Background: 

Focussed counter-insurgency operations against the Kashmiri terrorist sin early 90's led to the fall of public support to militants. Pakistan then introduced a new feature in the proxy war--the systemic induction of international Islamist mercenaries to prop up what it called as Jehad (religious war)_. Master Ahsan Dar, the founder of Hizbul Mujahideen, the armed outfit of Kashmir Jamaat Islami, upon his arrest in 1993 disclosed that ISI was laying stress on the induction of highly trained and well-equipped alien mercenaries to effectively engage the Indian security forces.

The availability of trained Islamic fighters folowing the end of the Afghan war enabled Pakistan to keep militancy alive in Kashmir as also to eliminate the potential of social disaster that could follow the influx of thousands of battle-hardened fundamentalist fighters now rendered jobless. Induction of these aliens into Kashmir was a low-cost option. This induction changed the complexion of terrorist campaign in Kashmir. It led to upgradation in military training within Kashmir. The alien mercenaries provided cutting edge leadership to militant activities in J&K. New routes for infiltration, hitherto insurmountable, became available through these experienced fighters. Foreign nationals' kidnappings were staged to draw international publicity. Minority community massacres with demonstrations of extreme brutality became a common affair. Demographic changes involving expulsion of Sikhs in Kashmir and Hindus from Muslim-majority districts of Doda, Poonch-Rajouri acquired urgency. They built an anti-west ideological framework. The new thrust for Talibanisation of Kashmiri became visible. There is global consensus that Pakistan funds, trains and equips the Islamic mercenaries. As per Indian government estimates around 40% of the militants in Kashmir are Pakistan or Afghan and some 80 percent are teenagers.

Fomenting subversion in Kashmir through Islamist mercenaries has led to the proliferation of Jihadi madrassas in Pakistan. According to a JKLF leader, there are more than five lakh Jehadi fighters in Pakistan. Though the destination of these Jehadists is primarily Kashmir, their role in Central Asia, Russia, China has also been significant.

Political activists and social scientists, concerned the Jehadi phenomenon have been trying to understand the rise of Jehadi groups to formulate a comprehensive response against these.

Curriculum and Poor Infrastructure:

Poor educational infrastructure, particularly in Pakistan countryside has facilitated the penetration of Jehadi groups into the rural populace. The World Bank estimates that only 40 percent of Pakistanis are literate, and many rural areas lack public schools. Islamic religious schools, madrasahs as they are called, are located all over the country. These not only provide free education but also free food, housing and clothing. In the poor areas of southern Punjab, madrasahs funded by anti-Shia sectarian group, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan even pay parents for sending them their children.

In the 1980's General Zia-ul-Haq promoted the madrasahs as a way to garner the religious parties' support for his rule and to recruit troops for the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. Presently madrasahs are funded by wealthy Pakistani industrialists at home or abroad and by private and government funded NGOs in the Persian Gulf States and Saudi Arabia.

Madrasahs preach a narrow and violent version of religion. These equate Jehad with Waging armed war against non-Muslims. Jessica Stern, who teaches public policy at Harvard University writes, "these schools encourage their graduates, who often cannot find work because of their lack of practical education, to fulfill their "spiritual obligations" by fighting against Hindus in Kashmir or against Muslims of other sects in Pakistan". Of an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 madrasahs in Pakistan, only 4350 are registered with the government.

Madrasahs have resisted the state demand for expanding the curricula. Some chancellors argue that madrasahs are older than Pakistan itself. The chancellor of Darul Uloom Haqqania, where mercenaries for subversion in Kashmir are churned out in thousands says that the broadbasing of the cirrucula would "destroy the spirit of the madrasahs". Sipaha-e-Sahiba says Madrassahs are the supply line of Jehad and complains that where states have taken control of madrasahs, such as Jordan and Egypt, "the engine of Jehaddis extinguished."

Financial Network:

Pakistani Jehadi groups describe hide donations on Eid-ul-Azha as significant source of funding for their activities in Kashmir. Intelligence officials say most of the militant groups' funding, comes in the form of anonymous donations sent directly to their bank accounts. Lashkar-i-Toiba has been found raising funds on the Internet. So much money has been raised by Lashkar-e-Toiba and its parent organisation Markaz-al-Dawa-Irshad mostly from sympathetic Wahabis in Saudi Arabia that they are reportedly planning to open their own bank.

