WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 05, 2001
Pak Islamic leaders disoriented by Taliban rout
ISLAMABAD: The weakness of Islamic religious parties and radical groups in Pakistan has been exposed following the rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan and about-face by Islamabad, analysts say.
With the writing on the wall for the Taliban, calls by the Pak-Afghan Defence Council (PADC) for "jihad", or holy war against the Americans and civil disobedience against the Pakistani government are bringing fewer and fewer people on to the streets.
"The religious parties' agitation in Pakistan over the situation in Afghanistan has been short on numbers and long on rhetoric," wrote Syed Talat Hussain, an editorialist in the daily Dawn newspaper.
"By coming out on the streets, these parties attempted to show their strength but end up exposing their weaknesses."
Idrees Bakhtiar, a Karachi-based specialist in radical Islamic groups, agreed. "The performances of the PADC in terms of mobilisation have been poor," he said.
The group did manage to get 50,000 people on to the streets on October 26 during countrywide demonstrations against the US strikes on Afghanistan, which have since fizzled out.
Compared to the half-a-million who used to spill on to the streets of Karachi to protest the United States involvement in the Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, however, the turnout, though the largest in the country, was meagre.
The Islamists are "demoralised, as if struck by the sudden collapse of the Taliban," said Bakhtiar. Moreover, he added, the various groups have failed to form a united front.
Another analyst, Illyas Khan, said the various groups were "manipulated, financed and trained" by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the Pakistani secret police.
They therefore became "disoriented" when the authorities began turning on them under pressure from the United States.
President Pervez Musharraf reaffirmed in a television address last week the desire of Pakistan, which helped the Taliban into power in Afghanistan, to contain religious radicals.
Following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, several religious leaders, among them Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Jamaat-e-Islami, have been placed under house arrest, while scores of their followers have been imprisoned.
"There has been religious repression not seen since the 1970s," said a researcher in the eastern city of Lahore, pointing, for example, to the imprisonment of imams for using speeches in mosques to make political statements.
Musharraf Monday met officials of the interior and religious affairs ministries to examine an overall plan aimed at regulating teaching programmes and the financing of Pakistan's estimated 3,000 Koranic schools, known as madrassas.
Officials said after the meeting that the government is preparing a comprehensive policy to bring the religious schools into the mainstream educational system.
The madrassas, which have spawned the Taliban and other radical groups, have been financed since the 1970s by the Pakistani and Saudi Arabian governments.
"The passions of the students of the madrassas to take part in the jihad in any event have been cooled by the adventures of those who followed Sufi Mohammad to Afghanistan," the academic said.
"The Pakistani authorities deliberately allowed them over the border."
Thousands of Pakistani volunteers entered Afghanistan at the end of October, led by Sufi Mohammad, head of Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM), a party for the strict application of the Islamic code, to join the Taliban fight against the Northern Alliance and a US-led coalition force.
Many have not been heard of again, while their leader has been arrested and sentenced to three years in jail for entering Pakistan illegally.
"The Pakistani intelligence service will let the government and the Americans act as long as their activities in Kashmir are not affected," said an expert on the ISI. "Their priority is to go against Indian interests" in Kashmir.
( AFP )
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