From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sat Jul 20 2002 - 15:40:07 MDT
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FREE AGENTS
This spring the U.S. State Department reported that South Asia
has replaced the Middle East as the leading locus of terrorism in
the world. Although much has been written about religious
militants in the Middle East and Afghanistan, little is known in
the West about those in Pakistan -- perhaps because they operate
mainly in Kashmir and, for now at least, do not threaten security
outside South Asia. General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military
ruler, calls them "freedom fighters" and admonishes the West not
to confuse jihad with terrorism. Musharraf is right about the
distinction -- the jihad doctrine delineates acceptable war
behavior and explicitly outlaws terrorism -- but he is wrong about
the militant groups' activities. Both sides of the war in Kashmir --
the Indian army and the Pakistani "mujahideen" -- are targeting
and killing thousands of civilians, violating both the Islamic "just
war" tradition and international law.
Pakistan has two reasons to support the so-called mujahideen.
First, the Pakistani military is determined to pay India back for
allegedly fomenting separatism in what was once East Pakistan
and in 1971 became Bangladesh. Second, India dwarfs Pakistan in
population, economic strength, and military might. In 1998 India
spent about two percent of its $469 billion GDP on defense,
including an active armed force of more than 1.1 million
personnel. In the same year, Pakistan spent about five percent of
its $61 billion GDP on defense, yielding an active armed force
only half the size of India's. The U.S. government estimates that
India has 400,000 troops in Indian-held Kashmir -- a force more
than two-thirds as large as Pakistan's entire active army. The
Pakistani government thus supports the irregulars as a relatively
cheap way to keep Indian forces tied down.
What does such support entail? It includes, at a minimum,
assisting the militants' passage into Indian-held Kashmir. This
much Pakistani officials will admit, at least privately. The U.S.
government believes that Pakistan also funds, trains, and equips
the irregulars. Meanwhile, the Indian government claims that
Pakistan uses them as an unofficial guerrilla force to carry out
"dirty tricks," murders, and terrorism in India. Pakistan, in turn,
accuses India's intelligence service of committing terrorism and
killing hundreds of civilians in Pakistan.
Pakistan now faces a typical principal-agent problem: the interests
of Pakistan (the principal) and those of the militant groups (the
agent) are not fully aligned. Although the irregulars may serve
Pakistan's interests in Kashmir when they target the Indian army,
they also kill civilians and perform terrorism in violation of
international norms and law. These crimes damage Pakistan's
already fragile international reputation. Finally, and most
important for Pakistanis, the militant groups that Pakistan
supports and the Sunni sectarian killers that Pakistan claims it
wants to wipe out overlap significantly. By facilitating the
activities of the irregulars in Kashmir, the Pakistani government is
inadvertently promoting internal sectarianism, supporting
international terrorists, weakening the prospect for peace in
Kashmir, damaging Pakistan's international image, spreading a
narrow and violent version of Islam throughout the region, and
increasing tensions with India -- all against the interests of
Pakistan as a whole.
PAKISTAN, TALIBAN-STYLE?
The war between India and Pakistan over the fate of Kashmir is as
old as both states. When Pakistan was formally created in 1947,
the rulers of Muslim-majority states that had existed within
British India were given the option of joining India or Pakistan.
The Hindu monarch of the predominantly Muslim state of Jammu
and Kashmir chose India, prompted partly by a tribal rebellion in
the state. Pakistan responded by sending in troops. The resultant
fighting ended with a 1949 cease-fire, but the Pakistani
government continued covertly to support volunteer guerrilla
fighters in Kashmir. Islamabad argued then, as it does now, that it
could not control the volunteers, who as individuals were not
bound by the cease-fire agreement. (On the other hand, Maulana
Abul A'la Maududi, the late founder of the Islamist party Jamaat-
e-Islami, argued that as individuals, these "mujahideen" could not
legitimately declare jihad, either.)
Pakistani officials admit to having tried repeatedly to foment
separatism in Kashmir in the decades following the 1948 cease-
fire. These attempts were largely unsuccessful; when separatist
violence broke out in the late 1980s, the movement was largely
indigenous. For their part, Indian officials admit their own
culpability in creating an intolerable situation in the region. They
ignored Kashmir's significant economic troubles, rampant
corruption, and rigged elections, and they intervened in Kashmiri
politics in ways that contradicted India's own constitution. As
American scholar Sumit Ganguly explains, the rigged 1987 state-
assembly elections were the final straw in a series of insults,
igniting, by 1989, widespread violent opposition. By 1992,
Pakistani nationals and other graduates of the Afghan war were
joining the fight in Kashmir.
