TERRORIST CAMPS IN THE TERRORIST STATE OF PAKISTAN

A SCHOOL OF WARRIORS

By Robert Fisk
The Independent

Tajikistan's Islamic "liberators" in Pakistan are more
than willing to talk to us. Rashed-ul-Haq insists that we
meet them. And sure enough, down a narrow passageway, the
young men are gathered, bearded, smiling, crying "Allahu
Akbar" (God is Great), posing before posters that show
the Russian bear skewered with a green Muslim flag.

Abdul Raouf--there are no student family names for us at
the Haqqaniya, the great mosque and its religious school
opposite the railtrack from Peshawar--grasps my arm. "We
would like to make an Islamic revolution in Tajikistan
and we believe in the rebirth of Islam in Tajikistan," he
shouts.

"The great light of Islam will shine upon our country. It
is the promise of God for us." His face is thin, his
beard pointed, his eyes alight with conviction. Abdul-
Raouf, aged 22, and his fellow students in the madrassah
religious school founded by Maulana Abdul Haq have only
recently taken leave of their Chechen colleagues, young
men who--after a year of Quranic teaching at Akora
Khattak--have returned to their country to fight the
Russians.

The Al-Haq college stands for everything the Americans
and Russians most fear: a Taliban factory, an ideological
school run by 70 teachers from Pakistan and Afghanistan
for thousands of international Islamists who wish to
struggle for a united Muslim nation in South-west Asia.
And if that Muslim union includes most of the former
southern Soviet republics, Afghanistan and even Pakistan,
then the Haqqaniya will have played its role. As Abdul-
Raouf puts it when I ask about his former Chechen
classmates: "They are our brothers and if they need help,
we can give it to them."

The madrassah, founded by Rashed-ul-Haq's grandfather in
1974, was school to all the present Taliban leadership in
Kabul and a new four-storey boarding hostel for 3,000
students shows that this is an expanding project rather
than a dying ideal.

If the Pakistani authorities like to assure western
leaders that such institutions are a thing of the past,
it is instructive to note that eight Pakistani policemen,
in black uniforms and holding Kalashnikov rifles, live
within the complex, guarding Maulana Sami-ul-Haq--
Rashed's father--and his students. They arrived in 1998,
on the orders of the now-deposed prime minister Nawaz
Sharif, for "security reasons".

On the ground floor of one building, a number of young
students are crouched over volumes of Islamic teaching.
This is the fatwa room--the Dar el-Fatwa, the house of
edicts--where they are trained to be muftis, those who
will provide religious justification for any act carried
out in the name of Islam, from marriage to punishment to
war.

Nor is the huge college at Akora Khattak steeped in the
past. The madrassah runs its own publishing house and has
gone hi-tech. Its computer room is managed by Sajjat
Khan, who is already constructing a website and
communicating via the college's e-mail:
haqqania@nsr.pol.com.pk. Mr Khan promises me that after
two weeks he will have the college's website in action.

Rashed-ul-Haq hands me a copy of the latest edition of
the blue-covered college magazine. Articles include
reports on life after death and a visit to the college by
an Indian Muslim scholar, Maulana Sayed Abul Hassan ali
Nadawi, who spoke about Afghanistan's "holy way" against
the Soviet Union. Rashed apologised for the absence of
his father, Sami, who was in Lahore organising protests
against President Clinton.

Intriguingly, another report in the magazine shows just
how interested western embassies have become in the
college. "Last week," the latest edition reports, "two
British diplomats from the political section of the
British High Commission, Mr Rowan Laxton and Mr Richard
Johnson, came to visit our school and held discussions
about the Taliban's support for [the Saudi dissident]
Osama bin Laden and the situation in Chechnya. The
representative of the school told the Britons they should
pass on a message to their government that it should
change its policies towards the Taliban."

The magazine says the British were criticised for their
silence over Russian human rights abuses in Chechnya and
urged to adopt an independent view of the Kashmir crisis
because of Britain's historical involvement in the
region.

Rashed-ul-Haq, walking me round the campus in his robe
and soft Pashtu hat, insists that the college costs only
one million rupees a year to run (a mere £13,000) but
agrees that its funding comes from around the world--"not
from countries, just from individuals". Which is what I
call a likely tale. "All the major Islamic leaders in
this area were students of my grandfather and father," he
says. "Especially the Taliban. The Islamic revolution is
very near, Inshallah [God willing]." Rashed's
grandfather--whose bound works have an honoured place in
the college library--is buried in a special plot beside
the college, with his wife and sister. The soft pebble-
rush of pouring concrete emerges from the hostel next
door where workmen are completing a new fourth floor.

The military takeover of Pakistan last October left the
college untouched. "In fact, we were happy because the
majority of members of the assembly were dishonest
people," Rashed-ul-Haq says.

"This was not a real democracy--and a real democracy is
what we are struggling for in Islam. For 50 years, since
the foundation of Pakistan, we have been waiting for real
Islamic law to be introduced."

Suddenly, the voice of Rashed-ul-Haq sounds like that of
General Pervez Musharraf, military ruler of Pakistan. For
are not their aims similar? Do they both not demand an
end to corruption? Do they both not denounce Nawaz
Sharif's rule as a fake democracy?

So why should Pakistan heed Washington's demands by
closing down the Taliban factory in Akora Khattak?

Yet other remarks show how far the college has gone in
espousing everything the Americans, and the Russians,
hate. As we walk past the madrassah's delicate blue and
white tiled mosque, Rashed-ul-Haq, who spent a year at
the Islamic university of Al-Azhar in Cairo and speaks
Arabic with a thick Egyptian accent, becomes emotional.
"There is, believe me, going to be an Islamic
revolution," he says. "The more the United States and the
western world, and the nations which murder Muslims,
oppress us, the sooner there will be an Islamic republic.
Our morale is high and it's possible to have an Islamic
Union all over this area and we want to create such a
union--like the EU and Nato."

Nato, I ask? Rashed-ul-Haq is thinking in military as
well as ideological terms. "If India and other western
countries make a nuclear bomb, everyone accepts this,
it's OK. But if one poor Muslim nation like Pakistan
makes a bomb then everyone is against it and it becomes
an Islamic bomb. If the Hindus make a bomb, it's not a
Hindu bomb. But the Muslims who make a bomb are called
fundamentalist terrorists."

And I find another point of contact between the Al-Haq
college and General Musharraf. For Rashed-ul-Haq, and the
students of the Akora Khattak madrassah, and the
Pakistani general, the bomb is a symbol of pride that is
there to stay.
Posted at the BR by Vijayk

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