Pakistan Plans to Reform Nation's Religious Seminaries skipping Punjab

February 16, 2018 6:12 PM
Madeeha Anwar

In an effort to control militancy and the alleged abuse of madrassas (religious seminaries) by some militant groups operating in the country, Pakistan’s government recently announced plans to bring all madrassas under the formal education structure of the country.

Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan’s interior minister, reportedly told a seminar last month the government already has allocated funds for initiating the reforms in the country’s education sector, and they include modernizing the educational curriculum and bringing traditional seminaries into the formal government structure.

The new measures are part of efforts to prevent the abuse of religious schools in the hands of militant groups.

Of the four provinces of the country, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa seems to suffer more than the others from the problem of madrassas being abused by militant groups, according to officials.

Damming Report of involvement in Terrorism

A 2015 report by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government called 145 religious schools in the province “highly sensitive” and noted that 26 percent of madrassas in the province remained unregistered and off the official books.

Officials charge the problem still exists, and the government plans to address it.

“Unfortunately, some madrassas in the terror-wrecked KP [Khyber Pakhtunkhwa] had been involved in promoting extreme ideologies in the past decades and some even have worked as facilitators and sympathizers for terror groups,” Sardar Yousaf, Pakistan’s federal minster for religious affairs, told VOA.

“By mainstreaming the madrassas, the government will ensure that no one is allowed to promote extremist ideologies, terrorism, hatred or sectarianism. We cannot allow it at any cost,” Yousaf added.

Yousaf said the planned reforms would be implemented across the country in all madrassas, but the government has not yet set any deadline for provinces to meet.

“All provinces are required to implement the madrassa reforms. Sindh, Baluchistan and Punjab are also working on plans to implement these reforms in their provinces at their own pace,” he said.

National Action Plan Non Implementation

Pakistan’s interior ministry last year directed all provinces to devise strategies and mechanisms to place madrassas under the national educational system in an effort to comply with the National Action Plan (NAP), a 20-point national strategy adopted in 2015 to counter terrorism in the country.

Yousaf said the registration of madrassas and efforts to bring them into the mainstream educational system are all part of the NAP.

“The initiative shows our effort and commitment to implement the National Action Plan that clearly states religious schools should be regulated and monitored by the government,” Yousaf said.

Some analysts applaud the government’s recent efforts, but point to past failed attempts.

Rahimullah Yousafzai, a Peshawar-based journalist, pointed toward the failed madrassa reform project initiated by former President Pervez Musharraf in 2002.

“There had been attempts to bring reforms to the madrassa system in the past as well, but there was no success. Remember what happened to the madrassa reforms program initiated by Musharraf?” Yousafzai asked.

Yousafzai said change has to be participatory in nature and must involve religious scholars in order for it to succeed.

“In order to achieve long-lasting results and to bring revolution in the madrassa education system, the government will have to get full consent of the religious scholars belonging to different sects of Islam,” Yousafzai said.

Yousaf asserted that problem has been ironed out this time around and the planned reforms have the blessing of religious leaders across the country.

“We’ve got phenomenal response from the religious clerics and scholars representing different madrassas across the country. They're willing to introduce the reforms in their religious seminaries,” Yousaf said.

According to Pakistan’s Board of Madrassas, there are about 2.5 million students enrolled in more than 3,500 registered madrassas across the country.

Additionally, there are thousands of unregistered madrassas for which the government has no exact count.

Resistance to science

Madrassas, for the most part, follow a curriculum that’s heavily dependent on Islamic theology and the Arabic language. There seems to be resistance from religious clerics to the introduction of scientific subjects. Some experts are hopeful the government will modernize the system and allow millions of children access to science and other necessary subjects.

“These are much-needed and long-awaited reforms. It is time to introduce modern academic tools to the enormous and unregulated madrassa network, which houses millions of children across the country,” Yousafzai said.

