Radical Pakistani coalition poses threat to Afghan stabilization efforts

9/24/03

President Hamid Karzai has openly accused Muslim clergy in neighboring Pakistan of supporting Taliban guerrilla activity in Afghanistan. Karzai recently asked Afghan clerics to help keep young Afghans out of some Pakistani religious schools, or madrassas, which are believed to promote radical Islamic beliefs.

Karzai's comments followed the fiercest Taliban raids since the radical Islamic movement was driven from power in Kabul in 2001 by the US-led anti-terrorism coalition. Taliban forces launched their attacks in late August. After 10 days of heavy fighting at least three US soldiers, 20 Afghan troops and 70 Taliban militants were reported killed by September 3. Karzai maintains that Pakistani madrassas are a major source of recruits for the Taliban guerrilla forces.

Experts in Pakistan believe that a coalition of six Islamic parties, called the Mattahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), is acting as a catalyst for the resurgence of the Taliban and for the spread of radical Islam's influence in Pakistan. The trend of MMA-inspired radicalization, experts say, is especially strong in North West Frontier (NWF) Province and Baluchistan, two predominantly ethnic-Pashtun provinces bordering Afghanistan. Karzai is an ethnic Pashtun, as were most leaders of the Taliban that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. "Anyone fighting the Americans is our friend, and we will try and help the Taliban as much as we can – we are all Pashtuns," says Maulvi Israrul Haq, an NWF legislator.

Although denying any role in providing material support to the Taliban, the MMA leadership is quick to praise resistance to the American-led coalition in Afghanistan. "The Afghans have always opposed foreign occupation," another MMA lawmaker, Pir Muhammad Khan, said.

Anti-American sentiment in Pakistan's border areas is widely seen as encouraging Taliban guerrilla raids, which undermine stabilization efforts in Afghanistan. Taliban actions also add to the tension between Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, General Pervez Musharraf.

Many experts also worry about what the MMA's support for extremism can mean for Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 140 million. In June, the MMA coalition passed a bill that relied on Sharia, or Islamic law, in order to segregate education by students' sex. The MMA then pledged to set up an Islamic vigilante force and a Department for Vice and Virtue, which echoes the Afghan Taliban's notorious Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the MMA has targeted Western popular culture for attacks, especially images of women. They banned huge movie billboards depicting women and sent police in Peshawar to seize videotapes and music cassettes, which officials then ritually burned. In the spring, the government ordered the closure of the musicians' market in Peshawar's centuries-old Dabgari Bazaar.

Under mounting pressure from US President George W. Bush, Musharraf moved in late August to tie up funds for Peshawar and arrest or fire senior police officers and bureaucrats who seemed aligned with the extremists. Finally, Musharraf threatened to dissolve the provincial assembly if the Islamic coalition continued to pursue its radical legislative agenda.

Despite such checks, the Islamist coalition is making its impression. "The [coalition's] political agenda has been slowed down by the central government, but it is expanding as social and cultural phenomena because of the anti-Americanism in the province," said Fazlur Rahim Marwat, a professor at the Pakistan Study Centre at Peshawar University.

With unemployment approaching 40 percent and an infrastructure that struggles to accommodate large numbers of refugees, Pakistan's border provinces are growing increasingly unstable. Social tension is providing secular Pashtun leaders with an opening to criticize the MMA, stinging the coalition with charges of economic mismanagement.

"The [coalition] cannot deliver jobs and many people now resent how it is exploiting Islam," says Begun Nasim Wali Khan, the provincial chief of the Awami National Party, a leading secular-nationalist force in the region. Khan indicated that many secular Pashtuns oppose the MMA's support for the Taliban. "Our slogan is: 'Hands off Afghanistan'," he said.

Editor's Note: Abubaker Saddique, an independent journalist specializing in South Central Asia, contributed reporting to this story from Peshawar.

Posted September 24, 2003 © Eurasianet