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Madressahs as a cover
Dawn Editorial
Wednesday, 15 Jul, 2009
We dont know how many other Kambohs are using madressahs as cells for terrorist activity. — AFP
It was not a suicide bomber who left 12 people, including seven children, dead in a village near Mian Channu on Monday; it was a huge quantity of ammunition stored in a seminary that blew up, spewing death and destruction. This is just a small indication of what some of those who run madressahs do behind what would appear to be an innocuous, even laudable, activity.
The man who ran the seminary, Riaz Kamboh, was known to have militant links, had gone to Afghanistan for training and was arrested twice but then released. Seemingly, the madressah he ran was teaching the Holy Quran to village boys and girls. However, the recovery of propaganda literature and suicide jackets from the debris makes it abundantly clear that he was using the madressah as a cover for organising a terrorist cell which brainwashed and trained young people to become terrorists and suicide bombers.
What happened at village 129/15-L in south Punjab is symptomatic of a larger phenomenon throughout the country, for many — though not all — madressahs have links with banned militant organisations and serve as recruiting grounds and as centres of indoctrination for both boys and girls. Let us not forget that Jamia Hafsa was an intrinsic part of the Lal Masjid empire run by the Aziz-Rashid duo, and it used girls for unlawful activities like raiding and occupying a government library and kidnapping a woman.
There are thousands of such madressahs and seminaries in Pakistan, and though all of them cannot be tarred with the same brush the security agencies must be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. That Kamboh’s activities remained undetected constitutes a sad commentary on the efficiency of our security agencies whose performance leaves a lot to be desired. We do not know how many other Kambohs are using madressahs as cells for terrorist activity.
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