration in Karachi. He is currently pursuing religious studies at Dar ul Uloom in Gulshan-i-Iqbal area of Karachi. He agrees with Rumi`s call for a debate but says `the secular elite do not have the moral and intellectual courage to have an honest debate` with Islamists.

`The media and the state have been suppressing any hon-est discussion on Islam. They want to regulate the debate in such a way that Islamists have to stay within the pre-defined, narrow framework set or rather imposed by the secularists.

They want us to debate Islam by judging it according to the secular value-systems,` says Siddiqui.

`It seems the government has little understanding of the nature of the conflict and it`s simply playing on some impressive buzzwords like madressah reforms, deradicalisation, counter-terrorism, secularisation and many more. These labels may be sellable when it comes to securing international funding but does not really bc1p in dealing with the challenges at hand. If anything, our society is getting increasingly polarised and that is not good,` says Sib Kaifee, an Islamabad-based security consultant who has acted as an advisor at some diplomatic missions as well.

A number of analysts seem to agree with some of the grievances coming out of madressahs.

`Government policies need a balance where every segment of society must be taken on board. Unfortunately, it seems that government policies are tilted towards the secular and liberal segment of society. I fear an Egypt-like polarisation if this trend continues. If the state fails to keep a balance then this type of polarisation may lead the society to violent confrontation,` says Abdullah Khan, director of the Conflict Monitoring Centre in Islamabad.

The government, however, appears confident that things are on the right track.

`A unity has been formed. You should not lose sight of this. The terrorists` strength has finally been broken,` says Minister for State and Frontier Regions retired Lt. Gen Abdul Qadir Baloch.

But Rumi warns against any misadventures.

`It would be unwise for the state to isolate millions of students and their families. Therefore the reform has to be debated and those who advocate violence need to be identified and proceeded against under the law,` he says.But Sib Kaif`ee sees a more l`undamental challenge.

`Clearly we have a significant number of people who do not even recognise the law of` the land and the system in place. Some of them vocally express their opposition while others are acting like sleeper cells waiting to explode. So instead of further polarising society, our mainstream media really needs to open up a debate on Islam and secularism. If` we want to promote certain values then we need to convince the people about the superiority of our ideas,` he asserts.
One size may not fit all - by Hasan Abdullah, dawn.com

"Islamabad: from the outside" by Mirza Khurram Shahzad

:Sitting in the lap of the magnificent green Margallas, Islamabad`s E-7 sector normally remains calm and quiet through the day.

The only noticeable activity is usually the movement of monkeys on its northern service road or the noticeable presence of several vigilant security men keeping an eye on the villa of Doctor Abdul Qadeer Khan.

That changes when the students of madressah Jamia Faridia come out on to the streets in their spare time.

The madressah Jamia Faridia, built on the northern edge in the green area between sector E-7 and Marga11a hills, is Islamabad`s largest religious seminary. It was constructed with the blessings of former military dictator, General Zia ul Haq, in violation of the rules and regulations of the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

Around 1,500 students, enrolled in this seminary, flock out after Asar prayers to roam around in grounds, parks, streets and markets.

They have come from different parts of the country to seek religious education in this Deobandi seminary, where they also reside.

Jamia Faridia is affiliated with the Lal Masjid and was once administered by Ghazi Abdul Rasheed, who was killed in the military operation in 2007. It is currently being administered by Maulana Abdul Aziz.

The majority of these students are from the north-western areas outside Islamabad such asChitral, Batagram, Swat, the tribal areas and also villages around Abbottabad, Murree and Kashmir.

Abdullah and Muhammad are two friends who have come here all the way from Chitral to seek higher education in this seminary and have nothing to do in the evenings but to go out in the streets of Islamabad.

`We initially studied in a seminary in Chitral but then came here to Jamia Faridia, because no seminary was offering higher education in Chitral,` Abdullah says as he leaves the madressah after Asar prayers.

`We will have free time to spend and relax a bit until Maghreb prayers and then we will return to the seminary,` he said.

Around three miles cast of Jamia Faridia, in sector F-6, up to 800 students of Jamia Muhammadia occupy a park in front of the Super Market commercial centre.

Soon after Asar prayers, they come out in the park and rest on the swings, benches and grass patches, leaving no room for other kids, particularly the girls and women living in the flats adjacent to the park.

`There was no madressah in my village in Tarbela Ghazi, so my father sent me here to become an Aalim (religious scholar),` says 15-year-old Huzaifa, who is in the first year batch of Jamia Muhammadia.

Like Huzaifa, Abdullah and Muhammad, there are over 15,000 students who have come to Islamabad to study in its religious seminaries. Incomparison there are hardly any local students from Islamabad who have joined these madressahs.

Intriguingly, organisations of all sects have built large seminaries in the federal capital, but none have established madressahs of this level in the areas from where the students actually hail.

`More than 90 per cent students in the 375 madressahs of Islamabad come from other citics. But this is a stupid question as to why these students come to study here. Islamabad is a city of outsiders and people in all departments have come from other cities,` says Maulana Abdul Quddus, a spokesman for Wifaq-ul-Madaris Al Arabia in Islamabad.

`It`s the government`s duty to provide high grade madressahs and schools in every nook and corner of the country. If they cooperate with us and establish high standard madressahs in other cities and facilitate them, students will not come to Islamabad for religious studies,` he says.

But Muhammad, a final year student of Jamia Faridia, believes there are financial reasons behind this.

`There are madressahs in our area in Chitral but they are not of this high level. The religious scholars don`t establish high grade madressahs in remote areas because they collect more funds from cities like Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

Moreover, life is easy here,` he said.

