...But terrorists come from all socioeconomic backgrounds. For poor people in countries where economic prospects are bleak, jihad can be one of the few jobs available. Of the 25,000 insurgents and terrorism suspects detained by U.S. forces in Iraq as of 2007, nearly all were previously underemployed, according to Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, the commander of detainee operations at the time. And according to Christopher Boucek of the Carnegie Endowment, the Saudi Interior Ministry found that most of the 639 convicted terrorists going through a rehabilitation program came from lower- or middle-class families, while 3 percent had high-income backgrounds...

These numbers can be benchmarked to enrollment in regular schools. Public schools run by the government enrolled between 16 and 17 million children in 1998 (Census of Pakistan, 1998); private schools enrolled almost one-third as many, at 6 million in 2000 (Federal Bureau of Statistics, Survey of Private Educational Institutes in Pakistan, 2000). As a percentage of children between the ages of 5 and 19, government schools accounted for 33 percent and private schools for another 12 percent. Again, since roughly one-half of all children between the ages of 5 and 19 are enrolled in school, as a percentage of enrollments these numbers approximately double to 73 percent and 26 percent. This comparison suggests that there are 38 times as many children in private and 104 times as many in government schools compared to madrassas.

Before he started interrogating insurgent prisoners in Iraq, he had been told that they were highly ideological and committed to establishing an Islamic caliphate in Iraq, Major Alexander says. In the course of the hundreds of interrogations carried out by himself, as well as more than 1,000 that he supervised, he found that the motives of both foreign fighters joining al-Qa'ida in Iraq and Iraqi-born members were very different from the official stereotype. In the case of foreign fighters – recruited mostly from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and North Africa – the reason cited by the great majority for coming to Iraq was what they had heard of the torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. These abuses, not fundamentalist Islam, had provoked so many of the foreign fighters volunteering to become suicide bombers.

The aim of this essay is to reply to these arguments. It starts not from the fantasies circulated about Islam in France but from reality. Islam is not the threat many would have us believe. What characterises any religion is its ambiguity. It is a tool of domination for those who run the system. But it can also be a tool of resistance for the oppressed. Islam is not homogenous. The state Islam of the Middle East should not be confused with that of French immigrants who are subjected to state racism. Olivier Roy, an authority in this matter, underlines the point:

Most of the young are radicalised in the West. Those drawn to radical Islamism are mostly ‘born again Muslims’.⁶ They have become Islamised in the West. What they contest is something very modern: US imperialism, capitalism, etc. In a word, they have taken over domain of intellectual debate which 30 years ago belonged to the proletarian left, 20 years ago to ‘direct action’ and a century ago to the ‘Bonnot Gang’,⁷ etc. We are talking here of a domain of militant debate abandoned by the extreme left. It is the only one available to these young people who wish to ‘break’ the system.⁸

We need a coherent left wing answer to the discrimination from which Muslims, and more particularly Muslim women, suffer. Socialists’ aim is to combat racist divisions and to strengthen the unity of all those whose interest it is to change the world. The real enemy is the system, capitalism, which exploits and oppresses the vast majority of the planet. We need to unite the majority of the exploited and oppressed, no matter their religion or sex, if we are to give ourselves the means to transform the world. In constructing this unity we can forge a genuine political alternative (one which Islam does not offer). It can be the motor for radically overthrowing this society.

Well, many of them are in agreement with the goal of weakening Hamas, very simply. I mean, in Egypt, this is a domestic security issue. Hamas is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is the main opposition movement. It couldn’t be simpler. The same is true in Jordan: the Muslim Brotherhood is the main—or it is actually the main opposition movement in Jordan. And so forth. So, for these regimes, keeping their chairs, keeping their thrones, keeping their money, their power, is the only thing that’s really important. Their people? They don’t care about their people.

But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

India’s majoritarian fascists, represented in Parliament by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are in a blue funk. The findings of the “Prime Ministers’ High Level Committee” (set up on March 9, 2005) headed by the former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Justice Rajindar Sachar, have in its Report submitted to Parliament on November 30, 2006 nailed the long-touted Right-wing disinformation about Indian Muslims as a skein of lies.

from white, "pakistan's islamist frontier," 2008
In and around 2002, for example, observers often made the mistake of reading the MMA hrough the lens of the Afghan Taliban; in doing so they underestimated the degree to which the Pakistani Islamists would be shaped by (even entrapped by) local political interests. Similarly, Observers today often make the mistake of reading the new class of neo-Taliban insurgent groups narrowly through the lens of al Qaeda and the Waziri militant networks; in doing so they again tend to underestimate theways in which these insurgents and their agendas are woven deeply into the fabric of both local and regional politics.
(...) Unlike the JUI, which drew largely from a rural support base and recruited the clerical Classes, the JI sought to recruit technocrats and activists, and drew its support predominantly rom the “devout middle classes” of Pakistan’s urban centers.16 Opposed to the Muslim League, the JI was Mawdudi’s attempt to institutionalize a movement of Islamic renewal among Muslims in India.
(...) Early attempts by the JI and the JUI to give the new state a substantive Islamist character were, on the whole, unsuccessful. Many of their failed efforts, however, set the pattern for future Islamist strategies of political agitation. For example the Tehrik-e-Khatam-e-Nabuwat (Movement for the Finality of the Prophethood), which pressed for the government to declare the Ahmadiyya sect as non-Muslim, was harshly suppressed by the government in 1953; but by 1974, after significant public pressure by Islamist groups, its main objectives had been accommodated in the form of a constitutional amendment.
(...) The Jamaat’s domestic policy during this era was consumed with the question of whether to give precedence to Zia’s program of Islamization, or to hold to the party’s democratic principles and insist on civilian governance. After much internal disagreement, Mawdudi’s successor Mian Tufail decided that the opportunity to do away with Bhutto and institutionalize the shariah program of the Jamaat was too appealing to pass up: the party became a partner with Zia and contributed several cabinet members to his government.
(...) The JUI had a much more limited interaction than the Jamaat with Zia’s government as such; by the early 1980s, the JUI, like the JI, was disillusioned with Zia’s reforms and began agitating for a return to civilian rule. But the Deobandis were ultimately shaped in profound ways during the Zia era through their participation in the Afghan jihad, and by the patronage they received from the state. The jihadi campaign against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, funded by the Americans and Saudis and operated by the Pakistani intelligence services, resulted in the establishment of hundreds of madaris throughout the Frontier.
(...) Both the prestige and the external financing which came with the jihadi vocation began to upend the traditional social order, particularly in the tribal areas. Tribal elders, including those maliks who served as paid liaisons between the tribes and the state’s political agent, found their standing undermined by new groups of entrepreneurial youth. This trend dovetailed with the explosion of remittance income from the Gulf states in the 1970s, which further reshaped in dramatic ways the political economy of the tribal areas.48 The systems of indirect rule which the state had relied upon for over a century began to deteriorate in the face of new regional and economic realities. [in sum, a antiquated system of state patronage for tribal maliks was being undermined by a new class of well-funded clerics]
(...) The Jamaat, though it had played a major role in the IJI’s election campaign, was never entirely comfortable with its place in the pro-military alliance. In 1987 Qazi Hussain Ahmad had taken over leadership of the Jamaat from Mawdudi’s successor,Mian Tufail. As an ethnic Pashtun, Qazi Hussain was the first non-Mohajir to lead the party since it inception in 1941, and was more sympathetic than his predecessors to populist political mobilization.51 Under his leadership the Jamaat retained its ideological focus on Islamization, but broadened its political agenda to include populist agitation and more rhetoric on socio-economic issues. This orientation did not always fit comfortably with the IJI’s political approach.
(...) The JI’s ambivalent relationship with the pro-military block in the post-Zia era was also accelerated by domestic political realignments which were threatening its hold on its traditional base of support among the Mohajir community. Therise of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) in Karachi in the late 1980s — a rise engineered in part by Zia and the army to weaken the Jamaat — left the party casting about for new constituencies. Qazi Hussain’s ethnic background and Islamic-themed populism allowed the Jamaat to broaden its base of support among the non-Mohajir middle classes in Punjab and — perhaps most importantly —
into the Pashtun frontier areas.
(...) On account of the extensive links which had been established in the 1980s between the Deobandi political establishment and the Pakistani intelligence services, the JUI by and large had only a muted responseto the military coup in 1999; the party’s investment in the Taliban precluded it from taking a more confrontational approach to the return of military rule.
The Jamaat, by contrast, had considerably less political investment in the Taliban movement and realized that, for all of the state’s support for Taliban and Kashmiri Islamist proxies, Musharraf would be unlikely to make even half-hearted attempts at expanding the reach of Islamist legal or political influence. The partythus conducted protests following the coup; Qazi Hussain was temporarily banned from the NWFP, and party activities were closely monitored by the government to prevent domestic unrest.
(...) The “mullah-military” nexus is, however, a more complicated story than is commonly portrayed. It is a relationship anchored in mutual manipulation, and one which has produced at least as much antagonism as cooperation. The military often used the Islamists for domestic or foreign policy ends: to distract from the unpopularity of a martial government, or antagonize India, or extend its sphere of influence into Afghanistan. But it is also evident that the Islamists were not infrequently at odds with Pakistan’s martial regimes. The religious parties bitterly opposed Ayub Khan. Even during Zia ul-Haq’s martial government, as the mutual manipulation reached its zenith with the army’s instrumentalization of the religious parties for the jihad and the Islamists’ attempts to garner state funds and press for Islamist reforms, the partnership was short-lived. By the mid- 1980s the relationship had soured and groups like the Jamaat were again deeply disillusioned with the martial state.
(...) The early Deobandis, for example, had a long history of interaction with madaris in Afghanistan and the tribal areas, but the movement did not begin as one dominated by ethnic Pashtuns. The Afghan jihad accelerated the process of “Pashtunization” among the Deobandi parties in Pakistan — a process which has resulted in the emergence of JUI factions which often put greater emphasis on ethnic and regional issues than on the broader implementation of Islamic revivalism throughout Pakistan. The Jamaat too has seen dramatic changes to its constituent base since Partition. Founded on an appeal to Punjabi and Mohajir urban religiosity, the party was weakened by the rise of the MQM in Karachi in the 1980s, which cut into its voter base. The selection of Qazi Hussain as amir in 1987 and the party’s efforts to broaden its appeal to a Pashtun constituency subsequently realigned the Jamaat’s approach to mobilizing its political base. Most notably, it increased its focus on issues relating to foreign influence in Afghanistan, and played off of gender issues (e.g., condemning gender-integrated events) in a way that was likely to appeal to the socially conservative Pashtun population.
(...) The reality is more multifaceted. Even the two major Islamic political blocs, the Jamaat and the JUI-F, have distinctly different visions of an Islamic state and society, and have often been at odds with one another. The parties, for example, had notably different views on the Taliban.71 The JI’s outlook is deeply ideological, modernist, and pan-Islamic. Its urban middle-class constituents are primarily concerned with restructuring the legal and political order. The JUI-F, by contrast, is a relatively pragmatic party with a rural, clerical constituency whose objectives are to protect the madrassah system from state interference and promote a conservative interpretation of Pashtun social values which they defend as Islamic. It should come as no surprise that these two movements have often found themselves on different sides of the political space in Pakistan and, prior to 2002, did not join together in any meaningful way to
advance a common agenda.
(...) These general patterns change somewhat at the local level, particularly in areas which have a history of tribal governance, such as the FATA and present-day Swat. In these regions, Islamist political behavior is often less related to ideology or patronage concerns than it is to established patterns of group conflict which appear in segmentary lineage tribal systems. These are patterns in which small tribes or factions partner with the state or with other small factions to take on a dominant faction in their own area. This kind of perpetual balancing, and the highly provisional alliances which make it possible, are regular features of religious politics in the tribal areas, and ones which are integral to understanding Islamism in the contemporary Frontier. It is important, for example, to realize that when Islamist groups in the tribal areas ally with
the state, they usually do so in the pursuit of political advantage vis-à-vis local rivals rather than in allegiance to state authority or shared political ends.
(...) Segmentation also, however, provides a secondary advantage to the religious parties: both the JUI and the Jamaat have learned to leverage their positions as political organizations in order to serve as middlemen between the state and the various militant factions to which they are linked. In this respect, the Deobandi parties have focused their efforts on the western (Afghan) front, positioning themselves as occasional brokers between the government and Taliban groups in the tribal areas. The Jamaat’s linkages, by contrast, have proven particularly useful to the state in support of anti-Indian incursions on the eastern (Kashmiri) front.74 Often these parties are asked to serve as interlocutors in secret negotiations; but just as often, they take up the cause of militant groups in public fora, either to rally their own political base or to express by proxy certain strategic interests of the state which cannot be expressed on an official basis.

