Posted on 09/22/2001 8:48:11 PM PDT by Ranger
KARACHI, Sept 23 (AFP) -
The Taliban's military hardware may be laughably unsophisticated when set against the might of the United States.
But their unique religious schools, or madrassas, have produced a weapon that the world's only superpower cannot claim: 40,000 men committed to dying in the name of their faith and on the orders of their supreme leader.
According to Taliban sources contacted by AFP, that is the total number of young men who have formally taken a formal oath of death, or bait ul almaut, before Mullah Mohammad Omar, the reclusive leader of the Islamic militia that rules Afghanistan.
The men are the product of what are known as jihadi madrassas, the equivalent in the world of Islamic radicalism to an officer training school.
"These are highly committed Muslims, faithful to Amir Momineen (the commander of the faithful -- Omar) and ready to die for Islam," according to one Taliban official.
Although there are thousands of madrassas, or seminaries, in Afghanistan with more than 1.2 million students, only around 35 of them are jihadi -- or warrior -- schools.
The Taliban official would not confirm that these were the same as the "terrorist training camps" the United States is threatening to attack but he did admit that they were designed to produce "a special cadre of highly committed and faithful Muslims."
Most of the students are Afghans but there are some from other Islamic countries as well, he said.
As well as studying the Koran, the Islamic holy book, students are also given training in the use of different weapons and undergo rigorous physical training to ensure they can last for days without food or sleep.
"These are special cadres with strong faith," he said.
The Afghan Consul General in Karachi, Rehmatullah Kakazada, does not deny the existence of jihadi madrassas.
"Yes, there are some 30 to 35 jihadi madrassas," he said, estimating that each one had been 1,000 and 2,000 students.
Although Pakistan's 10,000 madrassas have sometimes also been seen as a breeding ground for militants, there are none of the kind that exist in Afghanistan, according to Islamic leaders.
Some religious scholars from Pakistan do however travel to Afghanistan to give lectures in seminaries run by members of the Sunni Deobandi Muslim sect, to which most Afghans belong.
The Sunni Deobandi is also the dominant sect in Pakistani madrassas but there are also thousands of seminaries run by the Sunni Barelvi sect and by Shia Muslim.
"There is no need for such (jihadi) madrassas here because they are not in crisis situation like ours," Kakazada said.
None of the Pakistani madrassas provide weapons training or produce fighters, insists Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the head of one of Pakistan's leading Islamist parties.
"Jihad is part of Islamic teaching, but madrassas only produce good Muslims and leave it to the students what way of life they adopt," he told AFP.
Another Pakistani radical Muslim, Shah Ahmed Noorani, the leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, insists that madrassas students joined jihadi outfits of their own choice -- not because of the teaching in the schools.
"There are madrassas of three Muslim sects, Deobandi, Barelvi and Shiite, and to the best of my knowledge none of them give armed training to students," he said.
Madrassas, where students can spend anything from three to eight years, teach the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad, the founder of Islam, as well as Arabic and computing.
What is undeniable is that during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, many of the students of Pakistan's Islamic schools crossed the border to perform jihad.
"It is so strange that during those period Americans used to ask us to bring out religious students to fight the Soviets but now they are branded as terrorists," said Hameed Gul, a former chief of Pakistan's influential Inter-Services Intelligence.
Most of the Taliban in Afghanistan including those in the government have studied in Pakistani madrassas at some point.
Now, with a United States attack on Afghanistan looming, the students are gearing up for another jihad.
"They all ready," says Aminullah Shah, leader of another Islamist faction, who estimated that there were 70,000 former or current students of the colleges in Karachi alone.
Nizamuddin Shamazai, the head mufti -- or senior cleric -- at the biggest Muslim seminary in Pakistan, Jamia-ul-Uloom-ul-Islamia, last week called on his followers to seize control of airports if the government allows US forces to land in the country.
The United States has been warned. "It will not not be easy to defeat people who have the will to die," said Hasan Askari, a local professor.
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