Author:
Publication: The Guardian, UK
Date: February 16, 2001
Pakistan's government is cracking
down on militant religious leaders, says Rory McCarthy
Islamabad dispatch
Pakistan's military regime has earned
the wrath of the country's religious militants by warning that it will
crack down on their fund raising and the widespread use of illegal weapons.
In the past, no Pakistani government
has dared to curb the power of the religious right, which, for the past
decade, has focused its energy on what it calls a 'jihad', or holy war,
against Indian rule in Kashmir.
Now the interior minister, Moinuddin
Haider, a retired general, has begun to issue stern warnings to militant
groups.
"I am giving clear orders to the
police that, if they see anyone displaying arms, stop them, warn them and,
if they don't listen, just shoot them," he told journalists.
"No one will be allowed to display
arms, whether he belongs to a jihadi or religious group, or force people
to give donations for the purchase of weapons in the name of jihad."
If Gen Haider's warnings are implemented,
they would represent a rare crackdown against the country's religious leaders,
their thousands of students and the many heavily-armed militant groups.
There is little doubt the general,
one of the most liberal and respected members of General Pervez Musharraf's
cabinet, is concerned about the image of Pakistan on the international
stage.
"The world thinks we are promoting
terrorism," he said. He accused militant groups of raising money in the
name of the Kashmir war to "make personal gains and also promote hatred."
But, although many in Pakistan will
sympathise with his view, it is unlikely Gen Haider's bold promises will
materialise into significant reforms.
"General Musharraf has shown a great
fear of taking on the orthodox religious forces when it comes to the crunch,"
said Kamila Hyat, joint director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
After all, the regime has been promising
for more than a year now that it will ban all unlicensed weapons. Yet still
senior religious leaders are never seen without a team of bodyguards armed
with the obligatory Kalashnikov assault rifles.
When the heads of militant groups
like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul Mujahideen make speeches to large crowds,
there are frequently armed fighters cheering them on.
Sectarian killings between Sunni
and Shia Muslims are on the rise again, particularly in Karachi, Pakistan's
largest and most violent city. Five Sunni Muslims were killed in the city
two weeks ago when gunmen ambushed a van carrying three clerics, a student
and a driver.
Hafez Mohammad Saeed, the head of
Lashkar-e-Taiba, quickly made it clear he had little time for the interior
minister.
"This is an un-Islamic statement
coming from a minister of the Islamic republic," he said. "We collect funds
for the holy cause and display arms only in jihad. No one can stop us from
collecting funds."
There are collection tins for militant
groups like Lashkar in shops across Pakistan. On the roadside outside many
mosques, young boys and old men wave large, green flags to hail passing
drivers for donations.
"A ban on the collection of funds
for jihad is the same as a ban on prayers, and the people of Pakistan will
not accept this," said Maulana Farooq Kashmiri, the cleric who heads the
militant group Harkat-ul Mujahideen.
The great dilemma in today's Pakistan
is to gauge the true power of these outspoken religious leaders.
There are around 6,000 madrassahs,
or religious seminaries, across Pakistan, giving a free but strictly religious
education to the poorest boys and providing impressively large crowds at
rallies and demonstrations.
Many of these pupils grow up into
young men determined to fight wherever their clerics send them, often to
Kashmir or, more recently, alongside the soldiers of Afghanistan's hardline
Taliban regime.
Yet in past elections, the religious
parties have won only a handful of votes. Their deeply conservative views
appear to fit uncomfortably with a nation of religious but moderate voters
who may now be quietly applauding Gen Haider's proposals.