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(...) First, even though the religious parties are no longer in a governing role, and no longer command the influence they did even several years ago, the relationship between mainstream “democratic Islamists” and the new insurgent movements is a critical dynamic in understanding Islamism in the Frontier. The promises and demands of groups such as Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP), the TNSM in Swat, and the Lashkar-e-Islami (LI) in Khyber are not very far removed from those of the MMA six years ago. The tactics and organization of such groups, to
be sure, differ in profound ways from those of the MMA. But the continuities are equally important. Absent the historical backdrop of the MMA’s tenure, it would be easy to miss the quasi-political nature of groups like the TNSM and LI. It would also be easy to misconstrue the complex relationships between the “democratic Islamists” and the new insurgent groups — relationships which may figure prominently in the ability of the state to eventually bring insurgents into the political mainstream.
(...) The rise of the Islamist alliance in 2002 cannot be understood apart from the American invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, which immediately became the cause célèbre of the religious parties, and gave them an electoral issue with strong regional, ethnic, and religious appeal. Not surprisingly, it was Pashtun religious politicians such as Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the JUI-F, Maulana Sami ul-Haq of the JUI-S, and Qazi Hussain Ahmad of the JI who were best positioned to make use of “Islamic rage” in the wake of American operations against the Pashtun Taliban in Afghanistan.
(...) This change agenda was not only reactive, but also sweepingly proactive. The MMA promised the institution of a true Islamic system in the Frontier, including the prohibition of “obscene” material on cable television, the provision of Islamic banking, and the conversion of the provincial assembly into an “Islamic jirga.”12 Other pledges were considerably more vague, such as the curtailing of un-Islamic work by NGOs and foreign elements, the enforcement of “Islamic justice,” the imposition of the shariah into the provincial framework of law, and the promotion of policies designed to encourage the use of head coverings. Much as Mufti Mahmud had done in 1970, the MMA wove this Islamic reform agenda together with a rhetoric of populist
governance, an approach which in many ways echoed the language of the PPP.13 Drawing on its lower- and middle-class roots, the religious alliance put forward a strikingly populist campaign that equated Islamic political reforms with a pro-poor agenda.14 The MMA’s plan for its first hundred days promised the creation of a halfmillion new jobs, free education through the secondary level, interest-free loans for low-cost housing, cheap medications, and old-age allowances.
(...) If the Afghan situation had sufficient explanatory power to describe the election results, then why did the MMA make such surprising inroads into non-Pashtun Hazara division, an area in which there is minimal concern among the electorate about Afghan issues? Or why did the MMA lose in district Tank (adjacent to Waziristan), where there is a widespread affinity for the Afghan Taliban? The Afghan situation, along with the political interference by the ruling elites designed
to capitalize upon it, were necessary but not sufficient factors to explain the ascent of political Islam in the Frontier in 2002. Acute anti-establishment feeling was a significant driver of the electoral shift, as was the success of the MMA’s own populist agenda and its drive to implement a new kind of politics oriented around “Islamic values” and religio-political motifs.
(...) A more complete assessment, however, accounting for the MMA’s full fiveyear
tenure, reveals a decidedly more benign outcome: while the MMA certainly introduced or reinforced several troubling socio-political trends, it did not bring about widespread change in the Frontier, and neither did it demonstrate the means or the will to carry out more than a superficial program of Islamization. The story of the MMA’s gradual adaptation to the exigencies of governance begins with this first, tumultuous year in power.
(...) But it is clear in retrospect that late 2003 represented a critical inflectio
point at which the MMA leadership began pivoting toward an Islamism that was decidedly more populist, and more practical.
(...) It was clear after the MMA’s tumultuous first year in office that the substance of its Islamization agenda had largely stalled. Even so, the alliance continued to promote its program through informal channels. At the most basic level, the MMA did this through its use of Islamic rhetoric, which it used to shore up its credentials among the electorate; deflect attention from local problems; and generally distinguish itself from the mainstream and nationalist opposition, both of which were afraid of appearing un-Islamic in comparison to the ulema. Such was the MMA’s use of religious language that even political rivals in the ANP and PPP were often forced in provincial assembly sessions to show their support for “Islamicized” resolutions with which they disagreed in substance, for fear that they would be politically outmaneuvered by the MMA.
(...) Opponents claimed that the MMA leadership was often reluctant to take action against insurgent groups, or even against clerics who were causing trouble for local authorities. By and large, this was true: the Islamists frequently found themselves boxed in by their own religious rhetoric, such that they could not afford to confront any individual or group which carried out activities in the name of religion, lest they be seen as undermining their own message.
(...) But with the rise of the TNSM and neo-Taliban–linked bombings in 2006 and 2007, the MMA’s hesitance in confronting religious insurgents began to have tangible and adverse implications for the province. By the spring and early summer of 2007, the religious parties were coming under severe criticism for their indecisive response to the TNSM’s militancy in Swat, and
to a wave of bombings which had penetrated into the settled areas of the province.36 Politicians from the religious parties unconvincingly blamed the federal government and its security services, rather than the Taliban groups, for fomenting instability in the Frontier to destabilize the MMA government (though in private they acknowledged the spread of dangerous militant organizations into the settled areas).37 The situation in NWFP further deteriorated in the summer of 2007 following retaliations by militant groups after the siege of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad. The MMA government put off any kind of action against the TNSM until the final weeks of its rule, when the JUI-F chief minister quietly agreed to an expanded security presence in the Swat valley.38 Even then, the JUI-F did so reluctantly and in the face of
internal opposition by the Jamaat, and later denied that it had ever acceded to allowing military action in Swat.
(...) It is an overstatement to suggest, as some observers have, that the rise in militancy in 2006 and 2007 in NWFP was a result of the MMA provincial government; as is noted below, the religious parties were often at odds with the new insurgent movements, and upset about their expanding influence. At the same time, however, the MMA clearly played an indirect role in facilitating the spread of the insurgency by virtue of its inaction. While the alliance performed decently well in carrying out its law and order obligations under relatively peaceful conditions, the rising tide of insurgency eventually exposed the MMA’s political limitations in being able to take action against other self-described “religious” movements.
(...) (Anecdotal evidence suggests that the most problematic aspect of the madrassah system is not its curriculum as such, but its narrow pedagogy and openness to itinerant recruiters affiliated with sectarian or militant organizations.) One of the largely unexamined questions of the MMA’s tenure in NWFP is the degree to which the Islamist parties in general, and the JUI-F in particular, leveraged their position in government to benefit the madaris. Not since the Afghan jihad had the Deobandi parties been granted such extensive access to state resources, and it
was clear that for the JUI-F — as one up-and-coming party leader noted — “the madaris are our number-one priorities.”40 Given their important social welfare function, the flow of government resources to religious organizations is not prima facie a cause for concern. Still, there are legitimate fears that some of these madaris may have had linkages with the neo-Taliban movements now active in the Frontier.
(...) It is impossible to reliably assess the net impact of the MMA’s patronage of the madaris. It is clear that substantial funds were channeled to religious institutions during the Islamists’ tenure; but it is also clear that many of these funds were provided in-kind, and to institutions which served important social as well as religious functions.
