As U.S. presses, jihad schools prosper
Posted: Friday, October 26, 2007 3:17 PM
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Islamabad, Pakistan
By Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – I'd never been mistaken for a Taliban fighter before. I've been accused of being a CIA agent, a Mossad spy, a crusader and a war profiteer, but never a militant Islamic fundamentalist. I hardly look the part.
But when we pulled up outside the madrasa near Peshawar, it was the first thing we were asked.
I was in the back of a new Toyota 4x4, driven by a Pashtun who knows how to handle himself. The Pashtuns are members of an ancient tribe that straddles the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Before these were ever countries, the Pashtuns were here, and they like to brag how they pushed out British colonial forces and now American soldiers. They like to think of themselves as the toughest people in the world. They might be right.
I was flanked by two armed guards, also Pashtuns. One was dressed in an old police uniform. The other had a thick black beard and wore the traditional vest, long jacket, skull cap and baggy trousers.
In the 1980s, Peshawar was the one of the centers of al-Qaida, then known simply as the Services Office. The Services Office's mission was to deploy holy warriors from across the Islamic world into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Osama bin Laden had a house in Peshawar. The two-story villa is now a dormitory for a girls’ school. Two decades later, the holy warriors are back in Peshawar. That's why we were accompanied by armed guards. You don't fool around in Peshawar.
Outside the madrasa, men huddled around a steaming cart serving boiled chickpeas turned and stared when we pulled up in the 4x4. With the expensive car and hired gunmen, I guess we looked like we meant business, and the only people doing that these days in Peshawar are al-Qaida and the Taliban.
"Are you from the Taliban?"one of the men asked my main Pashtun escort. The armed guards never spoke a word.
"Maybe," he said.
"What are you doing here?"
"We are bringing Islamic Revolution."
"Good," the man said and nodded. "We need it."
Jihad academies
Within a few minutes we were taken into the madrasa, which in Arabic simply means "school." But in Pakistan the madrasas are Islamic institutes, boarding schools where children memorize the Koran eight hours a day, six days a week and study what I like to call The Theory.
The Theory is a world view – a mixture of history, conspiracy and myth – common from Morocco to Indonesia. The basic tenet is that the United States and Israel are united in a crusade to destroy Islam, harvest the Middle East's oil and subjugate Muslims through a network of corrupt dictators.
The director of the madrasa summed it up by saying, "American is the enemy of Islam. The United States wants Muslims to be slaves."
The madrasa's brochure said – in English – that its objectives are:
- imparting religious and Arabic education.
- interpreting correct and rational beliefs based on the Koran and Sunna (the accepted traditions of the Prophet Mohammed)
- safeguarding Islamic and Arabic culture
- countering false beliefs
- equipping holy warriors with culture and morals.
The madrasas are jihad academies, and they are expanding.
We arrived on registration day. The madrasa normally holds 800 students, but we saw hundreds more submitting applications. The school's director said there are at least 20,000 madrasas across Pakistan and that the U.S.-led "War on Terrorism" has made them more popular than ever.
Coming to madrasas for answers
In the last four months reporting on al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and now Pakistan, I have been told over and over that the war on terrorism is a war on Islam. American-funded television stations and other Washington PR initiatives designed to show the Islamic world that Muslims in fact enjoy full rights in the United States (often more than in their own countries) do not seem to be working.
When I asked about all the new applicants, and visited the new wing being built to accommodate them all, the madrasa's director certainly seemed to think the U.S. approach was producing results – for him.
"Whenever the United States equates terrorism and Islam," he said, "people here want to find out, 'What is this Islam?' What is it about Islam? Why is America so frightened by it? Many more people come to the madrasas to find out."
It is a serious problem. While the Taliban, al-Qaida and their ideology were a serious threat in Afghanistan (as proven by the atrocities of 9/11), they are much more dangerous is Pakistan, a poor country of 165 million armed with 35 to 40 nuclear weapons.