Some madrassas in Pakistan have been accused of links with terror groups and promoting hatred and intolerance.

For instance, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-based Darul Uloom Haqqania, a madrassa with thousands of students, is believed to have sympathy for the Afghan Taliban fighting the U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. The Islamic seminary is often called the “University of Jihad” by critics inside and outside Pakistan.

“There is evidence that many Islamic seminaries in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa openly participated in militancy in the past and some even worked as promoters and recruiters for terror groups, such as Taliban fighting in Afghanistan,” Hasan Askari Rizvi, a regional analyst from Lahore, told VOA.

Rizvi said the number of madrassas in Pakistan grew over the years partly because of a lack of formal education in poor neighborhoods and the government’s negligence.

“The government is responsible for the deteriorating social, educational and financial setup of the religious seminaries. It was because of government’s negligence that some madrassas promoted extreme and ultraorthodox ideologies and continued to impose a hard-core interpretation of Islam,” Rizvi said

Rizvi noted that religious schools in Pakistan are a good alternative for people because they promise food, shelter and education, and attract a large number of students, mostly from the impoverished classes of society.

Madeeha Anwar is a multimedia journalist with Voice of America's Extremism Watch Desk in Washington where she primarily focuses on extremism in the South Asia region.

Follow Madeeha on Twitter at @MadeehaAnwar

Reference : https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistan-plans-to-reform-nation-religious-seminaries/4258297.html

Myth of Taliban Leader Mullah Omar and Was he Really a Leader ?

Mullah Muhammad Omar Taliban Founder of Nookar of Punjabi Establishment 

Whether or not Mullah Omar is dead or alive, his long absence from public view is posing a growing threat to the strength of his splintering Afghan Taliban movement.

"Where is Mullah Omar?" is a question sources say is being increasingly and angrily directed at the commander regarded as the acting head, Akhtar Mohammad Mansour.

Commander Mansour has long been reported to be fighting off threats to his authority from more hardline Taliban opposed to any peace talks, including Abdul Qayum Zakir.

The Taliban are also facing a growing challenge from the still small, but increasingly significant presence of the so-called Islamic State in Afghanistan. Videos have emerged of disgruntled Taliban fighters swearing allegiance to the IS's self-declared Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The Iraqi cleric, who also declared a modern day caliphate in areas under IS control in Iraq and Syria, has publicly mocked the religious and political leadership of Mullah Omar.

Baghdadi ISIS Leader 

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militia, has ridiculed Mullah Omar's leadership
Fragile unity

In a Taliban movement said to be founded on a pledge of allegiance to the Amir ul-Mumineen (Commander of the Faithful), Mullah Omar's authority was regarded as a binding force of political and military strength.

"I really hope peace talks are concluded before Mullah Omar dies," a former senior Taliban official nervously remarked to me several years ago with unexpected candour about the movement's leader. "When he's gone, it will be much harder to maintain Taliban unity," he admitted with palpable concern.

Our conversation, outside Afghanistan, took place at a time when Nato-led forces were killing many mid-level Taliban commanders in their operations in southern Afghanistan. That was raising concern that younger, more radicalised fighters, without a strong allegiance to the Taliban leader, would rise through the ranks and be hard to keep in line.

In 2010, when US diplomats first engaged in face-to-face talks with the Taliban through what later became known as the movement's Political Office in the Gulf state of Qatar, they first sought to establish that the Talibs were acting with Mullah Omar's authority. At the time, US diplomats involved in the process told me credible assurances were received that Syed Tayyab Agha, his former personal secretary, had his blessing.

That green light was, however, said to be strictly limited to negotiations with the Americans about Taliban prisoners and the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan.

They eventually resulted in last year's swap of the remaining American soldier in Taliban captivity, Bowe Bergdahl, for five Taliban members held at Guantanamo Bay.