(...) Statements by MMA leaders seemed to indicate that this emphasis on female education was due in part to a desire “to quash western propaganda that Islam did not guarantee women’s rights.”49 Regardless of the rationale, however, the MMA did eventually convince skeptical donors that they were serious about educating women.50 “I do believe now,” said one World Bank education advisor in 2007, “that they want women’s education. I don’t question that anymore.” Female enrollment figures reflected the province’s investment in girls’ education,
with some o f the most striking gains coming from the most conservative areas dominated by the MMA. Over two years, Bannu saw a 38% increase in female primary enrollment; in Dir, 22%; in Buner, 40%; and in Dera Ismail Khan, 85%.51 Middle and secondary school female enrollments also increased, sometimes dramatically: in poor districts like Buner and Hangu, girls’ enrollments were up over 50%; in Dir, 39%; and in Shangla, Mahsehra and Lakki Marwat, over 20%.52 Overall, between 2001/02 and 2006/07, the gross female enrollment ratio in public primary schools increased from 48% to 57%.
(...) Critics were quick to point out, however, that they were much
less supportive of expanding opportunities for women’s employment which might
absorb the newly-educated female population.
(...) The MMA government’s record on health and social welfare issues was much the same: the alliance, lacking a clear agenda tying health to its Islamization mandate, deferred almost entirely to the advice of the provincial bureaucracy and the international donors. Most outside experts agree that the Islamist government adopted responsible health policies which differed little from those of previous governments, and interacted in a professional manner with domestic and foreign institutions.
(...) In spite of the MMA’s views on the role of women in public life, its impact on the gender policies of the province, and on the norms of the society at large, were relatively modest. Aside from a few abortive attempts to mandate the wearing of head coverings for female students, the alliance’s education and health policies basically supported the status quo on gender issues. Any greater ambitions to institutionalize enforcement of gender norms died with the repeated failure of the Hisbah bill. On a social level, the MMA did exert informal influence (e.g., people noticed more women observing purdah in local markets), but even here the change was not dramatic.
(...) There is no question that the MMA leadership was uncomfortable with gender reforms. “Deep down,” admitted a party advisor in the Frontier, “the JUI does not want to give a free role to women. They think that free mixing is not Islamic.”65 This did not mean, however, that the religious parties tacitly supported a Taliban-like agenda on gender issues.66 In reality, many of the most troubling and high-profile actions which set back women’s rights in the NWFP, such as the forcible closing of girls’ schools, were not sanctioned by the alliance’s leadership, and actually ran counter to the MMA’s political and institutional interests. The religious parties, for
examle, received a great deal of criticism for the closing of girls’ schools in the northern districts of NWFP beginning in 2007, when in fact that activity was carried out almost entirely by the TNSM and affiliated neo-Taliban groups, in contravention to the MMA’s own program of expanding female primary education.67
(...) Beyond the explicitly religious content of the MMA’s agenda, the Islamists also brought with them a unique style of governance and a distinctive political culture. These remain important even in the post-MMA era, as they shaped the political landscape of the Frontier and helped to redefine the boundaries of Pashtun nationalist discourse. Echoes of the MMA’s “Islamic populism” can be seen in the style of the ANP-led government which followed, and also in the ad hoc forms of Islamist governance established by the neo-Taliban in both the settled and tribal areas.
(...) Unlike any previous ruling party in the Frontier, the MMA brought to its exercise of governance a unique lower- and middle-class sensibility. The JUI-F drew its base of support predominantly from the underdeveloped southern districts, and the Jamaat relied on support from the so-called “devout middle classes” in the Peshawar valley and the poor districts in the north. Appealing to these constituents, MMA parliamentarians often spoke at length about wanting to help small farmers, shopkeepers, transport workers, and the young berozgar (unemployed) class, including madrassah graduates. Party workers from the PML-N, ANP, and PPP, by contrast, would often begin their criticism of the MMA by critiquing the Islamists’ ineffective industrial policy, or their lack of commitment to large-scale irrigation projects of the kind favored by the landed elites.
(...) The MMA’s style of Islamic populism was undoubtedly a form of political posturing, but it also points to the way in which the Islamists sought to articulate a vision of an Islamic welfare state which equated religious values with populist reforms likely to appeal to lower-class voters. It is, for example, remarkable to note the extent to which the MMA’s published manifesto focused not on the enactment of shariah legislation or the curbing of un-Islamic acts, but on promises to curb corruption, ensure provision of “bread, clothes, shelter, education, jobs and marriage expenses” (an effective play on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s famous promise of roti, kapra aur makan), ensure speedy justice, promote literacy through free education, and “[take] care of backward areas and classes.”88 In this sense, the language of Islamic populism was a rhetorical bridge which joined the MMA’s concern for Islamization and religious symbolism with its
efforts yo expand a patronage base among its lower-class constituency.
(...) The portrait which emerges above is that of the MMA as a right-of-center but
essentially status quo political force. And indeed, as early as 2004 it had become obvious
that the Islamist parties would not be a radical Talibanizing influence in the Frontier.
While their policies and rhetoric continued to trouble many observers, the religious
parties were clearly unwilling or unable to press for dramatic Islamist reforms. It is easy
to forget that this trend-line toward moderate politics, while apparent in retrospect, was not at all obvious even in 2003. [four factors given below: internal tensions in the alliance which stymied radical action, constitutent pressures (i.e., most people didn't really want it), the role of the international community via necessary development funding, and the role of the state in the formation of its politics)
(...) One of the most salient factors which limited the MMA’s ability to implement its Islamist agenda was the lack of enthusiasm for real reform within sectors of the MMA’s own constituency. An overwhelming majority of Pakistanis, when surveyed, express support for “implementing strict shariah law” in Pakistan.95 Actual implementation of strict regulations ostensibly deriving from the shariah is decidedly less popular.96 Even the relatively modest changes implemented by the MMA in NWFP provoked grumbling — and not just among “liberal-minded” Pashtuns.
(...) Beginning with the MMA’s victory in the NWFP, in which the state itself had a hand, there were profound pressures on the provincial Islamist government to comply with the interests
of the martial regime in Islamabad... In the end, the federal structure of Pakistan, the central government’s fiscal and bureaucratic leverage, the ability of the security services to fragment the religious alliance, and the MMA’s unique role as a “loyal opposition” to the Musharraf government kept the Islamists in Peshawar vulnerable to manipulation by the state.113 The MMA did not have wide berth to pursue a rigorous Islamization agenda even if it had wanted to, and nor did it have the autonomy to pursue policies which ran counter to significant state interests.
(...) Finally, as will be argued below, it is worth noting a lesson that should not be drawn from the decline of the MMA: religious politics is not going away in the Frontier. If anything, it is more relevant than ever. There is a striking resonance between the rhetoric, promises, complaints, and hot-button issues of the MMA in 2002, and the language of neo-Taliban groups in the Frontier today: injustice, corruption, obscenity, government inaction, and foreign intervention, to name a few. The locus of this “discussion,” to be sure, has gradually moved outside the bounds of formal electoral politics and into the realm of vigilantism, militancy, and insurgency — but it may yet come back. If and when it does, the religious parties are likely to again play an important role, and the lessons from the MMA’s tenure may again be relevant in responding to the religious politics of the Frontier.

