SONYA FATAH meets Islamic firebrand Sami ul-Haq on his home turf — the school where he trained most of the top Taliban
FOCUS, The Globe and Mail, Saturday, August 19, 2006
AKORA KHATTAK, PAKISTAN — In the 16th century, a Muslim warlord who had come to be known as Sher Khan, the original Lion King, began building the Sadak-e-Azam, or royal road, to link the four corners of his vast empire. Before it was finished, he died in an accidental gunpowder blast, but the great thoroughfare continued to grow, and today, known as the Grand Trunk Road, it stretches 2,500 kilometres from the gateway to Afghanistan across Pakistan and India to Bangladesh.
The Lion King was an Afghan, and he relied on the Grand Trunk to give his fighters the mobility they needed to keep his domain intact. More than 450 years later, those in charge of a sprawling complex of domes and spires that sit beside the road just east of its starting point, the Pakistani border city of Peshawar, are hoping their followers can do something even more dramatic — bring about an Islamist revolution. And many people around the world now wonder just how far they are willing to go to achieve it.
As investigators try to uncover who was behind last week’s apparent attempt to blow up as many as 12 U.S.-bound passenger planes over the Atlantic, they say they keep uncovering evidence that points toward Pakistan, especially its remote and often lawless provinces bordering on Afghanistan.
Peshawar is the capital of the North Western Frontier Province which, along with the neighbouring province of Baluchistan, is where so many of the “homegrown terrorists” being found in Muslim communities around the world have their family roots. This region is where they are believed to come to learn the art of war, and where Islamic militants are believed to be slipping back and forth across the border to attack the Canadian, American and British troops fighting to avert a Taliban comeback.
For here is where the more radical of Pakistan’s many madrassas, or religious schools, continue to transform the sons of poverty into dedicated warriors for their extreme brand of Islam.
Foremost among them is that collection of domes and spires beside the Grand Trunk: Darul Uloom Haqqania or, as it is known in some quarters, the “jihad factory.”
With more than 3,000 students on a campus that occupies eight acres in Akora Khattak about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, Haqqania is very impressive — as is its high-profile leader, Sami ul-Haq. For a man over 70, he cuts a striking figure, with his long, hennaed beard in stark contrast with the muted tones of his turban and robe.
Sami ul-Haq has run the school since 1988 when his father passed away. Abdul Haq was a maulana, or religious leader, who graduated from India’s leading Muslim academy, Darul Uloom Deoband, and returned to Akora Khattak, where he’d been born, to start Haqqania in 1947. Over time, however, the reform agenda of the Deobandi school changed under the influence of Pashtunwali, the conservative Pashtun tribal code.
His son, as well as being a maulana, is a politician — a member of Pakistan’s senate and the leader of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (S) or JUI-S, an Islamist party that places great emphasis on the Sunnah, the tradition of Prophet Mohammed, and adherence to sharia law.
He is also a good friend of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the one-eyed former Afghan president who gave shelter to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. Mullah Omar is the recipient of the only honorary degree Haqqania has ever granted, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the school sports a rich tradition of alumni engagement with the Taliban, both as leaders and foot soldiers.
For years, it has publicly declared its admiration for the fundamentalist cause. “The whole world is against Islam,” the openly anti-Western Mr. ul-Haq says in an interview. “Everyone is afraid of Islam. America, Europe, even the Far East is against us. They’ve perpetuated a myth against Islam, which is, ‘If you don’t support us against Islam, it will swallow you whole.’ ”
But is the “myth” really that far-fetched a notion? In neighbouring Afghanistan, “infidels” and invaders from the Russians in the 1980s to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops today have discovered just how tough it can be to wage war against radical Islam.
Haqqania became known as the jihad factory in 1997 when Mr. ul-Haq received a phone call from Mullah Omar. The Taliban had been badly defeated in an attempt to capture the northern city of Mazar-i Sharif, and the mullah was looking for reinforcements. So great was Mr. ul-Haq’s faith in the Taliban cause that he closed the school and shepherded his students across the border to join the fight. Then, when the city fell a year later, he reportedly organized a meeting with the leaders of 12 other madrassas to arrange for a further 8,000 recruits.
Since he fall of the Taliban, pressure from the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has forced him to maintain a lower profile. Gone is much of the incendiary jihadist bravado, and the school is no longer allowed to enroll students from abroad.