Taliban Office in Qatar 

Negotiations through the Taliban's political office in Qatar had to be approved by Mullah Omar
Seal of legitimacy

This year, in the midst of a series of unprecedented informal meetings between the Taliban's Political Office and Afghan government officials, Taliban sources emphasised they still did not have formal authorisation from Mullah Omar to negotiate officially and openly with the Afghan government.

That again raised the most salient issue: how to get a ruling from a leader who has not been seen in public since late 2001 when the Taliban movement was ousted in Afghanistan after the attacks of 11 September. Even his recorded messages stopped several years ago.

Taliban officials often insisted their leader had to keep an exceptionally low profile because of US efforts to kill or capture him. But he was widely rumoured to be in Pakistan, despite Islamabad's denials. A senior Afghan official told me a few years ago that the Americans had confirmed to him that Mullah Omar was living in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

This month, a written message from Mullah Omar suddenly appeared, to mark the Islamic Eid Festival. It did not directly refer to a new separate process of peace talks being organised by the Pakistani government which represented the first publicly recognised formal talks.

But the text said "peaceful interactions with the enemies is not prohibited" under Islamic tradition. It led to speculation over whether the message had been written by Mullah Omar himself, or someone who wanted his seal of legitimacy.

Reports of the Taliban leader's death have circulated for years but these latest ones have now emerged just days before another round of peace talks in Pakistan is about to get under way at the end of this month.

They also come at a time of disagreement over who should represent the Taliban in any negotiations with the Afghan government.

Sources say Pakistani military intelligence officers, who have long had close ties to the Taliban, are urging Taliban field commanders they have worked with to come to the table instead of members of the Political Office in Qatar with whom they have had difficult relations.
Powerful figurehead

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who has adopted a new policy of working closely with the Pakistan government and military on Taliban issues, is said to be giving Islamabad considerable leeway in a negotiating process making slow and indeterminate progress.

Before the first round of talks in the Pakistani hill resort of Murree in early July, Mr Ghani was said to be under mounting pressure to abandon his approach to Pakistan, which was markedly different from his predecessor Hamid Karzai's strained relations with Islamabad.

And there's the larger question of how committed Taliban commanders are to a political process when they continue to conduct bloody attacks not just against military and police targets but also brazen assaults on Afghan civilians everywhere from crowded markets to the country's national assembly.

Numerous countries are known to have been involved for years in secret and not so secret efforts to bring the Taliban to the table including China, Norway, Britain, and some private mediation groups.

The legitimacy conveyed by the mythical Mullah Omar was always regarded as essential even if the reclusive leader had long ceased to be involved in the day-to-day running of the movement.

Now the issue of who can replace such a powerful figurehead is emerging as one of the most significant challenges to its survival as a cohesive political and military force.

source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33701790

We could Have Stop the Massacre in Peshawar but it was Allowed to Continue .

The Peshawar School Massacre of Pashtun Kids could have been Stoped it the Pakistan Army had not refused cameras and Guards to Head Mistress even after she was Receiving Threats from Militants, and Corp HQ Peshawar His staff was one to Refuse claiming it Wont Happen. 

Secondly Imran Khan Aka Taliban Khan is also responsible as he sent all the Pakhtunkhwa Police to Islamabad for his Dharna along with all his Ministers Bureaucracy and Police force . 

Thirdly the Federal Government is also responsible as it sent about 300 Platoon of Police Frontier Constabulary to Islamabad to Protect VIP,s and Embassies at Diplomatic Enclave . 

All these People Engineered the Massacre for Earning US Dollars and Saudi Riyals on these War Games with Pashtun Blood which Has become cheep and does not Matter for Pakis , and Takht I Lahore Punjabi Establishment.  

it is now a Policy to, Sell the Pashtun Blood to highest Bidder if it USA , Saudia or Others like China if it Asks with Polite Money as for grabs for Punjab . 

We have killed all the children… What do we do now?