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(...) This new movement, known as the neo-Taliban, is distinct from both the Afghan Taliban and from mainstream Pakistani Islamists such as the MMA, though it has critical linkages with both groups.2 “Neo-Taliban” is itself a term of convenience, and refers not to a coherent operational entity but rather to a loose collection of selfdefined Taliban groups which share a number of common features.
(...) Groups with close ties to al Qaeda, such as some Taliban organizations in Waziristan and Bajaur, are more likely to have a transnational Islamist outlook and clear ideological reasons for rejecting the legitimacy of the Pakistani state. Other more locally-oriented movements, such those which emerged in Swat district and Khyber agency, tend toward a language of vigilante Islamism, in which they accept the state’s role in theory, but legitimize violence on the basis of its ostensible failings.
(...) Third, the movement is often linked to criminal networks and the illegal economy. This was, and remains, true for the Afghan Taliban, which is intimately linked to the opium trade. In the Pakistani context, it is becoming increasingly clear — even to the public at large — that the groups which call themselves Taliban are often no more than armed gangs which use religious symbolism to gain a foothold in local communities.6 Whereas mainstream religious parties such as the JUI-F historically maintained side interests in local transport networks, the neo-Taliban groups have explicitly sought to dominate local services and industries, particularly in FATA and
PATA region. The timber mafia in Swat was reportedly a key backer of the TNSM insurgency, and local leaders in Khyber agency such as Mangal Bagh rose to prominence through their control of transport networks used for smuggling goods across the Durand Line.7 Some observers have suggested that the neo-Taliban may eventually go the way of the FARC in Colombia, becoming over time less ideological and more criminal in nature.
(...)The creation of Tehrik-e-
Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP) in late 2007 merely formalized what had become a franchise-oriented model of insurgency. And while the Tehrik eventually took on a coordinating role among the various Taliban groups, it succeeded as a brand more than as an organization. TTP’s branding strategy sought to portray the movement as cohesive, and affiliate it with a simple platform of religious and political values. This aggregation function served the TTP leadership in Waziristan by amplifying its voice and reach, but also served the local affiliates by providing them with access to resources, and by discouraging local communities from pushing back against outsiders who claimed to be part of the umbrella organization. Despite this strategy, the TTP remains a loose alliance of convenience; local commanders still play a critical role in the decision-making of these groups, andsome localized movements — like that of Mangal Bagh in Khyber — have ought to triangulate their position vis-à-vis the state by staying out of TTP and instead pursuing a parallel Taliban-like agenda.
(...) the Taliban groups have proven to be adept at co-opting the state at the local level. Their expansion has often followed a predictable pattern: well-armed groups of young men enter an area with Kalashnikovs and white pickup trucks, calling themselves Taliban; they win the favor of the community by taking on local criminal elements and prohibiting certain un-Islamic behaviors; they establish qazi courts for the quick adjudication of disputes; and, having garnered some measure of local support, they set about solidifying their control by marginalizing or killing local notables and government officials, enacting even stricter Islamist measures, and establishing environments conducive to their own criminal networks.8 By playing off of local discontentment with the judicial system, policing, and other state services, the insurgents are able to gain a foothold which they then use to reinforce their local position.
(...) At a macro level, the neo-Taliban movement is indisputably a Pashtundominated insurgency. Disputes within the movement often fall along predictable tribal lines; and just as often, local tribal blocs leverage Taliban influence in order to compete against traditional rivals. But at the same time, the insurgents are threatening established norms by killing tribal elders, carrying out suicide bombings, and attacking jirgas. Other aspects of Pashtun culture (particularly those which have come under conservative Deobandi influence over the last several decades) are amplified perversely by the militants: the destruction of girls’ schools, barber shops, and music stores sit uncomfortably with most Pashtuns living in the conservative southern districts of the NWFP.
(...) Even before the government’s operation against the madrassah students in July, dissenters within the JUI-F (many of whom were from the Balochistan wing of the party) had argued that they needed to come out strongly in favor of the Taliban groups.10 Fazlur Rehman and most senior JUI-F party members from the NWFP demurred, in part because they were more dependent upon the state for patronage in the Frontier, but also because they were more directly threatened by the insurgent expansion in the southern part of the province. After the operation, the conflict burst into the open, and the JUI-F leadership wrestled for several months with internal dissenters who insisted that the party was obligated to support the madaris and the Islamization agenda of the neo-Taliban.
(...) The TNSM and its Waziri allies came to develop a similarly bleak view of the religious parties. The TNSM leadership, including Maulana Fazlullah, had close ties with the Jamaat, but also with JUI ulema from the Swat valley. Several of these ulema went to Fazlullah with the intent of persuading him to moderate his opposition to polio prevention campaigns and girls’ schools, but ultimately failed.17 Fazlullah did not strongly oppose the MMA — particularly so long as the alliance took a hands-off approach to the TNSM — but his supporters from Waziristan reportedly pushed the movement into a more hard-line posture.18 As the TTP patrons” from Waziristan became more and more dominant over their TNSM clients in Swat in 2008, the movement eventually took a harder line against the state, and against politically-active religious elements.
(...) Even secular observers interviewed in Peshawar in 2007 and 2008 expressed concern that the religious political establishment — leaders like Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain — might lose their ability to draw young activists into the formal political space rather than see them join militant organizations. (The JUI-F has, in making its case to foreigners, also framed its role in this way: arguing that it is a “wall” holding back the tide of militant influence in the tribal areas.19) The religious parties relish the opportunity to play the part of intermediaries between the militants and the state, and will likely continue to do so. Their views on the legitimacy of violence and vigilantism are also apt to prove important means by which they distinguish themselves from more militant Islamist efforts.
(...) By and large, the government of Pakistan has been slow to respond to the gradual expansion of neo-Taliban influence in the Frontier. In Waziristan it undertook deals in 2004 and again in 2006, both of which failed to quell local violence and resulted in an increase in cross-border attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.21 In Swat, the provincial government responded haltingly to the return of the TNSM under Maulana Fazlullah. After considerable delay, it carried out relatively successful army operations in October 2007, which appear to have been spurred by attacks on military targets in the area, capture by insurgents of tactically important sites such as the Saidu Sharif airport, and growing embarrassment that the militant groups were operating
openly in defiance of the state. Following the collapse of the May 2008 peace deals, the army again took on the TNSM and their Waziri patrons in Swat, prompted in part by concern over the compromise of critical lines of communication, including the Shangla Pass in northern NWFP.22 The military also carried out limited (and mostly cosmetic) operations under the aegis of the Frontier Corps in Khyber agency in the summer of 2008, ostensibly to disrupt the activity of Mangal Bagh’s Lashkar-e- Islami; and a large-scale campaign in Bajaur and Mohmand agencies, which included both ground and air operations and resulted in the displacement of several hundred thousand refugees into the settled areas of the NWFP.23 While recent actions, such as those in Bajaur, suggest the adoption of a more aggressive posture by the military in the Frontier, the overall pattern of the state’s response has been quite tentative in the past years. The case of Darra Adam Khel is broadly illustrative of the ways in which the government has attempted to deal with the emergence of the neo-Taliban, and serves as a microcosm for nderstanding the interaction between insurgents and the state.
(...) The rise of militant influence in Darra illustrates a number of the neo-Taliban characteristics described above. The local militant movement, by most accounts, emerged in an ad hoc way and only later established linkages with other networks in the Frontier. It built goodwill by targeting local criminals, but soon engendered resentment for its own criminality and brutality. It took advantage of the poor governmental oversight of the FR areas, and co-opted elected officials into its camp, thus allowing it to frame its agenda in terms of local development and not simply Islamization or power politics.41 It used religious parties and local tribesmen as intermediaries,
while recognizing that the government lacked the capacity and the will to follow through with sustained paramilitary or military operations. And it fostered relationships with outside groups, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Punjabi sectarian organizations whose members reportedly established militant training camps near Darra.4
(...) The response of the state to the violence in Darra was also illustrative of the broader challenges it faces in the Frontier. The government repeatedly negotiated with neo-Taliban militants, usually through jirgas, and these negotiations repeatedly failed. One basic problem was the lack of credible state capacity to enforce its agreements. The system of managing the FR areas relies heavily on indirect rule by the political agent through the tribal leaders, and is ill-equipped to deal with a robust militant movement like that of the neo-Taliban. The state was able to displace the militants for a short while, but had no robust system of local governance through which to maintain order.
(...) In the Frontier the results appeared to tell a different, but related, story. The MMA was defeated soundly by its rivals, garnering only 10% of provincial assembly seats (down from about 50% in 2002). The Pashtun nationalist ANP delivered the strongest showing, with 32% of seats, followed by independent candidates with 23%, and the PPP with 18%.44 The PPP-S, PML-N, and PML-Q each polled about 5%. Despite widespread fears of terrorism, overall turnout appeared to be comparable to that of the 2002 election. (Participation was somewhat depressed in Malakand division due to fears about Taliban presence, and somewhat inflated in the areas around Bannu due to Taliban ballot-stuffing.45)
(...) The electoral success of the ANP and PPP brought about a flood of news reports hailing the rise of secularism and the rejection of religious politics and “Talibanization” in the Frontier. While this narrative captured one important dynamic of the poll results, it did not tell the entire story. The religious parties’ defeat was due to a number of factors. Public anger over American action in Afghanistan was no longer a driving force as it had been in the 2002 elections, and anti-Western sentiment was no longer the province only of the religious parties. Moreover, the MMA’s standing had been weakened by rifts within the alliance over the extent of its cooperation with Musharraf ’s military government, and following the imposition if the Emergency in late 2007, the JI had decided to boycott the elections. (While it is doubtful that the Jamaat would have returned a strong showing in the polls, its participation might have cut somewhat into the ANP’s success in urban areas, and districts such as Upper and Lower Dir.) The mainstream and nationalist parties were also given much wider latitude to contest the elections than in 2002, and there was by all accounts significantly less government interference in the election process.
(...) The movement traces its roots to the Khudai Khidmatgars (Servants of God) who, led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, launched a non-violent campaign against the British in 1929. Known as the Red Shirts, these Pashtuns later later allied themselves with the Indian National Congress, with Khan dubbed the “Frontier Gandhi.” On account of their affiliation with the Congress, the Red Shirts were sidelined after the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and intermittently banned until the early 1970s. The movement nominally continued during this period under the leadership of Khan’s son Wali Khan, who joined the leftist National Awami Party (NAP). The NAP, as noted above, formed a coalition government in NWFP in 1972 with Mufti Mahmud of
the JUI, but this alliance was short-lived.49 Wali Khan’s NAP was banned during the latter years of Bhutto’s rule, and he eventually took up the leadership of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in 1984, which in turn merged into the Awami National Party (ANP) in 1986.
(...) The party also brings with it notable weaknesses. It does not have significant influence in many of the areas which have come under insurgent threat, such as the southern settled districts, or FATA agencies outside of Khyber and parts of Mohmand and Bajaur. It has a history of vicious infighting, manifested in ongoing disputes between Asfandyar Wali Khan (son of Wali Khan, and uncle of the current chief minister) and the Bilours, a long-established Hindko-speaking political family from Peshawar. Its leadership is often uncomfortable and ineffective in using Islamic language that appeals to the religiously conservative population, particularly outside of the Peshawar valley. (Although, in its efforts to promote the Nizam-e-Adl Act in Malakand division, it has been more proactive in enacting religious legislation than the MMA government.) And its pro-Karzai policy is deeply unpopular throughout the Frontier,
where Karzai is widely ridiculed to as a “fake Pashtun.
(...) The ANP’s nationalist agenda, while generally consonant with U.S. interests in the near-term, is therefore more complex than it is often portrayed. The party has spoken out strongly against American strikes in the FATA, and has pushed, against U.S. pressure, for peace deals in Swat. Taking the long view, the ANP’s enthusiasm for Western military intervention in Afghanistan is also likely to be contingent. This support, as one party leader has argued, is based on the premise that “the U.S. and NATO in Afghanistan are not as dangerous as Persians and Punjabis.”56 To the ANP, the American support for Karzai is, on the one hand, a check on Tajik (i.e., Darispeaking Afghan) influence and, on the other, a check on Pakistani state hegemony
over the Pak-Afghan frontier areas. This perspective suggests that the ANP will continue to be viewed with suspicion by the military-bureaucratic elites in Islamabad. It also suggests that any substantive attempt by the international community (together with the government of Pakistan) to negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan may put the party in the awkward position of having to weigh its its support for Pashtun dominance of Afghan politics against its secular political orientation and its abiding fear of a “Punjabi” proxy in eastern Afghanistan.

