Pakistan, Our Fragile Ally

As U.S. and British bombers flew into Afghanistan Sunday, Pakistan placed Maulana Fazlur Rehman, a leading fundamentalist Muslim, under house arrest to prevent him from agitating against the U.S.-led "war against terrorism."

In doing so, the government is taking a real risk. Even as Pakistani officials try to convince an uneasy public that this new campaign isn't about religion, they've essentially locked down a prominent figure of the hard-line religious movement. Fazlur Rehman and his supporters are not to be underestimated. Far from a fringe element, this fundamentalist corps is strong enough and organized enough to destabilize the government, grab control of the military, and plunge the nation into civil war.

American pols would like to present the international coalition they've cobbled together as a tapestry of many colors, but it's really a tapestry that could be unraveled by a few loose threads—starting, potentially, with Pakistan. U.S. discomfort with the situation in Pakistan is evident in everything from the White House's continued talk of economic backing to the way President Bush reminds us again and again that a stable Pakistan is good for the world. One senior U.S. official told The Baltimore Sun of cautionary notes from Arab leaders: "Everybody says, 'I'm stable, but the other guy isn't.' "

Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, has presented his administration as wholly allied with the U.S. against terrorists, when in fact many top officials remain dependent on a little-known but powerful fundamentalist party called Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam. Known more simply as JUI, this group has in many ways served to incubate Afghanistan's ruling Taliban—and it may yet spark civil war in its home country.

JUI runs hundreds of religious schools in the Northwest Frontier province of Pakistan, where Taliban leaders were raised in special training schools called madrassas. During the war against the Soviet Union, Afghan and Pakistani refugees were offered food, shelter, free education, and military training by JUI. "In 1971 there were only 900 madrassas in Pakistan, but by . . . 1988, there were 8000 madrassas and 25,000 unregistered ones, educating over half a million students," Ahmed Rashid writes in his book Taliban.

Not only does JUI strongly support the Taliban, but it crafted close relations with the Pakistani government while Benazir Bhutto was prime minister, thereby providing access for Maulana Fazlur Rehman, to top political powers. More important, JUI fostered relationships within the army and the intelligence service, which helped the Taliban rise to power in Afghanistan amid warring factions. The party was included in Bhutto's coalition, and her Interior Ministry welcomed close ties with it as part of an effort to open up southern Afghanistan to Pakistani traders heading into Central Asia. Shortly after the Taliban captured the city of Kandahar and opened the roads through Afghanistan in the mid 1990s, reports Ahmed Rashid, some 5000 students from the JUI schools rushed to join the new regime.

The surge of JUI led to the creation of numerous splinter groups, some more extremist than others. The most important was run by former Pakistani legislator—widely held to be the movement's éminence grise—Maulana Samiul Haq. Eight Taliban ministers and numerous other high officials graduated from Haq's educational apparatus, which included a boarding school for 1500 students, a day school for another 1000, and numerous affiliated academies. By 1999, this school had 15,000 applicants for some 400 places—no surprise, since the education, housing, and care were offered free.

Haq respects the Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar, who is surrounded by graduates from his school. He keeps in close touch with Omar, advising him on international relations and other decisions. In 1997, Omar called Haq and asked for help, and Haq responded by shutting down the school and sending all the students to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance. In addition, he has organized reinforcements for the Taliban.