Terrorism’s Supermarket
Fareed Zakaria
Why Pakistan keeps exporting jihad.
Published May 7, 2010
Newsweek
Faisal Shahzad, the would-be terrorist of Times Square, seems to have followed a familiar path. Like many earlier recruits to jihad, he was middle-class, educated, seemingly assimilated—and then something happened that radicalized him. We may never be sure what made him want to kill innocent men, women, and children. But his story shares another important detail with many of his predecessors: a connection to Pakistan.
The British government has estimated that 70 percent of the terror plots it has uncovered in the past decade can be traced back to Pakistan. Pakistan remains a terrorist hothouse even as jihadism is losing favor elsewhere in the Muslim world. From Egypt to Jordan to Malaysia to Indonesia, radical Islamic groups have been weakened militarily and have lost much of the support they had politically. Why not in Pakistan? The answer is simple: from its founding, the Pakistani government has supported and encouraged jihadi groups, creating an atmosphere that has allowed them to flourish. It appears to have partially reversed course in recent years, but the rot is deep.
For a wannabe terrorist shopping for help, Pakistan is a supermarket. There are dozens of jihadi organizations: Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al Qaeda, Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani's network, Tehrik-e-Taliban, and the list goes on. Some of the major ones, like the Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, operate openly via front groups throughout the country. But none seem to have any difficulty getting money and weapons.
The Pakistani scholar-politician Husain Haqqani tells in his brilliant history, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, how the government's jihadist connections go back to the country's creation as an ideological, Islamic state and the decision by successive governments to use jihad both to gain domestic support and to hurt its perennial rival, India. Describing the military's distinction between terrorists and "freedom fighters," he notes that the problem is systemic. "This duality ... is a structural problem, rooted in history and a consistent policy of the state. It is not just the inadvertent outcome of decisions by some governments." That Haqqani is now Pakistan's ambassador to Washington adds an ironic twist to the story. (And a sad one, because the elected government he represents appears to have little power. The military has actually gained strength over the past year.)
(Original here.)
Why Pakistan keeps exporting jihad.
Published May 7, 2010
Newsweek
Faisal Shahzad, the would-be terrorist of Times Square, seems to have followed a familiar path. Like many earlier recruits to jihad, he was middle-class, educated, seemingly assimilated—and then something happened that radicalized him. We may never be sure what made him want to kill innocent men, women, and children. But his story shares another important detail with many of his predecessors: a connection to Pakistan.
The British government has estimated that 70 percent of the terror plots it has uncovered in the past decade can be traced back to Pakistan. Pakistan remains a terrorist hothouse even as jihadism is losing favor elsewhere in the Muslim world. From Egypt to Jordan to Malaysia to Indonesia, radical Islamic groups have been weakened militarily and have lost much of the support they had politically. Why not in Pakistan? The answer is simple: from its founding, the Pakistani government has supported and encouraged jihadi groups, creating an atmosphere that has allowed them to flourish. It appears to have partially reversed course in recent years, but the rot is deep.
For a wannabe terrorist shopping for help, Pakistan is a supermarket. There are dozens of jihadi organizations: Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al Qaeda, Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani's network, Tehrik-e-Taliban, and the list goes on. Some of the major ones, like the Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, operate openly via front groups throughout the country. But none seem to have any difficulty getting money and weapons.
The Pakistani scholar-politician Husain Haqqani tells in his brilliant history, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, how the government's jihadist connections go back to the country's creation as an ideological, Islamic state and the decision by successive governments to use jihad both to gain domestic support and to hurt its perennial rival, India. Describing the military's distinction between terrorists and "freedom fighters," he notes that the problem is systemic. "This duality ... is a structural problem, rooted in history and a consistent policy of the state. It is not just the inadvertent outcome of decisions by some governments." That Haqqani is now Pakistan's ambassador to Washington adds an ironic twist to the story. (And a sad one, because the elected government he represents appears to have little power. The military has actually gained strength over the past year.)
(Original here.)
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1 Comments:
Why Zakaria keeps on applying one specific lens to examine all problems regarding possible factors contributing to radicalization? Experts point out to a globalization of grievances which push the disenchanted to desperation. In the United States, fewer than 500 suspects have been arrested for having anything remotely to do with support for holy war against America after 9/11, with less than one hundred cases being considered serious out of an immigrant Muslim population of more than 2 million. As noted by Scott Atran, the popular notion of a "clash of civilizations" is woefully misleading. Violent extremism represents a crash of traditional territorial cultures, not their resurgence, as people unmoored from millennial traditions flail about in search of a social identity. Individuals now mostly radicalize horizontally with their peers, rather than vertically through institutional leaders or organizational hierarchies: in small groups of friends -- from the same neighborhood or social network -- or even as loners who find common cause with a virtual internet community. Ways must be found beyond our own bombs and bullets to channel this disaffection, through the same culturally-savvy sorts of peer-to peer appeals and interactions that sustain the jihad. Enthralled by the economic opportunities of globalization, we are failing in Pakistan, that most unstable of nuclear nations, as in our own backyard, to help manage the global crisis of cultures that is shattering social and political peace, and grabbing marginalized youth away from us and into the waiting arms of violent extremism.
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