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(...) Most actions undertaken by the FC, however, should not be confused with actual counterinsurgency activities. Any review of the literature on insurgency will suggest that successful counterinsurgency efforts are fundamentally about a political contestation over the legitimacy of a given government. Absent a strategic program of coordinated political reforms in the FATA, there is essentially no government in the tribal areas to contest. FC activities, while useful, are maneuver-oriented and tactical rather than politically-oriented and strategic.
Counterinsurgency activity in the FATA — whether by the FC or the army — will not achieve overall political objectives until and unless the government begins to conduct such activities in the context of a coordinated program of governance reform, such as the one outlined below.
(...) Citizen mobilization programs which raise lashkars against local militants might represent a very effective counterinsurgency model in the Frontier, since most communities have both the legitimating mechanisms (jirgas) and means (small arms) to mobilize quickly. Almost by definition, the state cannot direct these lashkars, but it can encourage and support them. In some areas and in some cases, consistent and timely state support of lashkars has the potential to induce a cascading effect in encouraging other communities to take up arms against militant organizations.
(...) Neo-Taliban groups which have established a foothold in the Frontier have often proven to be unpopular on account of their brutality and their seizure of local assets. One key area, however, in which these insurgents have effectively played on local discontent is on matters of justice. The judicial system in the Frontier, inherited from the British, comes under nearly constant criticism for its partiality, corruption, and slow processing of cases.53 Taliban groups have proven adept at exploiting frustration over the judicial process by establishing qazi courts which adjudicate disputes and award punitive judgments on the spot. These courts have blossomed in almost every Pashtun-majority part of the Frontier — including the tribal agencies,
PATA regions, the Swat valley, and even in Peshawar district itself. According to reliable reports, “the Taliban have been campaigning in the Tribal Areas and asking locals to submit their complaints in the Qazi courts rather than the country’s courts if they want ‘quick and easy’ justice.”54 The use of qazi courts by Islamist movements as a means by which to bypass or challenge the writ of the state is long-established in the Frontier, particularly in areas such as Swat.
(...) Observers who trace the rise of extremism in the Frontier tend to focus on exogenous factors, such as the Afghan jihad and the American war in Afghanistan following 9/11. These are of course critical events. But comparatively less attention has been paid to the internal, structural weaknesses of the state which have facilitated the rise of radical Islamist movements. This section and the one which follows examine these weaknesses and the crises of governance in the settled and tribal areas, respectively.
(...) The Local Government Ordinance (LGO),
commonly known as the Devolution plan, devolved powers from a class of elite deputy commissioners — each of whom oversaw several administrative districts, and wielded broad discretionary authority — to a class of local elected officials. The reforms were intended to encourage local ownership and decision-making; boost delivery of health, education, and other government services; buttress the military’s democratic credentials; and bypass the provincial government so that elites in Islamabad could exert direct political influence on local government.
(...) The Frontier today is a complex patchwork of governance systems — of settled districts, provincially administered tribal areas, frontier regions, and federally administered tribal areas. Each of these has its own unique history and logic. But the amalgam of frameworks has also made it difficult to manage anything resembling a coordinated counterinsurgency response to the growing radicalization of the Frontier. Prior to the Devolution system, the provincial home secretary in Peshawar served as the link between the settled areas, the PATA, and the FATA. This critical link was broken in 2002 when, following the promulgation of the LGO, the government began transferring administrative oversight of the FATA from a special cell in the provincial government to a new FATA Secretariat in Peshawar.
(...) There are four reasons behind the advocacy for FATA reform. First, the region is rightly seen by security planners as an “ungoverned” space conducive to the development and perpetuation of insurgent and terrorist safe havens.82 Following the reestablishment of al Qaeda
operations from FATA, this has become a preeminent national security issue for the United States. Second, the Pakistan army’s failed intervention in Waziristan in 2004, combined with actions taken by the neo-Taliban insurgents targeting political agents and tribal maliks, has resulted in the collapse of the political agent system in several of the southern tribal agencies.83 There is a recognition among some military and civilian leaders that it may be more profitable to move forward with FCR reforms than to attempt a reinvigoration of the now-discredited political
agent system. Third, civil society advocates have proposed FCR reforms in order to bring FATA
governance into conformity with international civil and human rights norms.84 The FCR system lacks basic civil protections; allows for collective punishment of individual crimes; and places extraordinary discretionary powers in the hands of the political agent, who often faces perverse incentives to collude with tribal elders for their mutual financial gain.85 And finally, there are political pressures behind the current agitation for reform: the ANP would like to see the FATA integrated into the NWFP, as it believes that integration will serve both its ideological aspirations (for pan-Pashtunism), and electoral prospects.
(...) The U.S. should support extension of the Political Parties Act to the FATA. This legal change would be largely symbolic, but nonetheless politically meaningful. The current political environment, in which party activity is formally suppressed, favors parties such as the JUI-F which can mobilize via madrassah networks. Allowing formal party activity would send an important signal to residents of the FATA about their political rights and their place in the larger Pakistani polity, and would provide incremental benefits to mainstream and nationalist parties seeking to compete for votes in the tribal areas.
(...) But the most critical reforms are those which focus on institutions of governance. Aside from the office of the political agent, and the relatively moribund “agency councils,” the FATA lacks institutions through which political power and state resources can be channeled. Absent institutional development, FATA reforms will have little effect in integrating the tribal areas into the Pakistani mainstream, or addressing the governance vacuum which has proven to be so advantageous to neo-Taliban groups. The U.S. should strongly promote the development of institution-oriented reform plans. These might include the establishment of local government structures (directly or indirectly elected) which feed into a FATA Council on the model of a provincial assembly; courts which establish a right of appeal to Peshawar or Islamabad; and modest civil institutions through which to coordinate development programs.88 Of these, a local
elected government is perhaps the most important. Such a system need not mirror the local government system in the settled areas, but at the very least the state should begin a process by which to establish a baseline set of government functions, and build up institutions which, over time, can constitute legitimate alternative centers of local power.
(...) The cultural reductionists contribute an important word of caution to the debate over FATA reforms, but ultimately fail to account for the dynamism and adaptability which Pashtun society has demonstrated over the last three decades.

