US for closure of 600 religious schools in Pakistan

An influential US lawmaker has sought closure of religious schools (madrassas) which are fanning terrorism and extremism in Pakistan as he asserted that the country had failed in eliminating the extremist mindset. He sought the closure of 600 Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan, describing them as an “infrastructure of hate” while other madrassas should be registered.

Congressman Ed Royce, Chairman of the powerful House Foreign Relations Committee’s comments came after the deadly shooting in California on December 2 by a radicalised Pakistani-origin couple that killed 14 people.

He alleged that the madrassas were spewing hate. He said that Pakistan should allocate a sizeable portion of its budget on education instead of giving major budgetary allocations to defence. He said that $30 billion (Rs3000 bn) had been given to Pakistan after 9/11 and those funds had not been accounted for. He also called for stopping the $2 billion annual aid to Pakistan. He said that armed forces of the country should act against militant groups like the Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and others. He alleged that Pakistan’s security apparatus had links with terrorists which should be brought to an end and till these links were eliminated, the partnership between Pakistan and the US against terrorism could not be meaningful.

“Unless that infrastructure of hate is shut down, Pakistan will never win its struggle for internal peace,” Royce said during a Congressional hearing on Pakistan. “That’s the issue. We have the list of the 600 schools. I’ve made three trips, as I’ve indicated, to try to convince the government to shut those down. We’ve had little success in convincing families in the Gulf States not to send their money there or convincing those governments in the Gulf States not to fund this,” Royce said.

“It’s a phenomenon that frankly, it’s so frustrating, because what we see is the failure of the government, time and time again, to address issues that are in that government’s own best interests. And this to me, given the knowledge about what goes on in those 600 schools, is the most obvious and vexing problem that is right in front of us,” Royce said.

Responding to his concerns, Richard Olson, Special US Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the growth of such madrassas was due to the lack of primary education system.

“The reason, in a way, that they exist and have become popular in Pakistan, if that’s the word, is because they do provide a free education,” he said. “We think that what has to be done is there has to be further reform of the public education system. The public education system is not delivering in Pakistan and it has to be a viable alternative for parents who otherwise have no choice but to send their children to schools that are free and indeed where not only are they free, but food is provided,” Olson said.

“So there’s a real draw factor in all of this. We also think that it’s important that the government of Pakistan, and we’re working in this area, in the countering violent extremism area, to try and reform the curriculum so that at least in the religiously-oriented schools, there are marketable skills, standardised curricula and there are attempts to address a more modern perspective,” Olson said.

Royce said Pakistan would be better served addressing this issue of shutting down these schools.

“And if they do it funding public education there for individuals, for families, as an alternative for their sons to go to those schools in this case, instead of the lads going to schools where you and I suspect the final outcome is going to be like a lot of others that were radicalised in those Deobandi schools,” he said.

Meanwhile, members of Congress expressed their concerns that the F-16 military jets and other weapons the US provides to Pakistan are being used “against their own people” in Balochistan during a hearing on Capitol Hill.

The hearing on the future of US-Pakistan relations was held by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

After Richard Olson, the State Department’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, stated that “with all the challenges of the relationship, I think it’s most important for the US to be engaged still and to build a partnership with Pakistan,” Rep Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) responded:

“The fact is that Pakistan has, from its very beginning, been plagued with corruption and oppression by its own government. The brutality and corruption in Pakistan was so bad that early in 1971, the people of Bangladesh couldn’t take it anymore.

“And their uprising was, of course, answered not by trying to reform their government but instead by brutal suppression which led to the independence of Bangladesh,” said Rohrabacher, who chairs the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats.

“I see similar type of sentiments with the situation arising with the people of Balochistan. There are now these F-16s that the judge was talking about, those F-16s and the military equipment that we are providing Pakistan are being used against their own people, just like they did against the people over there in Bangladesh,” said Rohrabacher.

Rohrabacher has long been an advocate for the people of Balochistan, having introduced a resolution in 2012 supporting its independence.

“If we were thwarted in trying to bring to justice Osama bin Laden, it would have been because the Pakistanis were using American jets to shoot our people down. “We calculated on that. That was not out of the realm of possibility. And the fact that that is the reality of it and we end up giving them billions of dollars of military equipment, no wonder they don’t respect us,” Rohrabacher continued.

Earlier in the hearing, Poe said: “I want to be very specific in what I am concerned about, and that is, the sale of American fighter jets to Pakistan or the giving of American fighter jets to Pakistan through military aid. That military aid is then used in the United States to buy those jets.”