By Ismail Khan, Dawn Newspaper

Peshawar massacre

PESHAWAR, Dec 18: `We have killed all the children in the auditorium,` one of the attackers told his handler.

‘What do we do now?` he asked. `Wait for the army people, kill them before blowing yourself,` his handler ordered.

This, according to a security official, was one of the last conversations the attackers and their handler had shortly before two remaining suicide bombers charged towards the special operations soldiers positioned just outside the side entrance of the Army Public School`s administration block here on Tuesday.

This and other conversations between the attackers and their handlers during the entire siege of seven and a half hours of the school on Warsal< Road form part of an intelligence dossier Chief of Army Staff Gen Raheel Sharif shared with Afghan authorities on Wednesday.

`Vital elements of intelligence were shared with the authorities concerned with regard to the Peshawar incident,` an Inter-Services Public Relations statement on Gen Sharif`s visit to Afghanistan said.

Pakistan has the names of the attackers and the transcripts of the conversation between one of them, identified as Abuzar, and his handler,`commander`Umar.

Umar Adizai, also known as Umar Naray and Umar Khalifa, is a senior militant from the (FR Region)  Frontier Region Peshawar Just a Few KM from Peshawar

Security officials believe he made the calls from Nazian district of Afghanistan`s Nangrahar province and now want the Afghan authorities to take action.

The officials believe that a group of seven militants attacked the school. Five of them blew themselves up inside the administration block and two others outside it.

The attackers entered the building by climbing its rear wall, using a ladder and cutting barbed wire. They all headed for the main auditorium where an instructor was giving a first-aid lesson to students of the school`s senior section.

`Did the attackers have prior 1(nowledge of the congregation in the main hall? We don`t know this yet. This is one of the questions we are trying to find an answer to,` a security official said.

A watchman standing at the rear of the auditorium appears to be the first victim because of a pool of congealed blood splashed in one corner of several steps in the open courtyard.

Finding the rear door closed, the militants charged towards the two main entry and exit doors and this is where the main carnage appears to have taken place, according to a military officer who took part in the counter-assault. Pools of blood at the entrance on both sides bore testimony to the horrific, indiscriminate shooting.

`There were piles of bodies, most dead, some alive. Blood everywhere. I wish I had not seen this,` the officer said.

The students in the hall appear to have rushed to leave the place af ter hearing the first round of shooting, and this was where they barged into the waiting militants who were blocking the two doors.

Inside the main hall, there was blood everywhere, almost on every inch of it.

Shoes of students and women teachers lay asunder. Those who had hid behind rows of seats were shot one by one, in the head.

More than 100 bodies and injured were evacuated from the entrances and the hall.

Every row of seats was bloodied. On one seat, there were blood-stained English notebooks of two eighth-grade students, Muhammad Asim and Muhammad Zahid.

A corner to the right of the stage in the auditorium, where an instructor was giving the lesson, was where a woman teacher, who had beseeched the militants to have mercy and let the children go, was shot and later burnt.

By that time, the Special Services Group (SSG) men had arrived and fighting had ensued and the militants were forced tomake a run for the administration block, just a few metres away.

Security officials believe the death toll could have been far higher had the militants reached the junior section before the arrival of the SSG personnel.

It is from inside the administration block that the militants fired at the SSG men.

Four of the militants blew themselves up inside the lobby of the block when they were cornered.

The impact was huge and devastating.

There were pockmarks from the flying ball bearings and human flesh and hair were plastered to the ceiling and the walls.

One of the bombers blew himself up in the office of the Headmistress, Tahira Qazi. Her office stands gutted. Her body was recognised later. A leg of the bomber was lying around.

Two students and three staff members were killed in the administration block along with the headmistress.

The last two bombers charged towards the SSG men who had taken positions on either side of the flank entrance to the block.

One of them exploded himself and after a while, the second one did. Shrapnel and ball bearings hit the rear wall, some pierced through the trees opposite the entrance.

