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EDITORIAL: Neutralising the extremist threat

General Pervez Musharraf has said that his government will, in a few days, adopt a law banning foreigners and people with dual nationalities from studying in Pakistani seminaries. Official records put the number of foreigners currently studying in Pakistan’s nearly 10,000 seminaries at 1,400. In line with the new policy the government has also decided not to issue new visas to non-Pakistanis desirous of studying in Pakistani seminaries. The ordinance, expected in the coming days, will also require seminaries to register with the government by December 31. This move is meant to streamline the entire system of seminaries. Also, the official grants will be available only to registered seminaries. During his press conference on Friday, General Musharraf also slapped a ban on anti-West speeches.

All these measures are welcome. These, and many other steps, are definitely needed to pull Pakistan out of the morass in which it has landed itself. The current move, and the sense of urgency that attends it, shows the gravity of the situation in the wake of the London bombings on July 7 and the linkages of Pakistani jihadis with worldwide extremist terrorism. One does not need to marshal arguments to prove that there can be no modern, progressive Pakistan while the country has a parallel, medieval and millenarian streak running through it. However, having said this, we need to put the new measures in a perspective.

First, and let this come as no surprise, some of these measures are not new. Banning extremist organisations, arresting their leaders and streamlining and registering seminaries, are measures the government decided to take, with no less fanfare, back in 2002. Since then, their implementation has been the story of inefficiency and selectivity. Consider.

When the registration drive was started, the interior ministry had a major role to play. The ministry remained high profile until the current minister for religious affairs, Ijaz-ul Haq, came on-line. He was critical of the role of the interior ministry, saying that the seminaries were the preserve of his ministry and the interior ministry was encroaching on his domain. He even went around publicly praising the jihadis and the suicide bombers. Additionally, the religious parties, including the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, came out against the seminary registration drive. There was a similar reaction from the administrations of seminaries. For reasons of political expediency, bureaucratic inefficiency, inter-ministry tugs-of-war and much else, the will to streamline the system soon dissipated. Arresting jihadi leaders was an exercise in selectivity that bordered on the absurd. Most top jihadi guns were allowed to go underground; some were arrested and later released and they went about doing their business as before. It did look like some elements within the establishment were not convinced that the time to completely get rid of these jihadis was at hand. The groups and organisations that were banned resurfaced after re-christening themselves, and then it was business as usual.

We recap all this not for reasons of hair-splitting but to recall the slips betwixt the cup and the lip that spilled the tea last time round. There now seem to be more reasons for the government to neutralise the extremist threat and we hope that the measures announced by General Musharraf will, this time, be put in place more forcefully. But, as was clear from some of the observations made by him during his press conference, the current move will, again, encounter some technical problems. If the seminaries are in the private sector, why should they be registered? Is the government registering private schools? This argument was used by General Musharraf to inform the media that there are conceptual issues involved here.

We are pleased to note that General Musharraf remains sensitive to legalities, at least when it comes to registering the seminaries. We may be forgiven for having forgotten this on the basis of the ease with which he has been creating new legal realities on other fronts. However, may we be allowed to present the argument that if the private schools were found to be linked to global terrorism, would the government not begin to move against them and ensure that their finances are made transparent, their syllabi streamlined and their recruitment monitored? Surely, the answer would be in the affirmative. The sanctity of a private entity is directly proportional to the good that the entity can produce in a society. It does not mean freedom from regulation to do things that are patently against accepted or legal norms of behaviour or, as in this case, obviously murderous and criminal.

Not all terrorists come from the seminaries. But there is enough evidence to suggest that some seminaries have a dubious character on that count. Moreover, nearly all seminaries produce students with sectarian biases and narrow, particularistic ideologies. So it makes sense to tackle the problem in all its aspects.

There is a similar problem regarding arresting jihadi leaders. How long can they be kept behind bars if there is no case against them? Sure, it is a legal nicety and related to fundamental rights. But we have a sneaking suspicion that some people in the establishment know exactly what these people have been doing and what can be fairly used against them to keep the world safe from their capers. That’s how Al Capone, the notorious American gangster, was put away by the FBI.

But the real problem in the longer run lies with the nature of the state itself. That brings us to other facets of the problem about which General Musharraf remains quiet. The problem, as it stands, has been the creation of his constituency. While he might want to move against the seminaries, he is not prepared to put the army in its correct place within the polity. Neither has he shown any desire to link up with regular, mainstream parties. Both these factors are inter-linked.

Pakistan’s current troubles need to be tackled at multiple levels. The reversal of the process that has led us to this point is not going to be an easy exercise; neither can it be done piecemeal. So while General Musharraf is at it, he might want to look at other aspects of the problem too if he is sincere in wanting to end Islamist militancy in Pakistan. *

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