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EDITORIAL: Agitated over agitation

The Alliance for Democracy (ARD), the home of the mainstream PPPP and PML-N, has been greatly upset by the MMA’s decision to postpone their plan to start agitation against the Jamali government. The PPPP’s Makhdoom Amin Fahim has called on the JUI’s Maulana Fazlur Rehman and protested the postponement till December 18 of the big push to get rid of the house that General Pervez Musharraf has built. Mr Fahim says that he and the other ARD leaders might be compelled to consider the possibility of launching their campaign without the MMA. Apparently, for this to happen, the PPPP and the PML-N will have to submit their cases to their exiled leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who will then consult each other in exile and give the final go-ahead.

The MMA has not done well by the ARD parties despite the fact that the latter’s secular leaders did join their rhetoric with that of the clergy to show solidarity in parliament. The first act of disloyalty on the part of the wheeling-dealing leadership of the MMA was to stay out of the ARD and wait for the government to blackball ARD and then agree to talk to the MMA. However, it may be recalled that when the MMA staged its ‘million marches’ after the American invasion of Iraq, the PPPP decided to stay out of it, thus revealing the ideological and political distance within the opposition. But that is not all. As Makhdoom Amin Fahim makes ready to launch his campaign from Mochi Gate in Lahore on December 7, he has an unpleasant rumour snapping at his heels: is Ms Bhutto making a deal with the army through Mr Mustafa Khar?

The MMA is fearful of the same kind of thing when they look at the ARD. They know that the two mainstream parties may be badly bruised and licking their schismatic wounds these days, but on the hustings they will always tend to push the religious vote back. The religious leaders may have sharpened their statements against the government but they would prefer a last-minute patch-up on the LFO if that is possible. As a result, the way the MMA has behaved doesn’t enhance the nimbus behind its leaders’ heads. It has been growling its threats ever since the first meeting with the government over the LFO broke down but it has ended up suffering internal rifts instead of forcing the government to back down on General Musharraf’s insistence on holding dual office. People first saw the religious alliance nearly splitting over distribution of political power in the NWFP, then saw factions haggling over wriggle-room within the MMA.

All this has not gone down well with the very public which the opposition wishes to exploit during its agitation against the paper-thin majority of Prime Minister Jamali and his mentor, General Musharraf. Indeed, in the eyes of many analysts, the days of the ‘million marches’ are over. Desk-thumping in parliament has been read by the people as a lot of noise at the end of which the MNAs get bigger salaries rather than greater democracy. Political agitation in the past has succeeded in a certain atmosphere where the power centres in Islamabad could be persuaded to play a role in the removal of the government. Rarely has an independent popular agitation against a military-backed government met with any success. An effort on the part of the PML-N to break the support of the army came to grief and will doubtless serve as a lesson to the MMA. *

Visa policy and jihad

The IG Police Punjab, Syed Masood Shah, has asked his officers to update the information held by the department on the number of foreign students being trained in the religious seminaries in Punjab. He has also ordered examination of the syllabi being taught in the seminaries to see if the books read by the pupils were in violation of laws banning sectarianism and terrorism. He must be a bit worried about foreign activists posing as students in his province. There are about 7,000 seminaries officially in the country, half of which are located in Punjab. The government also estimates that there are 36,000 foreigners being trained in these seminaries. The United Nations has asked Pakistan to reform the seminaries and get rid of those that are encouraging acts of terrorism in the name of Islam and are receiving funds from dubious sources for doing so.

Whether we like to admit it or not, the fact is that Pakistan has been a nursery of various types of terrorists for the past 20 years. Many of the troubles faced by the countries of Southeast Asia today have been fomented by ‘pupils’ prepared by our seminaries. Entire communities have been formed in Karachi of expatriate students who have become jihadis, first in this region, then taking it back to their own societies. Seminaries in Balochistan and the Tribal Areas are linked to seminaries in Punjab and their pupils keep shifting from one city to another. The government itself helps in the organisation of their annual million-strong congregations where Pakistan-based foreign students and new ones from abroad are allowed to gather. Special trains are run for them and visas are granted by our missions abroad for the extremist pilgrims to travel to the land of jihad, that is Pakistan. It is pity that hardly anyone comes for technical training in our engineering, medical and agricultural institutions. Unless the federal government formulates a new policy about the grant of visas to this brand of students, it will be difficult to control the situation from below. *

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