All roads in war on terror lead to madrassas in Pakistan
Dated 18/7/2005
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London, July. 17 (PTI): British dailies today described Pakistan as "the epicentre" of Osama bin Laden\'s unremitting campaign of terror against the West as it was revealed that three of the London bombers had spent time in that country.
"Irrespective of whether you are dealing with the disaffected youth of Leeds or a brainwashed Jihadi at a madrassa on the North West Frontier, the inescapable conclusion is that Pakistan forms the epicenter of Osama bin Laden\'s unremitting campaign of terror against the West," The Sunday Telegraph stated.
In an article "The Pakistan Connection", The Sunday Times said "now it seems that the Leeds suicide bombers were probably trained and perhaps master-minded from Pakistan." "Yet again with 7/7 we see all roads lead to Pakistan," M J Gohel, Director of the London-based Asia- Pacific Foundation that monitors terrorism, told The Sunday Times, pointing out that all six of the most senior Al-Qaeda leaders captured so far were living in Pakistan.
Richard Reid, the failed British shoe-bomber, had spent time there as had Saajid Badat, the second would-be shoe-bomber who was arrested in Gloucestershire. Pakistan was also the base for Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born London School Economics student sentenced to death for beheading Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter.
Con Coughlin, author of 'Saddam: The Secret Life' wrote in Sunday Telegraph: "When Prime Minister Tony Blair, flew to Islamabad in October 2001, he was under no illusions about the role that Pakistan's infamous ISI had played in creating the Taliban."
Blair had also been briefed by Britain\'s Secret Intelligence Service chiefs about the activities of A Q Khan, the "father" of the Pakistani bomb, in clandestinely proliferating nuclear technology to such unsavoury regimes as Libya and Iran, Coughlin wrote.
Last week's revelation that two of the London bombers had spent time in Pakistan is depressingly familiar, he said. Virtually every British subject known to be involved with al-Qaeda-- from Richard Reid the shoe-bomber to the two British suicide bombers responsible for blowing up a Tel Aviv bar in May 2003-- had visited Pakistan in the months leading up to their terror attacks. "And in each case it appears that individuals who, in the main, left these shores nurturing nothing more sinister than a youthful sense of ennui returned with a burning desire to commit murder and create mayhem," the Telegraph report said.
"As the shocked relatives of the 22-year-old bomber Shehzad Tanweer explained last week, the young athletics enthusiast underwent a radical transformation after he spent a few months last year in Pakistan studying the Koran and Arabic. Tanweer, it now transpires, had spent his time studying at a madrassa."
There are thought to be an estimated 20,000 such places in the country - the Pakistani authorities are unable to provide an accurate number. Many provide an important and valuable education for the children of poor families who would otherwise have no schooling. "But a significant number have a far more sinister agenda: inculcating the cult of martyrdom and sacrifice into their pupils in the hope that the blood of these naive young Muslims will one day enable the Islamic creed to conquer the entire world," the report said.
"Even more alarming for our security forces is the fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of the young British Muslim men and women who are sent to study at Pakistan's madrassas return to these shores filled with the conviction that it is their Islamic duty to sacrifice their lives as suicide bombers."
As one senior British security official commented last week, sending a British Muslim to a Pakistani madrassa "is the equivalent of sending them to a bin Laden boot camp." Both Washington and London have in the past urged President Pervez Musharraf to curtain the Islamic brainwashing taking place in the madrassas, but Pakistan's response has been at best half-hearted, mainly because the country's military and intelligence community fully support the Islamic agenda that the madrassas represent, Coughlin stated.
