Pakistan's Schools of terror

It is strange to see the surprise shown by many that members of the terrorist cell accused of conducting the Safoora Chowk massacre and the murder of activist Sabeen Mahmud were graduates of major private and public universities. No one who has attempted to trace the roots of the terrorist-militant networks that emerged in Pakistan in the late 1960s and were consolidated in the 1980s has been able to ignore the centrality of the Pakistani university to the rise of militancy. What is more of a surprise is a report in this newspaper that intelligence agencies have started to keep a watch on Karachi’s academic institutions following the arrest of university graduates for involvement in high-profile terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials have claimed that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are penetrating academic institutions under a strategy and have symphatisers in many places. Their focus are students studying computer sciences, applied physics and applied chemistry – all useful on the terrorist front. If accusations against the Safoora cell are proven, then it would confirm that a number of well-educated men from upper-middle class families have been recruited by terrorist groups. The story of Saad Aziz, business graduate turned tableeghi turned alleged terrorist, is not the outlier. Many university graduates, alienated by both their education and the lack of work opportunities in the country, have turned to extremism and radicalism to give their lives meaning.

It is rather surprising this is being called a ‘new brand of militant’. The story spans a number of decades. Religiously-inspired militant students took over university campuses first in the 1980s when the Gen Zia government supplied them arms and ammunition. Many of these students were recruited in the Afghan and Kashmir wars. The ones that remained were told to eliminate all left and liberal opposition to the dictatorship. The arming of these student groups with ties to global militant groups came as the democratic politics that had made Pakistani campuses so vibrant till the 1970s was crushed. Student unions were banned and universities were left to radical religious groups. Our report also confirms that militant groups using the names ‘Punjabi Taliban’ and ‘Badar Group’ were created by ex-IJT members in 2007. One root of why terrorists have emerged in Pakistan’s universities is repression. The way to resolve this kind of radicalisation is to return healthy political debate from all kinds of spectrum to the university. Recent attempts to curb academic freedoms is only counter-productive, and a continuation of the legacy that produced militant students in the first place.