This is where the seven SSG men were injured. One of the personnel who had taken position behind one of the trees was hit in the face, but is reported to be in stable condition.

The assault came to an end but left several questions.

Could the tragedy have been avoided? Yes, given prior specific intelligence tips of August and repeated conveyance of concerns by some teachers regarding the school`s vulnerability vis-a-vis its western and northern boundary walls.

Could the casualties have been avoided or minimised? Probably not, given the short response time. By the time the SSG men arrived and began the operation within 10 to 15 minutes of the assault, the militants had carried out much of the carnage.

There was no clarity on the number of militants and their location. The SSG team arrived through the front gate covered by two armoured personnel carriers. As they moved from block to block, the first major priority was to secure the junior section.

source : http://www.aboardthedemocracytrain.com/we-have-killed-all-the-children-what-do-we-do-now

Meet the Man who did Peshawar School Massacre An Enemy with 4 Names.

In order to Deceive People of Pakistan General Raheel Sharif of Pakistan Army to deceive People of Pakistan while the Taliban who did this is from Islamabad Own controlled Taliban they themselves made as Strategic objectives. The Villagers of Adezai are in Shame but the Master minds in Punjab are not shamed it seems and wows to continue the Strategic Depth and control of Afghanistan via Taliban made in Pakistan and financed by US dollars and Saudia Riyals that are used to feed the Overpopulated and Hungry Punjabi,s  who cannot sustain themselves . 

Taliban are Protected by Pakistani Media by Giving them Multiple Names and confusing the People actually the Person is only Same Person . This Policy is most Striking in Geo and rest of Punjabi Establishment controlled media , Taliban are all same coming from Madrissah in Punjab  either who Operate in Afghanistan or Pakistan , but Media Gives them name LEJ, LET , TTP, or Taliban but all are same and Made in Pakistan . 

In Fact the tribal Area is Directly controlled by Punjab  via is Federal Government via colonial laws called FCR-40 made in 1857s by Lord Curzon British Raj Viceroy via a special clause in Paki Constitution called Article 247, which the Punjabi establishment Weapon of Mass Destruction of World .  

by Rahim Mullah Yousafzai . 
The mastermind of terrorist attack on the Peshawar Army Public School leaves Adezai village FR Tribal Area in Peshawar Controlled by Islamabad via Lord Curzon FCR laws ,  in perpetual mourning in shame of Umar Narai / Slim a Criminal of their village Supported by Punjabi Establishment for Conquering Afghanistan as Strategic Depth . 

Umar Narai / Slim from FR Tribal Area of Peshawar 

Feelings of anger and revenge overpowered Adezai, a historic village located Few kilometres from Peshawar district and  FATA , sited close to the semi-tribal territory of Darra Adamkhel FR tribal Area , against their fellow villager, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, as news emerged that he was the mastermind of the December 16 terrorist attack on the Army Public School and College.

“We know him as Umar Naray, but he now calls himself Khalifa Umar Mansoor. We have long known that he is a terrorist and is hiding somewhere in Afghanistan,” said Farmanullah, the brother of Delawar Khan, the late head of the Adezai Qaumi Lashkar set up to defend the village and its neighbourhood from the Taliban militants.

Almost all the villagers referred to him as Umar Naray because his second name in Pashto means slim. In fact, the real name of this tall and lean man is Aurangzeb, but like most of the militants he kept a second name after embracing militancy and joining the Maulana Fazlullah-led Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He now has four names – Aurangzeb, Umar Naray, Umar Adezai and Khalifa Umar Mansoor. Obviously, he prefers the last name as it confers on him some respectability in the ranks of the militants and makes him important in the hierarchy of the Pakistani Taliban.

