The news looks pretty bleak for Pakistan being able to curtail the number of foreigners coming to the country to get their Jihad 101 basic training at the radical madrassas located there.
A good article here from Daily Times:
A good article here from Daily Times:
Hardline madrassas a draw for foreigners
* Foreign embassy official says nothing can be done about foreigners coming into Pakistan
* Various foreign students get visas extended by sympathetic officials
* Most foreign students from countries fighting terror, insurgencies
KARACHI: Thousands of foreigners have flocked to conservative madrassas in Pakistan, despite a government ban, The Associated Press has found through interviews with officials, documents, visits to the schools and encounters with dozens of students.Pakistani and foreign governments consider the international students a potential security threat. The students could export extremism back to their own countries or stay and fight in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the US is battling a resurgent Taliban eight years after the US-led invasion. Islamabad stopped granting student visas in 2005, but many students still arrive on travel visas and never leave when they expire.Can’t be done: “We are concerned, but what can we do?” said an official from one Southeast Asian embassy in Pakistan who asked for anonymity because he did not want to upset his hosts. “We can’t stop people from travelling. It is their constitutional right,” the official added.Officials are concerned in general about foreigners coming to the country for training in militancy. Most recently, five young American Muslims were arrested after meeting with representatives of an Al Qaeda linked group and asking for training, a law enforcement official said on Thursday.And in a separate case, the US accused another American, David Coleman Headley, of attending militant training camps in Pakistan and conspiring with members of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba to conduct surveillance on potential targets in Mumbai before the deadly terror attacks there in November 2008.In 12-year-old American Anas bin Saleem’s school, Jamia Binoria, several hundred students from 29 countries live alongside 5,000 Pakistani pupils, teachers said. Binoria is one of the largest schools in the country and one of at least four schools in Karachi with foreign students on its books.Anas said he was not taught extremism at Binoria, but clerics firmly endorsed suicide bombing and jihad against Western troops in Afghanistan. Anas admitted he was fed up with anti-American barbs from teachers and pupils.“I get it like every second,” said Anas, who left Louisiana last year with his Pakistani-born mother, barely spoke the national language when he arrived in Pakistan.“I’m like ‘shut up’ and don’t talk like that,” he said.Only a handful of the foreign students are Westerners; most are Asians and Africans in the late teens or early 20s. Many come to Pakistan for a cheap education, albeit a conservative one.Extended: Some get their visas extended by sympathetic officials, according to school and government officials. School principals help by concealing the students’ identities from authorities, officials said.“Where there is a will, there is a way,” said Muhammad Naeem, the head of Anas’ school, without elaborating. “They are committed to getting an education,” he added.Fighting: Many students are from countries themselves battling terror groups or insurgencies, such as Somalia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Governments there are desperate to avoid their citizens linking up with Al Qaeda operatives abroad or returning home radicalised.The minutes of a meeting attended by government and security agencies in Karachi concluded that foreign students at madrassas were being admitted with no clearance from security agencies, which those present at the meeting said was “illegal” and posed a “serious security risk”. It recommended they be deported.Interior Minister Rehman Malik denied anyone was slipping into the country unawares, saying the students suspected of links to militancy were deported. But a senior interior ministry official in the city said the ban was not being fully enforced because of fears of a backlash by the madrassas.“We have a tendency to soft-pedal, especially when it comes to religious affairs,” said the official.
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