What began as an indigenous, secular movement for
independence has become an increasingly Islamist crusade to
bring all of Kashmir under Pakistani control. Pakistan-based
Islamist groups (along with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, a Kashmir-based
group created by Jamaat-e-Islami and partly funded by Pakistan)
are now significantly more important than the secular Kashmir-
based ones. The Indian government estimates that about 40
percent of the militants in Kashmir today are Pakistani or Afghan,
and some 80 percent are teenagers. Although the exact size of the
movement is unknown, the Indian government estimates that
3,000 to 4,000 "mujahideen" are in Kashmir at any given time.
Whatever their exact numbers, these Pakistani militant groups --
among them, Lashkar-i-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen -- pose a
long-term danger to international security, regional stability, and
especially Pakistan itself. Although their current agenda is limited
to "liberating" Kashmir, which they believe was annexed by India
illegally, their next objective is to turn Pakistan into a truly
Islamic state. Islamabad supports these volunteers as a cheap way
to keep India off balance. In the process, however, it is creating a
monster that threatens to devour Pakistani society.
SCHOOLS OF HATE
In Pakistan, as in many developing countries, education is not
mandatory. The World Bank estimates that only 40 percent of
Pakistanis are literate, and many rural areas lack public schools.
Islamic religious schools -- madrasahs -- on the other hand, are
located all over the country and provide not only free education,
but also free food, housing, and clothing. In the poor areas of
southern Punjab, madrasahs funded by the Sunni sectarian
political party Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) reportedly even pay
parents for sending them their children.
In the 1980s, Pakistani dictator General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq
promoted the madrasahs as a way to garner the religious parties'
support for his rule and to recruit troops for the anti-Soviet war in
Afghanistan. At the time, many madrasahs were financed by the
zakat (the Islamic tithe collected by the state), giving the
government at least a modicum of control. But now, more and
more religious schools are funded privately -- by wealthy
Pakistani industrialists at home or abroad, by private and
government-funded nongovernmental organizations in the Persian
Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, and by Iran. Without state
supervision, these madrasahs are free to preach a narrow and
violent version of Islam.
Most madrasahs offer only religious instruction, ignoring math,
science, and other secular subjects important for functioning in
modern society. As Maududi warned in his 1960 book, First
Principles of the Islamic State, "those who choose the theological
branch of learning generally keep themselves utterly ignorant of
[secular subjects, thereby remaining] incapable of giving any lead
to the people regarding modern political problems."
Even worse, some extremist madrasahs preach jihad without
understanding the concept: They equate jihad -- which most
Islamic scholars interpret as the striving for justice (and
principally an inner striving to purify the self) -- with guerrilla
warfare. These schools encourage their graduates, who often
cannot find work because of their lack of practical education, to
fulfill their "spiritual obligations" by fighting against Hindus in
Kashmir or against Muslims of other sects in Pakistan. Pakistani
officials estimate that 10 to 15 percent of the country's tens of
thousands of madrasahs espouse such extremist ideologies.
Pakistan's interior minister Moinuddin Haider, for one, recognizes
these problems. "The brand of Islam they are teaching is not good
for Pakistan," he says. "Some, in the garb of religious training, are
busy fanning sectarian violence, poisoning people's minds." In
June, Haider announced a reform plan that would require all
madrasahs to register with the government, expand their curricula,
disclose their financial resources, seek permission for admitting
foreign students, and stop sending students to militant training
camps.
This is not the first time the Pakistani government has announced
such plans. And Haider's reforms so far seem to have failed,
whether because of the regime's negligence or the madrasahs'
refusal to be regulated, or both. Only about 4,350 of the estimated
40,000 to 50,000 madrasahs in Pakistan have registered with the
government. Some are still sending students to training camps
despite parents' instructions not to do so. Moreover, some
chancellors are unwilling to expand their curricula, arguing that
madrasahs are older than Pakistan itself -- having been "designed
1,200 years ago in Iraq," according to the chancellor of the
Khudamudeen madrasah. The chancellor of Darul Uloom
Haqqania objects to what he calls the government's attempt to
"destroy the spirit of the madrasahs under the cover of broadening
their curriculum."
