Jihad Industry Gathers Steam in Pakistan
Mohammad Shehzad,OneWorld South Asia
ISLAMABAD, July 21 (OneWorld) - Fuelled by the US-led invasion of Iraq (news - web sites), and the promise of paradise after martyrdom, thousands of impoverished young Pakistanis are allegedly enrolling for jihad (holy war) despite the ongoing war against terror.
"Jihad is spreading like wildfire in Pakistan," claims an official in the country's Interior Ministry. He says that according to a slew of separatist publications, between January and June 2003, Islamic groups recruited over 7,000 young boys aged between 18 and 25.
"Some of the largest separatist outfits - Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) - claim to have recruited more than 3,350 and 2,235 boys respectively during this period," says the official.
Jihadi groups are finding the Pakistani environment particularly receptive after the US-led attacks on Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq. They use publications, web sites, local prayer leaders, cassettes, CDs, and souvenirs like file covers, badges, T-shirts and so on to lure recruits.
Millions of pamphlets featuring ballads, speeches, interviews and profiles of young jihadis are distributed free by these organizations.
For his part, Pakistan Interior Minister, Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat, maintains, "The government is monitoring the activities of these jihadi groups and will take stern action if it got any proof or substantial evidence. But we cannot proceed against them without any evidence. The government also can't ban them unless they are really involved in anti-state activities."
Adds a senior Interior Ministry official, "We simply cannot penalize people for donating their children for jihad or stop boys from joining the jihadi outfits, as all this takes place secretly. There is no official patronage."
Officials say young men are eager to become Islam's foot soldiers and fight for separatist groups in the world's hottest trouble spots such as Kashmir (news - web sites) and Afghanistan.
"The young jihadis come from poor and middle-class families. When they fail to find jobs, they join jihadi outfits that provide them food and shelter and promise them paradise, which is attainable only to those who die for Allah, fighting non-believers. Thus our frustrated boys are misled and trapped," says columnist Gulzar Ahmad.
Significantly, as the member of a prominent separatist group remarks, "The vast majority of boys who join the radical Islamists consist of runaways." He says sixty percent of them are high school dropouts.
"People's passions are stirred when the jihadis are presented as heroes of Islam," says psychologist Dr Minhas.
With the Americans in the neighborhood, Islamists are having a field day. "The US bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq is an attack on the Muslim fraternity. You will go to hell if you do not wage jihad against the US," thundered LeT chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed in a recent public speech.
"Send your boys to us. We will train them and send them to Kashmir for jihad," invokes a message by Saeed in a CD.
In his Friday sermon at the Al-Raza mosque in the north Pakistan town of Rawalpindi, prayer leader Maulana Yousaf exhorts the assembly to "Contact me if you want to donate your sons for Kashmir jihad." He boasts, "My speeches have motivated hundreds of people to donate their sons. I have raised an army of 300 holy warriors within four months."
Such impassioned speeches have the desired effect. Take the case of laborer Ahsan Mehmood, a father of eight, who gave two of his sons to jihad last month. "It is better for them to die for a cause and embrace martyrdom before I kill them due to hunger," is how he justifies his decision.
Prayer leaders and schoolteachers are jihad's local PR agents. Says Karim Khan, a vegetable seller from Gujranwala in the northern Punjab province, "My 18-year-old son joined the LeT because he was influenced by his teacher's lectures. He would tell the boys that the real world (news - Y! TV) was in paradise, which a Muslim could achieve only through martyrdom, to be secured by fighting in Kashmir.
Khan's son played his part to the hilt. Last month, he was one of eight youngsters shot dead in Indian administered Kashmir.
That's the kind of fate awaiting many Pakistani separatists - whether they are fighting the Americans in Afghanistan or the Indians in Kashmir. The LeT web site, for instance, says around 800 youngsters were killed fighting the Indian Army last year.
The head of the Society for Protection of Children's Rights, Anis Jillani, says seminaries are the real constituencies of the fundamentalists. "A large number of boys who join jihadi outfits come from the most impoverished backgrounds. They join seminaries at a tender age and are taught in the orthodox style," he says.
Of course, not all parents see the world in the stark, apocalyptic terms of the jihadi. Complains Maula Bux, whose son, Kalim, was killed in Kashmir in March, "The jihadi outfits chase young boys and brainwash them."
The recruiters tell innocent boys they will go straight to paradise if they join jihad in Kashmir. "Young boys are swayed by this deceptive talk and desert their parents. That's what they did to my son," laments Bux.
"The militants compare martyrs with Osama bin Laden (news - web sites). This tempted my son Imran, 23, to become a jihadi. He had failed to find a job, so to become famous he became a jihadi. He died in June, fighting the Indian Army in Kashmir," cries Sakina, 40 from Muridke in the northern Punjab province.
Though the Pakistan government has banned jihadi outfits like the LeT, JeM, Al-Badr, Harkat-ul Mujahideen and so on, they have re-surfaced under new names.
Saeed says his LeT is banned in other parts of Pakistan except Pakistan-administered Kashmir where it has a free run. Similarly, JeM chief Maulana Azhar Masood has publicly declared that Jaish is under no restrictions as long as it operates within Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Although the government denies such recruitment, jihadi outfits have reportedly set up offices in residential areas of Pakistan cities, from where they approach the public.
"Recruitment takes place under the government's patronage. It is the same old wine in a new bottle. The same jihadi leaders are heading the same banned jihadi outfits under new names. The government is trying to fool the public and the Americans by pretending to have distanced itself from the jihadis," alleges senior journalist M. Ziauddin.
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