The road from the airport to the centre of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, should be a straightforward drive. Six lanes wide and well maintained, it has lights, even banks of flowers. But it is choked by a throng of black and yellow taxis, overloaded buses, lorries, scores of motorbikes and hundreds of bicycles. On a bank beside the road, spelled out in six-feet high letters: ‘Faith, discipline and unity’.
Last week, as it was discovered that at least two of the 7 July London bombers had been together in Pakistan six months before the attacks, the world’s second-largest Muslim country found itself in the spotlight again. As before, Pakistan was accused of being a ”rogue state” where ”schools of hate” had bred a horde of fanatics.
But scores of interviews conducted by The Observer over the past 10 days with everyone from government ministers to water sellers in the dusty streets has revealed a different picture: a poor, troubled nation where a moderate, peaceful majority try to live their lives as best they can amid violence, corruption and rabble-rousing rhetoric; where there is plenty of faith, little discipline and less unity.
Three kilometres outside Islamabad, in a small village under wooded hills, is the shrine of Bari Imam, a local saint. If anything is a symbol of religious tolerance, this is. On the portal to the tombs are engraved slogans for both Sunni and Shia Muslims. Outside, women light incense sticks and tie tinsel to a tree. Zaid Ahmed (25) a shop worker from the city, had cycled to the shrine to ask for help with a family problem.
”The bombings in London are very bad,” he said. ”We believe in the brotherhood of man and that Islam does not allow the killing of innocents.” Men alongside him nod in agreement.
The worshippers at Bari Imam, whose rites would be considered anathema by more orthodox Muslims, represent Pakistan’s silent majority: the two-thirds of the country who belong to the Barelvi school of Islam. There are hundreds of shrines like this throughout Pakistan but, as they are not political, few outside the country recognise their dominance.
They, too, know about violence. Earlier this year the head cleric at the shrine was killed by drug dealers after he objected to them selling opium and heroin. Last May a suicide bomber killed 20 people at the shrine gates during a Shia festival.
”The Koran says that if you kill a single person you kill all humanity,” said Rajah Jaffar (75) caretaker at the shrine.
Sectarian groups behind the attack are thought to be linked to the second biggest strand of Islam in Pakistan: the Deobandis. The movement, named after the town in India where it was founded, are characterised by their best known adherents, the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.
”They are everything the Barelvis are not,” said Ershad Mahmud, of Islamabad’s Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank. ”Their clerics are very active and very clever, and have successfully pursued a long-term strategy that has made them very fast growing.”
A critical element in the Deobandis campaign is the madrassas, or religious schools. It is still far from certain that any of the London bombers spent time at a madrassa, and diplomatic sources in Islamabad maintain that a crackdown implemented by the Pakistani authorities on religious schools in recent days was planned long before the United Kingdom attacks. But most analysts agree that a minority of Pakistan’s 15 000 madrassas, almost all Deobandi, do preach a violent and prejudiced ideology.
Javed Ibrahim Parachar is a tribal leader, cleric and principal of three madrassas where 500 poor children are taught for free. A heavy set man with a large beard and shaven head, Parachar, a lawyer, has represented hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda militants. He says the Taliban in Afghanistan were the ”best of all Muslims”.
”The bombing in Bari Imam was a very good action,” he told The Observer at his many-roomed home in the town of Kohat. ”So was 9/11 and so were the London bombs. They are killing our wives, our children, our Muslim brothers. Is there any law for Fallujah, Kabul, Chechnya, Palestine and Kashmir? It is all because of the Jews. They control the American and British governments through the economy.”
Parachar said the crackdown on madrassas ”will be unsuccessful. How can they control our minds and our ideas?” he said, before embarking on another anti-semitic diatribe.
On the other side of the country, in the cosmopolitan city of Lahore, a different scene is emerging. A new cafe has just opened in the upmarket suburb of Gulberg. The decor is Western lounge bar, though with alcohol banned in Pakistan, only fruit smoothies, water and coffee are available. Perrier costs 119 rupees — an agricultural labourer’s daily wage. Even late on a Wednesday night, the cafe was full of Lahore’s brightest young things discussing everything from fashion to politics.
One talked about President Pervaiz Musharraf, the army general who ousted a corrupt and inefficient civilian government in a bloodless coup in 1999. ”He has got two faces,” the man argued. ”The West think he is a man they can do business with. But actually he has failed to push through any reforms that might counter the extremists. He needs their support so talks a lot but does nothing.”
Sugra Imam, the local assembly representative of a rural district south of Lahore, sipped a cappuccino and spoke of Musharraf’s policy of ”enlightened moderation”, a concept of a middle road for Pakistan. ”The problem is that the constituency for these ideas is very small. In fact, it is pretty much the people in this room.”
Imam, the daughter of a former government minister, said: ”In my constituency there is a very poor level of teaching, the public school system is in ruins. This is an incredibly young country, with 70% of people under 30, a quarter of the population under 15.”
It is this demographic cohort, comprising tens of millions of people, that the contesting strands are fighting for. It is not clear which way Pakistan’s youth will go.
The Deobandis are firmly entrenched, particularly in west Pakistan where an alliance of religious parties runs two provinces and is pushing through Taliban-style legislation. It has access to massive funding from sympathisers in the Arabian Gulf which allows the parties to build hundreds of new schools and mosques each year. Many are constructed in Barelvi areas with the express intent of eradicating the more moderate strand. Yet the Barelvis are still ‘a bulwark against radicalism’ and arithmetic is on their side.
As for the ”enlightened moderates”, much depends on whether Musharraf and his elected civilian colleagues can give them space to grow. That could involve a head-on clash with the radicals and, with Deobandi organisations historically providing a reserve of paramilitary fighters used by Islamabad to prosecute policy by proxy in the contested state of Kashmir, as well as providing crucial support in Parliament, such a confrontation is by no means certain. Critics say Musharraf has worked at eliminating groups connected to al-Qaeda, but has spared the Kashmiri groups.
In his Islamabad office, Pakistan’s interior minister, Aftab Sherpao, denied the claim. ”We have been fighting terror since 9/11,” he said ”We have been victims of terrorism ourselves. There is a co-ordinated effort by all law enforcement agencies against terrorism of all kinds by anyone.”
In the end much will depend on the economy. Officials proudly point to Pakistan’s eight percent growth rate and foreign exchange reserves. Some of the huge debt bequeathed by previous governments has been paid off or rescheduled and, thanks to Pakistan’s support for the ”war on terror”, it has obtained substantial aid from Washington.
Yet, beyond cosmetic changes there is little sign of improvement for the lot of Pakistan’s common citizen. Investment in education, essential to combat the free madrassas, is derisory.
The urban middle classes may be critical. Almost every hardline Islamic movement in recent times has been led by frustrated pharmacists, engineers, teachers and businessmen. Though they have made some inroads in cities, most such people remain resolutely moderate. ”These things done in the name of Islam are shaming and they are bad for business,” a money changer in Islamabad said.
”Christians, Jews and Muslims all blame each other,” said Afnan Rauf (42) a computer salesman, ”We should be honest and admit we are all to blame. It is a bad time. Pakistan is on edge. The whole world is on edge.” – Guardian Unlimited Â