researching while arab:
A masters student at the University of Nottingham who was arrested under the Terrorism Act under suspicion of possessing extremist material was studying terrorism for his dissertation, Times Higher Education can reveal.

al-qaeda and the modernist wall:
I shall discuss an approach I have termed the "modernist wall", which seeks to deconstruct the ethical and epistemological structure of jihadist mentality, with an eye to obtaining a better grasp of what shapes it and how it works.
(...) this process of metamorphosis could not have brewed and regenerated itself in the absence of a major ingredient: the West's extremism in posing itself as the ultimate way of life, denigrating all other alternatives and forcing anyone who differs into having to choose either between identifying with it fully, at the cost of his religious and personal persona, or to turn fully and thoroughly against it.
(...) [dawkins fits here] The predicament of positivists, according to Gray, is that they believe that the more science advances, the more people will share the same values and, by extension, the solider will become the embodiment of the ethics of secularism, enlightenment and peace. Al-Qaeda essentially destroyed this hypothesis, not so much because of Al-Qaeda itself but because the persistence in promoting this hypothesis breeds violent organisations bent on destroying it. Such is the case with "end of history" theories, which implicitly put paid to the notion of cultural coexistence. These have become an important source for generating and fuelling "exclusionist" cathartic movements set upon seizing the helm of history and steering it towards "redemption". All jihadist movements in the Islamic world have been motivated by the sense that the West is relentlessly attacking their history and civilisation with the purpose of effacing them and supplanting them with its own. It is little wonder, therefore, that the Islamist revivalist creed perpetuates itself so easily, feeding as it does on the very substance of Western modernism.

one man's terrorist...:
In 1986, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose emotional invectives against "terrorists" were second to none, welcomed Abdul Haq, an Afghan rebel leader who admitted that he had ordered the planting of a bomb at Kabul airport in 1984 which killed at least 28 people. Such, then, were the scruples of cold-war anti-communists in late 20th century. As Anastasio Somoza had been "our son of a bitch", the Moujahedeen were now "our fanatic terrorists".

pakistan and islamism (hoodboy):
After his ill-advised dismissal of the chief justice of Pakistan's supreme court ignited violent protest, President Pervez Musharraf may be banking on Islamic fanatics to create chaos in the nation's capital, Islamabad. Many suspect that an engineered bloodbath that leads to army intervention, and the declaration of a national emergency, could serve as a pretext to postpone the October 2007 elections. This could make way for Musharraf's dictatorial rule to continue into its eighth year - and perhaps well beyond.
(...) But his secret reliance upon the Taliban card - one that he has been accused of playing for years - is increasing as his authority weakens. Signs of government-engineered chaos abound. In the heart of Islamabad, vigilante groups from a government-funded mosque, the Lal Masjid, roam the streets and bazaars, imposing Islamic morality and terrorising citizens in full view of the police. Openly sympathetic to the Taliban and tribal militants fighting the Pakistan army, the two cleric brothers who head Lal Masjid, Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi, have attracted a core of banned militant organisations around them. These include Jaish-e-Muhammad, considered a pioneer of suicide bombings in the region.
(...) Astonishing patience has been shown by the Pakistani state, which on other occasions freely used air and artillery power to combat such challenges. Lal Masjid seems to operate with impunity - no attempt has been made to cut off its electricity, gas, phone or website - or even to shut down its illegal FM radio station. The chief negotiator appointed by Musharraf, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, described the burka brigade kidnappers as "our daughters", with whom negotiations would continue and against whom "no operation could be contemplated".
(...) Lal Masjid's head cleric, a former student of my university in Islamabad, added the following chilling message for our women students: "The government should abolish coeducation. Quaid-e-Azam University has become a brothel. Its female professors and students roam in objectionable dresses. I think I will have to send my daughters of Jamia Hafsa to these immoral women. They will have to hide themselves in hijab, otherwise they will be punished according to Islam. Our female students have not issued the threat of throwing acid on the uncovered faces of women. However, such a threat could be used for creating the fear of Islam among sinful women. There is no harm in it. There are far more horrible punishments in the hereafter for such women."
(...) In a sense, the inevitable is coming to pass. Until a few years ago, Islamabad was a quiet, orderly, modern city no different from any other in Pakistan. Still earlier, it was largely the abode of Pakistan's elite and foreign diplomats. But the rapid transformation of its demography brought with it hundreds of mosques with multi-barrelled audio cannons mounted on minarets, as well as scores of madrasas, illegally constructed in what used to be public parks and green areas. Now, tens of thousands of their students with prayer caps dutifully chant the Qu'ran all day. In the evenings, they roam in packs through the city's streets and bazaars, gaping at store windows and lustfully ogling bare-faced women. [but surely his chain of causation only skirts with superficials?]