Mujibur Rehman Inqalabi, the SSP's second in command, told me
that Haider's reform plan is "against Islam" and complains that
where states have taken control of madrasahs, such as in Jordan
and Egypt, "the engine of jihad is extinguished." America is right,
he said: "Madrasahs are the supply line for jihad."
JIHAD INTERNATIONAL, INC.
If madrasahs supply the labor for "jihad," then wealthy Pakistanis
and Arabs around the world supply the capital. On Eid-ul-Azha,
the second most important Muslim holiday of the year, anyone
who can afford to sacrifices an animal and gives the hide to
charity. Pakistani militant groups solicit such hide donations,
which they describe as a significant source of funding for their
activities in Kashmir.
Most of the militant groups' funding, however, comes in the form
of anonymous donations sent directly to their bank accounts.
Lashkar-i-Taiba ("Army of the Pure"), a rapidly growing Ahle
Hadith (Wahhabi) group, raises funds on the Internet. Lashkar and
its parent organization, Markaz ad-Da'wa Wal Irshad (Center for
Islamic Invitation and Guidance), have raised so much money,
mostly from sympathetic Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, that they are
reportedly planning to open their own bank.
Individual "mujahideen" also benefit financially from this
generous funding. They are in this for the loot, explains Ahmed
Rashid, a prominent Pakistani journalist. One mid-level manager
of Lashkar told me he earns 15,000 rupees a month -- more than
seven times what the average Pakistani makes, according to the
World Bank. Top leaders of militant groups earn much more; one
leader took me to see his mansion, which was staffed by servants
and filled with expensive furniture. Operatives receive smaller
salaries but win bonuses for successful missions. Such earnings
are particularly attractive in a country with a 40 percent official
poverty rate, according to Pakistani government statistics.
The United States and Saudi Arabia funneled some $3.5 billion
into Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Afghan war, according
to Milt Bearden, CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989.
"Jihad," along with guns and drugs, became the most important
business in the region. The business of "jihad" -- what the late
scholar Eqbal Ahmad dubbed "Jihad International, Inc." --
continues to attract foreign investors, mostly wealthy Arabs in the
Persian Gulf region and members of the Pakistani diaspora. (As
World Bank economist Paul Collier observes, diaspora
populations often prolong ethnic and religious conflicts by
contributing not only capital but also extremist rhetoric, since the
fervor of the locals is undoubtedly held in check by the prospect
of losing their own sons.)
As the so-called jihad movement continues to acquire its own
financial momentum, it will become increasingly difficult for
Pakistan to shut down, if and when it tries. As long as "Jihad
International, Inc." is profitable, those with financial interests in
the war will work to prolong it. And the longer the war in
Kashmir lasts, the more entrenched these interests will become.
ADDICTED TO JIHAD
As some irregulars are financially dependent on what they
consider jihad, others are spiritually and psychologically so. Many
irregulars who fought in Afghanistan are now fighting in Kashmir
and are likely to continue looking for new "jihads" to fight -- even
against Pakistan itself. Khalil, who has been a "mujahid" for 19
years and can no longer imagine another life, told me, "A person
addicted to heroin can get off it if he really tries, but a mujahid
cannot leave the jihad. I am spiritually addicted to jihad." Another
Harkat operative told me,
We won't stop -- even if India gave us Kashmir. ... We'll [also]
bring jihad here. There is already a movement here to make
Pakistan a pure Islamic state. Many preach Islam, but most of
them don't know what it means. We want to see a Taliban-style
regime here.
Aspirations like these are common among the irregulars I have
interviewed over the last couple of years.
The "jihad" movement is also developing a spiritual momentum
linked to its financial one. Madrasahs often teach their students
that jihad -- or, in the extremist schools, terrorism under the guise
of jihad -- is a spiritual duty. Whereas wealthy Pakistanis would
rather donate their money than their sons to the cause, families in
poor, rural areas are likely to send their sons to "jihad" under the
belief that doing so is the only way to fulfill this spiritual duty.
One mother whose son recently died fighting in Kashmir told me
she would be happy if her six remaining sons were martyred.
"They will help me in the next life, which is the real life," she
said.
When a boy becomes a martyr, thousands of people attend his
funeral. Poor families become celebrities. Everyone treats them
with more respect after they lose a son, a martyr's father said.
