Islamic charities from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates financed a network in Pakistan that recruited children as young as eight to wage holy war, reveals WikiLeaks in the latest diplomatic cables made public. But when asked to comment on the report, Saudi Foreign Ministry spokesman Osama Nugali said, “Saudi Arabia issued a statement from day one that we are not going to comment on any WikiLeaks reports because Saudi Arabia is not responsible for these reports and we are not sure about their authenticity.”
A US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks said financial support estimated at $100 million a year was making its way from those Gulf Arab states to a jihadist recruitment network in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The November 2008 dispatch by Bryan Hunt, the then principal officer at the US Consulate in Lahore, was based on discussions with local government and non-governmental sources during trips to Punjab. It said those sources claimed that financial aid from Saudi and United Arab Emirates was coming from missionary and Islamic charitable organisations ostensibly with the direct support of those countries’ governments.
Militancy is deeply rooted in Pakistan. In order to eradicate it, analysts say, the government must improve economic conditions to prevent militants from recruiting young men disillusioned with the state.
The network in Punjab reportedly exploited worsening poverty to indoctrinate children and ultimately send them to training camps, said the cable. Saudi Arabia, home to the fundamentalist Wahhabi brand of Islam, is seen as funding some of Pakistan’s hard-line religious seminaries, or madrassas, which churn out young men eager for holy war, posing a threat to the stability of the region. “At these madrassas, children are denied contact with the outside world and taught sectarian extremism, hatred for non-Muslims, and anti-Western/anti-Pakistan government philosophy,” said the cable.
It described how families with multiple children and severe financial difficulties were being exploited and recruited. “The initial success of establishing madrassas and mosques in these areas led to subsequent annual “donations to these same clerics, originating in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” the cable stated. Quoting officials, the cables said the local police felt threatened by the radical groups in the region while some the madrassas were no-go areas for them as they hesitated to enter them, reported The Hindu. If the Pakistan government wanted to reverse the trend, it must dismantle both public and state support for militant groups and offer attractive alternatives to the disillusioned youth, the cables recommended.
A leading Sufi scholar and member of the Punjab Assembly informed Bryan that he had personally provided a lot of information on the location of extremist centres, madrassas, and personalities to provincial and national leaders, as well as to the local police. But the officials and police thought that direct confrontation with the madrassas was too dangerous, he said. According to a cable, Allama Qasmi, brother of the federal Minister of Religious Affairs, told US officials even if the political will could be found, the bureaucracy in the Religious Affairs, Education, and Defense ministries remained dominated by Ziaul Haq appointees who favoured the Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith religious philosophies.
Benazir told US about ‘Saudi-terror’ link
Four months before her dismissal as the prime minister for a second time, Benazir Bhutto warned United States about the foreign-funded camps where people were being trained for terrorism which would spawn the menace, reported The Hindu quoting latest revelations by WikiLeaks. She also informed them about a plot orchestrated to overthrow her government. A diplomatic cable July 14 1996, records a conversation that Benazir had with American businessman and diplomat Frank Wisner and US Ambassador to Pakistan Thomas W Simons Jr, she expressed concern about disturbing intelligence about religious madrassas and other institutions, including youth training camps which could produce terrorism, says The Hindu.
Benazir is quoted as saying that the most recent indications were that Saudi Arabia was funding these institutions. Although she assumed that private finance was involved, Benazir had directed that the Saudi government should be approached on the issue. Noting that foreign funding for such religious institutions in Pakistan is not new, she said the Iranians, the Libyans and the Iraqis had been providing it earlier. She went on to say that the problem also had a political context, as there was a fairly elaborate and articulated plot to overthrow the government. According to her, the conspiracy involved Qazi Hussein Ahmed, the then chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami, and former ISI Director Hamid Gul, who was one of the guiding forces.
It was Benazir who removed Gul as the head of the spy agency in 1989 during her first government.The cable said Benazir saw the conspiracy as beginning with opposition to the budget and then forging an ever-broadening political movement with demands for a change of government. Monitoring Desk