pakistan, afghanistan, and current crises:
Pakistan has historically seen both a problem and an opportunity in Afghanistan. The problem is that the British Empire, like all empires, drew its boundaries with no respect for the lives and aspirations of the people on the ground. Its empire in India ended in the Northwest Frontier Province, despite the wars to conquer Afghanistan. While Afghanistan was outside the formal structure of empire, in fact there was social, economic and cultural continuity across the Pashtun region that spans Pakistan and Afghanistan. The new Pakistani leadership saw this as a problem once Pakistan became independent in 1947. Would there be calls for an independent Pashtunistan? Pakistan sought to limit the power of ethnic nationalism to unite Pashtuns across the border. They came to believe that in order to keep the NWFP, they would need leverage over Afghanistan.
(...) In its confrontation with India, especially after 1971 war that spilt off East Pakistan and created Bangladesh, the Pakistani generals looked at a map and thought, given how narrow Pakistan is, if India invades, where do we retreat to and fight back from? They decided they could retreat to Afghanistan and organize the defense from there. To do so they needed a client government in Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the US effort to organize the resistance gave Pakistan a chance. It tried to take advantage of its support for the insurgents against the USSR to establish clients among the Afghan militias. But the real breakthrough came in the chaos after the Soviets left and the Americans stopped caring about what happened in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s military helped create, train, arm, equip and at times led the Taliban to take power in Afghanistan during the 1990s. The goal was to create a client regime there. But, after 9/11, they had to distance themselves from the Taliban because of American pressure. But they seem not to have let go completely.
(...) [excellent summary of US creation of pakistan's military complex] The US and Pakistan have a long military relationship. In 1954 Pakistan signed a military co-operation agreement with the US. Up to that point it was a very small army with very little equipment, inherited from the British army before independence. With this agreement with US, Pakistan hoped to get military aid, training, and equipment to build an army to match India. The US was looking for a Cold War ally and saw Pakistan as pivotal with its proximity to the Middle East and to the USSR and a willingness to support the US. [/] The US poured in money, training, and equipment and redesigned the army on American lines. A generation of officers was sent to US for training. Many went to on to become very senior. They included General Zia-al-Haq, who trained in the US and went on to stage a military coup in 1977 and ruled for over ten years. US training was hugely influential in shaping how the Pakistani military thought about military issues. They developed a taste for American equipment, and American strategy and tactics. [/] From the 1950s to the 1970s, this was conventional training and conventional weapons: tanks, planes, artillery, communications. These were the skills that won ambitious soldiers promotions and medals. As a consequence, these people had an important voice in military planning and decision making. In the 1980s, the Afghan war meant that the focus shifted to organizing and running a guerilla army. In this period the ISI came into its own, going from an insignificant agency to an enormously powerful institution. It received money, training in covert ops, ideology, and developed a capacity for recruiting, training and managing Islamic militants. These became the new ways of war. [/] After the end of the Afghanistan war and the collapse of the USSR, Pakistan was no longer needed. The US imposed sanctions and cut off aid because of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Through the 1990s there was almost no aid or training. It started again after 9/11. The US has resumed cooperation, but its emphasis is countering al-Qaeda and Taliban. It has focused on intelligence sharing, covert action, counter-insurgency, ideology, and propaganda. [/] But many of the Pakistani generals still value Americans weapons. They are seen as high-equalizers against India’s larger numbers of soldiers, tanks, planes and so on. So Pakistan continues to seek big ticket, high-tech US weapons, like F-16s. The US has been pouring in billions of dollars a year in military aid. For the US, this has the added benefit, of course, of directing US government money to American military contractors who make and sell this equipment.
(...) The extent of cooperation is hard to know. The Afghan government is certainly convinced that Pakistan is helping the Taliban. It is clear that the Taliban are being allowed to organize and move freely in certain areas in Pakistan. They also continue to have access to weapons and other supplies, and funds. There has been no crackdown on the madrassas where the Taliban are recruited.
(...) The Taliban have become a more diverse group. The people the US are fighting now are not just the old Afghan Taliban. There are also veterans from the Afghan war in the 1980s against the Soviets. Many who were trained by US to fight Soviets are now on the side of the Taliban. Many Pakistanis also volunteered to go fight against the Americans and started to join the Taliban. And, there are now the Pakistani Taliban, a home-grown movement of Islamic militants, many from madrassas.
(...) They felt they could conduct a conventional war to try to force a negotiated settlement. It didn’t work. Nuclear threats were made by both sides. Both countries came under tremendous pressure to calm things down.
(...) On the other side, the Indian army’s massive military effort for almost twenty years has had a huge impact. The Kashmiri population is small. If you swamp it with soldiers, draconian measures, massacre, murder, torture, detention, as India has done, people back down. And as the movement for independence in Kashmir moved into Islamic militant hands, backed by Pakistan, the degree of identification between ordinary Kashmiris and the people claiming to fight for their freedom decreased. The Islamic freedom fighters, radical and conservative, were against the grain of the kind of Islam prevalent in Kashmir. They alienated the population with their attacks, their reliance on outsiders, and their brand of Islam.
(...) The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan has become a national flashpoint. He decided to hear the cases filed by relatives of people who were rounded up and disappeared, mainly in Balochistan and as part of the Pakistani military’s efforts to wage their own little war on terror. He told the government he wanted to know where the missing people were – habeas corpus. The government said, we don’t have them. The Court was clearly not convinced and has continued to pursue the matter, and held the government in contempt of court. Suddenly people who have been secretly detained for several years turned up in court. Musharraf decided not to tolerate this kind of challenge from the courts, so he took the extreme step of firing the Chief Justice. The real fear Musharraf had was that a Chief Justice and a Supreme Court willing to confront the military government on human rights might also intervene and prevent his securing re-appointment as President.
(...) Pakistan is stuck in its traditional troubles. The military is too strong, controlling the state, society, the economy. This idea is filtering into the common sense of the country, with the crisis in Islamabad. The military want to take the nicest bit of the capital city and build a new facility. This is prime real estate, and they are getting it at below market rates, basically stealing it from exchequer. And political leaders are too weak: You’ve heard how Benazir Bhutto is negotiating for a return to the country on the military’s terms. You accept our power and we won’t prosecute you for corruption. That’s the traditional pattern for Pakistan.
(...) The new thing is the rise of the madrassa phenomenon and the growing role of a generation of young, radical Islamist activists trained in these religious schools. These religious schools were once thought to be confined to the hinterland and to the conservative provinces like the North West Frontier Province (bordering Afghanistan). Many went to fight in Afghanistan. But there were also madrassas in the big cities, including Islamabad. These have created the Pakistani Taliban. The students from there have now become more active. In Islamabad, madrassa students have taken it upon themselves to take over public buildings, take hostages, and there has been a standoff with police for weeks. These are women madrassa students.
(...) Islamabad was a custom-built capital, built in the 1960s by General Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s first military dictator. The capital had been Karachi. The dictator chose a green field site, basically farmers’ fields, and said “build me a city”. So it is a city with a master plan, with planned green areas, parks, all built into the plan. But in recent years, people started to build mosques in the green areas, and in shopping centres, without a permit. It is basically the private, illegal appropriation of public land. They got away with it for years. The logic was simple. You build a mosque wherever you want, people will come and pray, and you’ve created facts on the ground – who’s going to demolish a mosque? Finally, the city administration said we can’t turn a blind eye to this anymore. Islamabad is undergoing a massive construction boom, land is suddenly in great demand. This also means the city administration needs to get some control back after years of unregulated development. The city demolished a couple of the illegal mosques and announced plans to demolish many more. In response, in January this year, women students from a local madrassa occupied a public building, a children’s library, saying: you must stop the demolitions and rebuild the demolished mosques. The women students are still there. They wear burqas, but there are reports that some of them are armed with Kalashnikovs.
(...) The protests started over the demolitions, but the students have added other issues. They started protesting corruption and moral depravity in society, and demanding enforcement of sharia (Islamic law). They established their own court - in the capital city – where they pick people off the street and punish them for violations of sharia. This is an amazing development. It shows that the crisis in law and order and state authority has become very acute.
(...) The government has been very passive. They say we don’t want to hurt anybody. But this doesn’t stop the authorities from beating the hell out of human rights protesters, including women activists, and women lawyers. What this suggests is that the insecurity of the regime has reached the point where they don’t want to provoke a confrontation that will unite the Islamic parties and militant jihadis against the state. The Islamists could create a real challenge to the state.
(...) At the same time, Musharraf needs to show public opinion that he is in charge of the situation and no one should think of challenging his government. He also needs to show the West that he can take on the Islamists. He also convince his fellow generals that he can manage all these problems. There is always a risk that he may look for, if not create, an opportunity to be able to put on a show of force.
(...) [tensions within military brass] There are tensions, for instance over support for the Taliban and the Islamists groups. It used to go all the way to the top. Musharraf was one of the architects of the 1999 war with India, that started with Islamist militants crossing over into Kashmir from Pakistan. Among the militants were Pakistani soldiers in camouflage. Musharraf has been involved in all of the decision-making around Pakistan’s policy in Afghanistan. But there were more religiously-minded conservative generals for whom support for the Taliban wasn’t just a tactic. Some of those have retired or been pushed out after 9/11. The US was very worried about the Pakistani military leadership for a while. But there is still a lot of sympathy among the military for Islamic groups, ideologically, as well as for strategic and political reasons. This includes people who simply don’t like America’s foreign policy or fighting America’s wars.
(...) In India, it seems we’re starting to see that the process of urbanization, industrialization, and education set in place after independence by the avowedly socialist Congress Party has produced a new ruling class. This new elite has interests in business as well as the state. It is a bourgeoisie that owns means of production, factories, and so on, as well as a middle class to work in these new jobs. The influx of foreign investment into India, with Indian companies and multinationals setting up there, has also created a large group of young people who are seeing rapid increases in income and seeking to satisfy a sense of the “good life”, buying into the American dream.
(...) They have moved towards liberalization – the transfer of public assets and goods into private hands - so that they can make private profit from what was previously public investment. They want state resources to build and strengthen infrastructure for their lives and aspirations. There are more imports of luxury goods and less emphasis on producing within India for Indian needs. This is what Arundhati Roy meant: the successful seek to secede, and they want to take everything with them. The new Indian elite is trying to pull the ladder up after themselves, in the typical pattern. This leaves 3-400 million in desperate poverty and marginalized from economic and political institutions.
(...) It is part of the new sense of success and achievement, a new sense of India’s capacity as a strong state and economy. People have started to say, we have economic growth, we are becoming an economic superpower, we should have the other aspects of great power. This is a sentiment the Americans and Europeans are happy to feed. Buy our weapons. Get big buildings. Buy submarines and jet fighters. The US military-industrial complex finds in India a huge new market in a context when other markets aren’t growing. Indian spending increasing by leaps and bounds with military modernization across the board. They are building nuclear weapons and missiles, aircraft carriers, submarines, jet fighters, new radar systems, everything. It seeks power projection, which requires a huge capacity for logistics, ships, refueling airplanes.
(...) The US State Department went on record and said the US goal is to help India become a major world power and that they understand the military implications of that statement. The US is preparing India to become a major power. The intent is to help India as a competitor to China. That’s also feeding Indian militarization and ambitions.
(...) The Pakistani military sees itself as vulnerable. They see their position eroding. What can they do if the US sells to both sides in South Asia, and India has much more money to spend on weapons? Pakistan can buy more hardware from China, but it is not as good as the US stuff they are used to. The real danger is that as they see the conventional gap grow, they will become more reliant on the nuclear arsenal.
(...) Both Pakistan and India are torn between their regional interests to have good relations with Iran, and their alliances with US. The whole problem is really encapsulated in an important project proposed some years ago: a gas pipeline to bring Iranian gas through Pakistan to western India, to provide energy for India. India does have huge energy needs, natural gas is more environmentally friendly and preferable to coal and nuclear power. The Iranians are happy to sell it and it diversifies their client base. Pakistan would benefit from the gas, the rent they could charge for the pipeline passing through, and the trust it could generate between India and Pakistan.
(...) The problem: the US doesn’t want Iran to sell gas. They told the Indians they can’t buy, they told Pakistan they can’t let pipeline be built. Where Iran could have played a great role in improving the level of cooperation between the two countries, the US is trying to prevent that for narrow short-term interests in trying to control and contain and undo Iran. This is one of the biggest problems.
(...) The second is the Iranian nuclear programme – from an Iranian point of view, the program started in the 1950s, under “atoms for peace”, the same program that helped provide nuclear training, technology, and reactors to India and Pakistan. The Shah wanted a large nuclear program, and nuclear weapons. But he was a US ally and there were not too many concerns about helping Iran’s program as long as he was in power.
(...) The Islamic revolution has an interesting nuclear history. Khomeini denounced the atomic energy program on theological grounds. He also said, we don’t need the stuff. He gave it no attention, and no money. But the scientists managed to stay in business through the hard times. Then the Iran-Iraq war happened and the US provided plenty of help for Iraqis and the international community did nothing while Iraq used poison gas against Iran. The Iranians thought: we have to look after ourselves.
(...) Today the Iranian revolutionary leadership doesn’t have much to show for its 20 years in power. It has a 10-year war and an oil exporting economy whose infrastructure is on the verge of collapse for lack of investment. It has one national project: its nuclear program. Something only the government can do. This has become their measure of achievement. When the west attacks the nuclear program, they see it as proof of its importance – they believe the West doesn’t want Iran to have the program because nuclear technology is so important.
(...) But Iranian mullahs are like mullahs everywhere: they are interested in technology, not science. They want the symbols of being modern, rather than actually wanting to be modern since that would imply a commitment to a different kind of society.