"And when there is a martyr in the village, it encourages more
children to join the jihad. It raises the spirit of the entire village,"
he continued. In poor families with large numbers of children, a
mother can assume that some of her children will die of disease if
not in war. This apparently makes it easier to donate a son to what
she feels is a just and holy cause.
Many of these families receive financial assistance from the
militant groups. The Shuhda-e-Islam Foundation, founded in 1995
by Jamaat-e-Islami, claims to have dispensed 13 million rupees to
the families of martyrs. It also claims to provide financial support
to some 364 families by paying off loans, setting them up in
businesses, or helping them with housing. Moreover, the
foundation provides emotional and spiritual support by constantly
reminding the families that they did the right thing by donating
their children to assist their Muslim brethren in Kashmir. Both
Lashkar-i-Taiba and Harkat have also established charitable
organizations that reward the families of martyrs -- a practice
common to gangs in inner-city Los Angeles and terrorist groups
such as al Qaeda and Hamas. Although these foundations provide
a service to families in need, they also perpetuate a culture of
violence.
BAD BOYS
The comparison to gangs and terrorist groups is particularly apt
because the irregulars often hire criminals to do their dirty work --
and sometimes turn to petty or organized crime themselves.
Criminals are typically hired to "drop" weapons and explosives or
to carry out extreme acts of violence that a typical irregular is
reluctant or unable to perform. For example, members of the
Dubai-based crime ring that bombed the Bombay stock exchange
in March 1993 later confessed that they had been in Islamabad the
previous month, where Pakistani irregulars had allegedly trained
them to throw hand grenades and fire Kalashnikov assault rifles.
Law-enforcement authorities noted that the operatives' passports
contained no Pakistani stamps, suggesting the complicity of the
Pakistani government.
Criminals joining supposed jihad movements tend to be less
committed to the group's purported goals and more committed to
violence for its own sake -- or for the money. When criminals join
private armies, therefore, the political and moral constraints that
often inhibit mass-casualty, random attacks are likely to break
down. Criminal involvement in the movement also worsens the
principal-agent problem for Pakistan: pure mercenaries are even
harder to control than individuals whose goals are at least partly
aligned with those of the state.
EXPORTING HOLY WAR
Exacerbating the principal-agent problem, Pakistani militant
groups are now exporting their version of jihad all over the world.
The Khudamudeen madrasah, according to its chancellor, is
training students from Burma, Nepal, Chechnya, Bangladesh,
Afghanistan, Yemen, Mongolia, and Kuwait. Out of the 700
students at the madrasah, 127 are foreigners. Nearly half the
student body at Darul Uloom Haqqania, the madrasah that created
the Taliban, is from Afghanistan. It also trains students from
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Russia, and Turkey, and is currently
expanding its capacity to house foreign students from 100 to 500,
its chancellor said. A Chechen student at the school told me his
goal when he returned home was to fight Russians. And according
to the U.S. State Department, Pakistani groups and individuals
also help finance and train the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a
terrorist organization that aims to overthrow secular governments
in Central Asia.
Many of the militant groups associated with radical madrasahs
regularly proclaim their plans to bring "jihad" to India proper as
well as to the West, which they believe is run by Jews. Lashkar-i-
Taiba has announced its plans to "plant Islamic flags in Delhi, Tel
Aviv, and Washington." One of Lashkar's Web sites includes a list
of purported Jews working for the Clinton administration,
including director of presidential personnel Robert Nash (an
African American from Arkansas) and CIA director George Tenet
(a Greek American). The group also accuses Israel of assisting
India in Kashmir. Asked for a list of his favorite books, a leader of
Harkat recommended the history of Hitler, who he said
understood that "Jews and peace are incompatible." Several
militant groups boast pictures of burning American flags on their
calendars and posters.
INTERNAL JIHAD
The "jihad" against the West may be rhetorical (at least for now),
but the ten-year-old sectarian war between Pakistan's Shi'a and
Sunni is real and deadly. The Tehrik-e-Jafariya-e-Pakistan (TJP)
was formed to protect the interests of Pakistan's Shi'a Muslims,
who felt discriminated against by Zia's implementation of Sunni
laws governing the inheritance and collection of zakat. Iran
helped fund the TJP, probably in hopes of using it as a vehicle for
an Iranian-style revolution in Pakistan. Five years later, Haq
Nawaz Jhangvi, a Jamaat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) cleric,
established the SSP to offset the TJP and to promote the interests
of Sunni Muslims. The SSP was funded by both Saudi Arabia and
Iraq. Since then, violent gangs have formed on both sides.
After Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni sectarian gang, attempted to
assassinate then Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif in
early 1999, Sharif proposed to expand the special military courts
that try terrorist crimes from Karachi to the rest of the country.
Pakistan's Supreme Court later deemed the special courts
unconstitutional. Musharraf has continued Sharif's attempt to rein
in the terrorist groups by implementing, among other things, a
"deweaponization" plan to reduce the availability of guns to
sectarian gangs and criminals.
The problem for Musharraf is that it is difficult to promote the
"jihad" in Kashmir and the Taliban in Afghanistan without
inadvertently promoting sectarianism in Pakistan. The movements
share madrasahs, camps, bureaucracies, and operatives. The JUI,
the SSP's founding party, also helped create both the Taliban and
Harkat. Deobandi madrasahs issue anti-Shi'a fatwas (edicts), and
boys trained to fight in Kashmir are also trained to call Shi'a kafirs
(infidels). Jaesh-e-Mohammad, an offshoot of Harkat and the
newest Pakistani militant group in Kashmir, reportedly used SSP
personnel during a fundraising drive in early 2000. And the SSP's
Inqalabi, who was recently released after four years in jail for his
alleged involvement in sectarian killings, told me that whenever
"one of our youngsters wants to do jihad," they join up with the
Taliban, Harkat, or Jaesh-e-Mohammad -- all Deobandi groups
that he claims are "close" to the SSP.
Sectarian clashes have killed or injured thousands of Pakistanis
since 1990. As the American scholar Vali Nasr explains, the
largely theological differences between Shi'a and Sunni Muslims
have been transformed into full-fledged political conflict, with
broad ramifications for law and order, social cohesion, and
government authority. The impotent Pakistani government has
essentially allowed Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi'a Iran to fight a
proxy war on Pakistani soil, with devastating consequences for the
Pakistani people.
WHITHER PAKISTAN?
Pakistan is a weak state, and government policies are making it
weaker still. Its disastrous economy, exacerbated by a series of
corrupt leaders, is at the root of many of its problems. Yet despite
its poverty, Pakistan is spending hundreds of millions of dollars
on weapons instead of schools and public health. Ironically, the
government's "cost-saving" measures are even more troubling. In
trying to save money in the short run by using irregulars in
Kashmir and relying on madrasahs to educate its youth, Pakistan
is pursuing a path that is likely to be disastrous in the long run,
allowing a culture of violence to take root.
The United States has asked Pakistan to crack down on the
militant groups and to close certain madrasahs, but America must
do more than just scold. After all, the United States, along with
Saudi Arabia, helped create the first international "jihad" to fight
the Soviet Union during the Afghan war. "Does America expect
us to send in the troops and shut the madrasahs down?" one
official asks. "Jihad is a mindset. It developed over many years
during the Afghan war. You can't change a mindset in 24 hours."
The most important contribution the United States can make,
then, is to help strengthen Pakistan's secular education system.
Because so much international aid to Pakistan has been diverted
through corruption, both public and private assistance should
come in the form of relatively nonfungible goods and services:
books, buildings, teachers, and training, rather than money. Urdu-
speaking teachers from around the world should be sent to
Pakistan to help. And educational exchanges among students,
scholars, journalists, and military officials should be encouraged
and facilitated. Helping Pakistan educate its youth will not only
cut off the culture of violence by reducing ignorance and poverty,
it will also promote long-term economic development.
Moreover, assisting Pakistan will make the world a safer place. As
observers frequently note, conflict between India and Pakistan
over Kashmir is one of the most likely routes to nuclear war in the
world today. The Pakistani militants' continued incursions into
Indian-held Kashmir escalate the conflict, greatly increasing the
risk of nuclear war between the two countries.
Although the United States can help, Pakistan must make its own
changes. It must stamp out corruption, strengthen democratic
institutions, and make education a much higher priority. But none
of this can happen if Pakistan continues to devote an estimated 30
percent of its national budget to defense.
Most important, Pakistan must recognize the militant groups for
what they are: dangerous gangs whose resources and reach
continue to grow, threatening to destabilize the entire region.
Pakistan's continued support of religious militant groups suggests
that it does not recognize its own susceptibility to the culture of
violence it has helped create. It should think again.¶
Jessica Stern is a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government and Adjunct Fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations.
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