Share this story!            

EDITORIAL: Striking Islamic University in Islamabad

On the fourth day of the South Waziristan offensive by the Pakistan Army, the terrorist suicide-bombers decided to strike at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, killing six, out of whom three were girls. Heeding the message, the federal government and the provinces have closed down all educational institutions for five days, after which some decisive developments are expected.

The attack on the university reveals the changing temperament of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and its increasing desperation. The University is a centre of the study of sharia and is staffed in such a way that a worldwide perspective on the Islamic way of life becomes available to Pakistani students. It has featured renowned foreign scholars on its faculty and is highly regarded in the Islamic world.

But the TTP signature is crying out to be noticed. The girls, most of them observing hijab, have been targeted. In this sense, the attack is of a piece with the attacks on girls’ schools elsewhere in the country by the Taliban. From a recorded past of approval, the terrorists have moved to disapproval of the University. Since it is funded by Pakistan’s friendly Arab states and is located right next to the Saudi-built Faisal Mosque, the attack also contains a message from Al Qaeda. All bets, it appears, are off.

The students of the Islamic University expressed their view of the government by pelting stones at the car of the interior minister, Mr Rehman Malik, as he arrived to review the scene of bombing. This was a leftover from the settled understanding they had of the government. It might change in the coming days as they review their opinion of the TTP and Al Qaeda. But the question to be asked here — and in other universities — is: will the campuses undergo a change of mind?

When the Islamic University was set up, one teacher sent by Saudi Arabia to teach here was Professor Abdullah Azzam, a renowned Palestinian scholar who also ran the famous Saudi humanitarian organisation Rabita al-Alam al-Islami, which had an office in Islamabad. Mr Azzam also laid the foundation of Al Qaeda in Peshawar, not as a terrorist organisation but as an Islamic response to the Soviet incursion in Afghanistan. He was killed in Peshawar but his legacy has remained a part of Al Qaeda.

It is significant that a TTP group of terrorists that killed a number of khassadars, or local levies, during the month of Ramazan in Khyber called itself the Abdullah Azzam Brigade. Is it a lapse of memory on the part of the terrorists that they have attacked a university where Prof Azzam taught once and to whom the leaders of such organisations as Harkatul Mujahideen and various Lashkars owe allegiance? One can only put it down to an act of desperation. And it must cost the TTP a lot of support.

Those who have held exchanges of views with the Islamic University will remember that its students did not share the generally liberal outlook that characterises Pakistani society. In this they are in tune with views held in most universities of Pakistan where religious parties have almost a permanent influence. In Pakistan’s education system, the madrassas and the universities are close in their worldview. In the middle, among the schools and colleges, is where the typical middle-of-road Pakistani view — backed by our non-religious political parties — is still prevalent.

The TTP may be about to lose the support at campuses where most students tended to look at them positively and were in favour of “talks” with the Taliban, adhering to the stance adopted by Jama’at-e Islami and Tehreek-e-Insaf. A glimpse of this was offered by the Punjab University where the vice-chancellor led a march of protesting boys and girls against Tuesday’s outrage at the Islamabad Islamic University.

The terrorists have gradually abandoned the broad support they had among the largely conservative majority of Pakistan’s population. By doing what they did in Swat they proved that it was a deliberate act. From a majority of those who accepted the “cause” of the Taliban, the country now has a minority that would still support the so-called “Islamic enterprise” their leader Hakimullah has announced from South Waziristan. This is the moment when the resolve to face up to the challenge of terrorism should become even stronger. *

SECOND EDITORIAL: Durand Line and Afghanistan

Pakistan’s Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC), General Tariq Majid, has told the visiting British Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, that the Pak-Afghan border must be sealed on the Afghan side to prevent the cross-border movement of terrorists and the flow of weapons. Pakistan’s plaint has been that even as its army advances into South Waziristan, the posts on the Afghan side are being abandoned by the US-NATO forces.

Pakistan wants “synchronisation” with forces on the other side of the Durand Line to prevent Taliban “reinforcements” from reaching the TTP. For once, Pakistan doesn’t “separate” the two kinds of Taliban; but, by abandoning the border posts, the “allies” are accepting the thesis that the Taliban are not one entity and will therefore not join up against Pakistan.

The Pak-Afghan border, though physically incomplete, has always erected other kinds of barriers. The word barrier here describes the psyche of the observer and not the physical demarcation on ground indicating the Durand Line. Pakistan wants to fence it because it wants Afghanistan to recognise the Durand Line as the border; in doing so, it also indirectly gives an earnest of non-interference in Afghanistan. But just as the Indian fencing hasn’t allayed Pakistani fears of Indian “interference”, the Pashtuns of Afghanistan have never ceased complaining of Pakistani interference.

Pakistan backs the Pashtuns in Afghanistan quite understandably because the Pashtuns are the largest single nationality there and are ethnically linked to the Pashtuns in Pakistan. But here the ironies come crowding in. Pashtun nationalism in Afghanistan does not recognise the Durand Line. This rejection of the border reveals the annexationist nature of this nationalism. On the other hand, the non-Pashtuns of Afghanistan, whom Pakistan does not support, have nothing against the Durand Line. General Tariq Majeed is talking good sense, but regional politics is too out of joint to see it. *

Home | Editorial

Share this story!