Security officials named Khalifa Umar Mansoor as the mastermind of the horrendous attack on the army-run school in Peshawar in which 146 persons, including 134 mostly teenaged students, were killed and more than 100 were wounded. They claimed he was based in Afghanistan where the plan for the attack was made and had been in touch with the attackers by phone as they went on the killing spree in the school attended by around 1,000 students. Some of the security officials placed him in Nazian area in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, but a few others thought he was in Achin located not very far from Tora Bora where the US had carried out intensive aerial strikes in December 2001 to kill al-Qaeda head Osama bin Laden and his men to avenge the 9/11 attack.

Any doubts about the involvement of Umar Mansoor in the school attack were removed when the TTP released the pictures of the six attackers, armed and wearing fatigues. In one of the pictures, the turbaned Umar Mansoor is standing in the middle flanked by the six attackers. It clearly established that he had motivated and sent these men on the suicide mission to attack the Army Public School and College and kill the students and teachers as they believed all of them belonged to military families. They were wrong as many students from civilian families were studying in the school and the teachers too were mostly civilians. Umar Mansoor later sent an audio message in Urdu to the media in which he tried to justify the school attack.

According to Adezai villagers, Aurangzeb aka Umar Mansoor studied in the village school for some years and then started working in the nearby gun-manufacturing Darra Adamkhel town. It seems making guns and pistols made him love weapons and eventually pushed him to become a militant. He joined the TTP unit in Darra Adamkhel led by Commander Tariq Afridi and set up its branch adjacent to his house in Adezai village. He became head of the local chapter of the TTP when Tariq Afridi was killed.

Villagers recalled that Umar Mansoor’s cousin Jangrez Khan was a senior TTP commander in the area and the men in his extended family followed in his footsteps as they picked up the gun and began fighting the state. Jangrez was reportedly killed in an ambush by the Frontier Corps soldiers in Khyber Agency. Umar Mansoor’s younger brother Mustafa alias Monoon and four of his accomplices were killed in a joint operation by the law-enforcement and intelligence agencies in the Frontier Region Peshawar in the aftermath of the attack on the Army Public School and College.

The saying “as you sow so shall you reap” aptly explains the story of this clan comprising three families headed by brothers Zakhakhel, father of Umar Mansoor, Jangrez’s father Kalakhel and Shahikhel, whose son Pervez Sheenay is also a TTP commander. Members of the extended family have been killed and captured, others are on the run and its womenfolk and children after being uprooted from the village are living in constant fear.

The villagers in Adezai rose up against the lashkar when Jangrez and Umar Mansoor set up base in the village and began harbouring wanted militants. An armed force, Adezai Qaumi Lashkar, was raised to fight the militants. The militants’ houses were demolished and their families were expelled from the village. This was also the beginning of the ordeal of the Adezai villagers as the militants repeatedly attacked them using suicide bombers and by carrying out roadside bombings. Scores of villagers lost their lives and many were maimed. Funerals were bombed and so was the village marketplace.

The government and Peshawar Police initially supported the lashkar to defend the village and its surroundings, but later its heads, including Abdul Malik, his son Noor Malik and Delawar Khan who are all dead now complained that they weren’t getting enough support in terms of resources. The lashkar was weakened due to disunity in its ranks and the discontinuation of assistance from the government. The lashkar members have continued to defend their houses and village and are still facing retaliatory attacks by the militants. Revenge is on the mind of both sides and Adezai is perpetually in mourning.

Adezai Qaumi Lashkar’s late head Delawar Khan’s brother Farmanullah said Adezai villagers were saddened by the savage attack on the Army Public School and College as they were familiar with the pain after having lost men, women and children in their families in militants’ attacks. “Our war with Umar Mansoor and his men is ongoing. We have been told by informers that he is in Afghanistan, moving from Nuristan to Nangarhar. We want the government to also take action against the militants’ financiers, supporters and sympathizers as they enable people like Umar Mansoor to fight the state and those loyal to it,” he told TNS.
source: http://tns.thenews.com.pk/umar-mansoor-an-enemy-with-four-names/#.VKMbqSuUegY