6 - 12 December 2001
Issue No.563
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 December 2001 Issue No.563 |
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Unmourned soldiers
With the death of hundreds of Pakistani PoWs in last week's prison revolt in Afghanistan, Pakistan needs to take a hard look at the madrassas that produced them, writes Absar Alam in Islamabad
The US-led coalition's cold shoulder regarding calls for an investigation into the massacre at Qala-i Jhangi fort, near Mazar-i Sharif, in which an estimated 600 non-Afghan Taliban prisoners of war (PoWs) were killed following during a prison revolt last week, has raised many questions and quite a few eyebrows in Pakistan. The revolt, put down brutally by the combined forces of the opposition Northern Alliance and US bombing, saw the death of most of the Pakistani, Arab and Chechen fighters imprisoned there.
A moment of calm among chaos: a woman feeds pigeons at the Shahi Dow Shamshira shrine in Kabul
(photo: AFP)
The Islamabad-based spokesman of the US-led coalition, Kenton Keith, refused this week to give in to an demand by Amnesty International to hold an investigation into the killings. Justifying the US bombing on the prison, Kenton told a press conference that "After they [the prisoners] revolted, their status changed from prisoners to combatants."
Although President Pervez Musharraf had spoken to both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the US Secretary of State Colin Powell about ensuring the safety of the hundreds of Pakistani Taliban trapped in northern city of Kunduz before it fell to the NA early last week, officials privately admit Islamabad was powerless to rescue them. These Taliban fighters, after they surrendered, were taken to Qala-i Jhangi, where the gory incident, which also claimed the life of a CIA official, took place.
"The government was not very serious in taking these Pakistani Taliban back," a senior official said, requesting anonymity. Major General Rashid Qureshi, the government's chief spokesman, seemed to be saying as much when he was asked why the government did not do anything to save its citizens. "Why did they go to wage war in a foreign country in the first place?" he said.
Political analysts and the Pakistani people in general are less callous on this issue, however. They accuse the government failing to save hundreds of Pakistani lives. "Look at the Americans," remarks Sadiq Ahmed, a carpet dealer in Islamabad, bitterly. "There was only one American Taliban in the prison, and the US forces have taken him to custody and are talking care of him."
The Taliban in question, born John Phillip Walker Lindh, is a Washington DC resident who converted to Islam. Now known by his Muslim name, Abdul Hamid, he apparently went to Pakistan with a humanitarian group, but joined a madrassa (religious school). It is from Pakistan's numerous hardline religious schools like the one Hamid studied at that so many mujahidin (holy warriors) have emerged. It was these mujahidin that eventually succeeded in ousting the Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan.
Thousands of young, religious Pakistanis joined the madrassas during Cold War days of the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The governments of Pakistan, the United States and other Western countries were funding the madrassas then. With sacks full of gold, guns and grenades, the intelligence agencies encouraged the religious scholars of Pakistan to recruit more students, but the effort was perhaps far too successful. In 1979, there were an estimated 1,700 madrassas sin Pakistan. By 1999, that number had swelled to around 6,000.
Every year these madrassas would churn out thousands of graduates, many of them foreigners, who joined the fight against the "infidel" former Soviet Union, which "did not believe in the existence of God." Once the Soviet war was over, these students, or taliban, fought a bloody war against the mujahidin commanders and captured most of Afghanistan.
In the absence of proper regulation and monitoring systems, Pakistan's madrassas adopted no modern syllabus and ultimately produced fanatic, half-literate graduates. Since there were no jobs available for them in Pakistan, many went on to join the radical Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Hundreds of Pakistani Taliban who first surrendered in Kunduz and then got killed in Qala-i Jhangi were the production of these schools who joined the civil war in Afghanistan believing they were participating in a jihad.
These Pakistani Taliban hailed from poor families who start sending their children as early as age five and up to 18 to the madrassas, where they receive food, shelter and an education, however weak. Successive governments in Pakistan have not checked the activities of the madrassas, many of which are believed to be involved in illegal acts. The years of negligence are one of the main causes for the deaths of hundreds of Pakistani Taliban.
Senior Pakistani officials privately admit they were under tremendous pressure from the families whose sons have either been killed or still trapped inside Afghanistan to address the issue of Pakistani Taliban. There are at least 4,000-5,000 Pakistanis who are still in Afghanistan, either under detention by the Northern Alliance or still fighting for Taliban.
As President Musharraf's government is getting in motion to rein in the activities of the madrassas, unrest is brewing in Pakistan for the failure of the government to save the lives of these Pakistanis. It is yet to be seen how Pakistan's religious parties, whose leadership is under arrest, would react to this action by a military government that has been supportive of their activities in the past.
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