But as NATO troops fight for their lives in Afghanistan and authorities strive to keep terrorists off intercontinental airplanes, many observers suspect that Haqqania isn’t as divorced from the action as it may appear. “I think the links with the Taliban are very, very close,” Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid says. “I think they’re probably still consulting.”
In fact, they may be doing a lot more.
Newsline, Pakistan’s major investigative monthly, recently carried a cover story entitled, “The Taliban Strike Back” reporting that thousands of madrassa students, out of school for the summer, had crossed the rugged border between Baluchistan and Afghanistan to take part in the anti-NATO insurgency that has cost more than two dozen Canadian lives.
This week, Pakistani authorities announced that they had arrested 29 fighters at a hospital in Quetta, the provincial capital, adding to the 200 they apprehended in Baluchistan last month and lending further credence to the sense that the Taliban and al-Qaeda move back and forth between the two countries with ease, entering Pakistan for rest and medical treatment before heading back to the fray.
Mr. Musharraf has repeatedly said he is doing all he can to reduce the influx, which may be one reason Canadian and other NATO forces recently took control of security for southern Afghanistan. The move allows the United States to shift more of its 22,000 troops in the country toward the porous border and disrupt the flow of traffic across the Durand Line, which separates Pashtun Pakistan from Pashtun Afghanistan.
If this suggests a lack of U.S. confidence in the Pakistani military, it’s not without reason. When madrassa students first began to cross the border and fight, they were helping the Afghan mujahedeen drive out the Soviet forces that occupied Afghanistan until 1992. At that time, they were financed and armed, like Osama bin Laden, by the United States. And they enjoyed the support of many sympathizers within Pakistan’s government and intelligence services — a deep, complicated relationship that solidified when the Taliban came to power in 1996 and is believed to continue to this day.
Having destroyed communism, many militants came to believe they could destroy capitalism as well, especially as many felt they had been betrayed by the United States after its own interests had been achieved in the region. As many of its students were Afghans born and raised in nearby refugee camps, many of the Taliban’s key leaders emerged from Haqqania.
In fact, Sami ul-Haq has complained that Pakistani intelligence agencies didn’t give him enough credit for his services. In an interview with Ahmed Rashid in 1999, he seemed bitter that “we were ignored, even though 80 per cent of the commanders fighting the Russians in the Pashtun areas had studied at Haqqania.”
Today, support for the Taliban is expressed less openly, but in the May issue of Al-Haq, the institute’s monthly Urdu-language publication, editor Rashid ul-Haq (Sami ul-Haq’s younger son) wrote a stinging critique of “puppet” Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
“In comparison to his rule, the Taliban’s governance was a thousand times better, organized and more peaceful,” he insisted. “Despite the financial support from the United States, NATO and the entire world, Afghanistan is miles away from rebuilding and development, and poor Karzai is himself physically restricted to the city of Kabul . . .
“In these circumstances, if freedom fighters are attacking, why is there such a noise being made about this situation? When stones are thrown into people’s homes, those people will not send back flowers and petals and an assortment of gifts.”
In the air-conditioned library at Haqqania, Rashid ul-Haq confirms his feelings over a cup of sweet tea and biscuits fresh from the bakertd biscuits.
“The Taliban,” he says, “brought peace for five to six years. They made it pure. Now, the struggle is ongoing. You’ve heard the news — the Taliban have recaptured some places.”
In its heyday, not so long ago, Haqqania had a strong program for foreign students on a quest for Islamic knowledge — one of its nine hostels, the Ihata Mawara Annaher, was specifically for those from Central Asia. But since “the United States put pressure on our government,” the younger Mr. ul-Haq says, “we no longer have foreign students.”
In 2003, Mr. Musharraf passed a law that requires all madrassas to end their foreign programs, and Haqqania officials say they have complied with the ban.
But analysts call measures like this superficial, saying that activities once conducted in the open, and thus traceable, are now well concealed. And despite official Pakistani denials, many closet Taliban sympathizers remain within the administration and intelligence agencies.
“The [federal] government has not abandoned the Taliban, and there is definite support from provincial governments,” says Mr. Rashid, the journalist.
Both NWFP and Baluchistan are governed by Islamist parties that are sympathetic to the Taliban cause and have made efforts to Islamize the region. In Peshawar, the faces of women in billboard advertising have been blanked out.