extremism in palestine:
For sometime, Palestinian Islamic and nationalist leaders have been warning that the Israeli, American and European economic embargo against the democratically-elected Palestinian government, including the recently formed broad-based government of national unity, is driving Palestinian society towards extremism.
(...) Hamas called the attackers "misguided" people who "lightly and easily spill the blood of Palestinians". Fatah called the perpetrators "representatives of dark forces" and "murderers".
(...) It is difficult to ascertain the numerical strength of the Salafis, especially those who are militant, in the occupied territories. However, it is well known that they are concentrated in the Gaza Strip and are spreading to the West Bank as well.
(...) And when the US, Israel, the EU and most Arab regimes imposed an exceptionally harsh economic, financial and political blockade on the Hamas-led Palestinian government, which pushed the bulk of Palestinian society on to the brink of poverty, the Salafis and others, like Hizb Al-Tahrir, confronted erstwhile proponents of Hamas's participation in elections, telling them "didn't we tell you so?"
(...) It is thus widely presumed that many, if not most, of those joining the ranks of Al-Qaeda, particularly in the Gaza Strip, are actually former Hamas supporters and members who have come to the conclusion that the West's real purpose is to destroy Islam, not to promote democracy, and that the only way to stop this is through Jihad.
(...) Moreover, it is an almost foregone conclusion that Israel stands to benefit from the strengthening of Al-Qaeda amongst Palestinians, especially in the short run, as it will enable Israel to claim that it has a common cause with the West in combating "Islamic terror", thus obtaining an additional excuse to consolidate its occupation and theft of Palestinian land.
(...) In any case, what is abundantly clear is that the betrayal by the West of the Palestinians, and the continuation of the blockade on the Palestinian government is driving many Palestinians towards Al-Qaeda. This should be taken as a serious warning of things to come, if the present trend continues, and if American, Israeli and European policies continue to nourish the root causes of extremism and terrorism in the Middle East by narrowing Palestinian horizons and effectively giving Israel a carte blanche to finish its goal of dispossession, at the expense of the Palestinian people.

peace in the quran:
A list of postings from Informed Comment on this subject.

the numbers and the hype:
There were 498 incidents in eleven EU countries last year labelled as "terrorist attacks." The Basque separatist group ETA did best (136 terrorist attacks) and was responsible for the only deadly attack, killing two in Madrid. The remaining 497 fortunately cost no human lives. How about the Islamic terrorists then? Considering the perpetual warnings in our daily papers, the findings in the Europol report is, to say the least, surprising. The truth is that Islamists only carried out one out of the 498 terrorist attacks in the European Union in 2006. [report available here]
(...) Either way, even after taking these plots into account, the report proves the genuine magnitude of Islamic terrorism in Europe--it's not exactly a huge threat.
(...) If we look at the people arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences, the figures are rather disproportionate; about half of them arrested were Muslim. In plain English: Muslims are a group causing very little terrorism in Europe, while at the same time much more likely to be arrested on suspicion of it. The constant media coverage of Muslims being arrested creates the false image of a serious threat in order to benefit the imperialist world-view Washington wants us to adopt. Meanwhile the Americans and their accomplices are carrying out genocide in Iraq. Clearly, something needs to be done about the media.