According to government statistics, there are a total of 329 madressahs in Islamabad, out ofwhich 175 are registered. Up to 16,000 students study in these madressahs but no official data has been maintained about the students who come from other cities.

On the other hand, around 250,000 students study in 422 formal government schools and up to 300,000 in 2,000 private schools including the high standard private schools affiliated with foreign universities. But hardly any students come from other cities to study in these schools.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a senior professor formerly associated with Islamabad`s Quaid-i-Azam University, says that while the state originally provided space to religious elements in the federal capital during Gen Zia`s regime, those elements have now become much stronger and bring in people from outside to increase their power.

`If`a molvi gets a residence in a house associated with a mosque or madressah on a prime location in a city like Islamabad, he then brings in more and more people from outside to strengthen his hold.

`Over the years, they have now strengthened their street power in Islamabad. They can close down the city whenever they want to, and they have become accustomed to using this tool to blackmail the authorities. This is the reason they don`t establish large seminaries in other cities and have made Islamabad as their headquarter.

`But this has sufTocated the city, particularly for women who can`t move freely in the areas where madressahs exist. And children of`ten can`t go to parks because these madressah students have occupied most of`those.

Hoodbhoy also said that the madressah students have also forcibly snatched the citizens right of freedom of assembly on various occasions.

`I remember when we protested against a terrorist attack on the Hazara community in Quetta in front of the National Press Club, Islamabad two years ago, these students armed with clubs, bats and iron rods came there and attempted to attack us. Police had to intervene to save the protesters.`

Islamabad: from the outside
by Mirza Khurram Shahzad, dawn.com

Speaking in tongues - Terrorists

In 1857, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan began a reform programme for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, firmly believing that they would not be able to progress in society without the acquisition of Western education and sciences. Nearly one-and-a-half century later, madressahs in Pakistan believe the same.

`Without modern education, Muslims can`t survive, argues Attiqur Rehman Chohan, spokesman for the Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) in Peshawar. `The Dawa System of Education has been established to impart religious and modern education simultaneously. Our institutions are being set up across the country.

Notwithstanding the ban apparently imposed on them by the government as part of the National Action Plan against terrorism, the JuD is running about 30 English-medium schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is believed that their schools network in Punjab is much larger. Perhaps the ban is only in name.

`Our organisation is introducing a curriculum that is currently taught at Atchison College, Lahore and at the University of Oxford. The programme will start in the first phase from Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, and thereafter extended in other cities,` explains Chohan.

Thus far, the JuD has been training teachers who can instruct in the English language. Around 250 teachers in Islamabad have completed their training, but the JuD`s requirement is much larger. `We have planned to set up English-medium schools and colleges at divisional level.

Our network will then be extended to district and tehsil levels,` elaborates the spokesman.

In the past, religious organisations following different schools of thought focused on madressahs to produce their particular breed of cleric.

The trend has now shifted; the medium of instruction no longer needs to be a vernacular language or Arabic, while subjects taught are no longer restricted to theology. This process of establishing modern institutions, where students can be taught business, science and technology in the English language, has been underway since almost a decade.But this strategy is not born out of` the clerics` love l`or modern education; it is what they need to systematically propagate their ideology to a wider audience.

Most of these new English medium institutions are not restricted to schools either; well-off people affiliated with religious groups have set up vocational and technical colleges on the basis of sect. The number of English medium schools in the country has been increasing simply because religious groups have started their entry into modern education systems. The problem arises, however, when sectarian teachings become part of the curriculum in the guise of religious teachings.

Some sectarian groups also organise special coaching classes and tuition centres to prepare candidates to appear in competitive exams such as Central Superior Service (CSS) and provincial management service. `A religious group regularly arranges classes in Lahore for candidates who intend to take the CSS exams, so as to induct officersfrom their sect in the bureaucracy,` explains a source.

Given the number of sects and sectarian differences at play in Pakistan, almost all major players now run a growing network of modern educational institutions and madressahs in tandem.

The Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), which represents the Deobandi school of thought and has the largest network of madressahs in the country, runs private schools and colleges through the Sufa School System. `Retired teachers and professors ideologically infused by the JUI-F have been running this system in different areas, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,` claims the party`s provincial information secretary, Maulana Abdul Jalil Jan.

The Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) too runs a separate body in Mansoora, Lahore, named Dar-i-Argam. This organisation manages the party`s affiliated chain of English-medium schools across the country. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone, the party has more than 150 private schools. Another two JT-affiliated syndicates, Hira and Iqra, have also their separate network of schools and colleges.

The Barelvi school of thought is not to be left behind either: they have a network of private schools that run under the supervision of four different bodies, AIMS Education System (AES), Mustafvi Model Schools, Muslim Hands and Minhajul Quran. These schools run in both the rural and the urban sectors.

Education experts and social commentators call the flourishing of parallel education systems a dangerous trend. The argument is that in the absence of a government-run uniform system of education, private educational institutions run by different schools of thought will systematically polarise Pakistani society, which is already reeling from the effects of sectarianism.

`Radical religious groups have already intruded into parliament and culture. Now they have planned to acquire managerial capabilities as well as the use of modern technology through their own English medium schools and higher education institutions,` says Professor Khadim Hussain, guest lecturer at the Linguistics Department, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. `They now want to accommodatetheir people in civil services, defence and other fields.

Prof Hussain explains that till a few years ago, the share of such groups in private education sector was about 25 per cent but now it has risen to more than 40pc. If the trend continues, he says, there will be an increase in `social isolation`.

The issue at heart for academics and educationists is not the increase in school buildings, but what is being taught in these buildings. One analyst describes the intervention of religious groups in education systems as something meant to indoctrinate children instead of educating them.
Speaking in tongues by Zulfiqar Ali dawn.com