However, the Taliban and Islamist parties have many critics in the political opposition, such as Bashir Bilour, provincial president of the secular Awami National Party. “After 9/11, America came to Afghanistan. Our party was the only one to support them because we knew that we, alone, did not have the resources to fight them,” he says in an interview at his home in Peshawar. “We lost the elections because of that.”
Mr. Bilour believes Mr. Musharraf is not doing his best to curb extremism in the country. “We have 80,000 forces in the region. There are 600 Taliban. Why can’t they control it?” In fact, “if President Musharraf is sincere, he can easily do it.”
But he feels the President suspects he is important to the United States only as an ally in the war on terror. “If they finish the Taliban, he will be finished” as well, he says.
On the other hand, Mr. Musharraf claims to be a secular leader, yet he has alliances with Islamist parties, some of whom are deeply opposed to the very principle of secular rule. For example, a brochure for Darul Aloom Haqqania heralds Sami ul-Haq’s fight: “He has constantly struggled against irreligious elements, socialist and communist parties.” And the school’s eight objectives include pledges to “edify Islamic values and safeguard Muslim culture and civilization from corrupting influences.”
The godfather of the Taliban clearly advocates a strict interpretation of Islam. It was he who, 20 years ago, brought the bill before the senate that made sharia the law of the land, something most Pakistanis have resisted.
But despite this drive to protect Muslims from corrupting influences, Mr. ul-Haq is jokingly known as “Sammy Sandwich,” a reference to an exposé several years ago in which he was caught on film sandwiched between two women. The maulana was described as a friend of and frequent visitor to Madam Tahira, an Islamabad brothel owner, news that was quickly hushed up, although the memory lingers.
At Haqqania, however, his reputation remains unsullied. Here, he is revered.
Most of the 3,000 students come from poor families and a good percentage of them are still Afghan youngsters, and Mr. ul-Haq says he is infuriated by claims that, because of their heritage, they are bound to become terrorists. “There are many children in the refugee camps around here,” he says. “Some of them study in universities and government schools. Some study here.
“If a child wants to study something about Islam and he enters the madrassa, he is automatically labelled a terrorist. The actual reason, the truth is, that they are trying to kill the spread of Islam. They want Muslims to remain wild animals.”
To keep that from happening, Haqqania offers students a 5,000-seat auditorium, a large mosque, a brand new cafeteria, dormitories, a library, computer facilities, a dispensary and programs that include an eight-year master’s degree in Islamic studies. (A doctorate takes two more years.) As well, there is a special department responsible for issuing fatwas, or religious directives — 50,000 since it began six decades ago.
All this is free to students, paid for by public donations. In fact, the ul-Haqs point to what they say is an increasing level of emotional and financial support as evidence that they are closer to bringing about an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.
Where is all the new money coming from? “We take nothing from anyone — not from Saudi Arabia, not from the government,” says Rashid ul-Haq, even though plaques in many of the new classrooms say the funding came from Saudi Arabia.
“The media has really propagated negatively against us. But, look, there is a positive impact of all this. Now, big businessmen are turning toward religion.”
He and his father say they would not import a Taliban-style regime but how their vision differs is difficult to make out. On one hand, Rashid ul-Haq says that “both men and women should be educated. Woman should especially be educated because she provides the first steps of learning for her child.”
Yet, in the next breath, he says that “whatever the Taliban did in Afghanistan was great.” Because Pashtun girls were walking around in mini-skirts, “the character of women was terrible, so the burka was a reaction to what was happening.”
And what of all the international death and destruction?
Sami ul-Haq, whose graduates have travelled far beyond Pakistan and Afghanistan to the United States, Canada and Britain, says he feels Western nations control their own fate. “If the West changes its politics toward the Muslim world, all of this will change.”
And if it doesn’t, the jihad will rage on. As long as Muslims are ostracized and foreign troops remain in Afghanistan, there will be no end in sight — and there will be connections to Pakistan when terror rears its head around the world. The government here has already arrested several Pakistani nationals on charges they conspired in the London bomb plot.
Meanwhile, the madrassas of Pakistan will continue to enroll the poor in the name of Islam, and the competition to get into Haqqania is especially intense. There is a long list of candidates seeking entrance to the jihad factory on the Grand Trunk Road.
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