Individual Jehadists also benefit financially from this generous funding. Celebrated Pakistan expert on Central Asia, Ahmad Rashid says, " they are in this for loot." Mid-level manager of Lashkar, as per one estimate earns 15,000 rupees a month, while the top leaders earn much more. These leaders live in mansions, which are staffed by servants and filled with expensive furniture. Operatives receive smaller salaries but win bonuses for successful missions.

Milt Bearden, CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, disclosed that the US and Saudi Arabia funneled some $3.5 billion into Afghanistan and Pakistan during Afghan war. Jihad along with guns and drugs became the most important business in the region. Wealthy Arabs in the Persian Gulf region and members of the Pakistani Diaspora, thus came to develop stakes in prolonging ethnic and religious conflicts, in areas where Muslims formed religious minority. They contributed not only capital but also extremist rhetoric. Late Eqbal Ahmed, the Pakistani scholar has dubbed this enterprise as "Jihad International, Inc." The prolongation of the subversive war in Kashmir, thus suits the interests of those involved in "Jihad International, Inc." While many are dependent on Jihad for financial interests, others find Jehadist war intoxicating psychologically. A Harkat operative told a Wester scholar :

"We won't stop--even if India gave us Kashmir... We'll (also) bring Jihad here. There is already a movement here to make Pakistan a pure Islamic state. Many preach Islam, but most of them don't know what it means. We want to see a Taliban type regime,"

Recruitment:

Wealthy Pakistanis donate their money than their sons to the "Jihad". Poor families particularly in rural areas are exploited to send their wards for fulfilling the "spiritual duty". So thorough is the brain washing that the parents, whose children die in terrorist acts do not lament. They believe that their sons have become martyrs. One lady, whose son died in Kashmir told a western journalist that she would be happy if her six remaining sons were also "martyred". "They will help me in the next life, which is the real life," she consoled herself.

Families with low social origin get respectability, when the funeral of their children killed in terrorist Jihad are attended by thousands of people. Jihadi groups manipulate funeral occasions in such a way that poor families get motivated to send their children for Jihad. Many of the families get financial assistance from the terrorist groups. The Shuhda-e-Islam Foundation run by Jamaat-e-Islami, claims to have dispensed 13 million rupees to the families, whose children got consumed in "Jihad" in 1995. To perpetuate a culture of violence, a practice common to gangs in inner-city Los Angeles and terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, Hamas etc, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harkat reward the families of killed terrorists.

Collaboration with criminals:

Jehadis  often hire criminals to do their dirty work and at time themselves turn to petty or organised crime. Criminals are typically hired to drop weapons and explosives or to carry out extreme acts of violence that a typical Jehadi may be reluctant or unable to perform. Members of the Dubai-based Dawood Ibrahim at the instance of ISI bombed the Bombay stock exchange in March 1993. Some of the members arrested subsequently told police that they had been trained in subversion by Jehadi groups.

Bizarre Designs:

Jihadi  groups proclaim their plans to bring Jihad to India proper as well as to the west, which they believe is run by jews. Jehadists adore Hitler, the fascist supremo of Germany during Second World War. The students from Burma, Nepal, Chechnya, Bangladesh, Sinkiang, Afghanistan, Yemen, Mongolia, Kuwait, Uzbekistan etc. have been found undergoing subversion training in Jihadi schools in Pakistan.

Roots of Jihadi Culture:

Pakistan's vulnerability to Jihadi culture is in-built in the ideology of the state it has pursued. Its quest for an identity and self-image based on religion and adversorial relationship with India has predisposed to the emergence of Jihadi culture. Pakistan journalists Khalid Ahmed and Najam Sethi have eloquently commented on this. Mr Ahmed in an article, "Mediavalisation on the Eve of 2000 AD" writes that Pakistan rulers, in particular General Zia to legitimise himself, medievalised the state through the constitution and the textbooks. These history books were written a fresh to popularise a purely Muslim version of events. He has described how the Pakistani state indoctrinated the masses in favour of a revival of the medieval state rather than a 'modern' state. Najam Sethi, Editor of the Friday Times,   in a speech delivered at Delhi on April 30, 1999 characterised the mentality and outlook of Pakistani state as that of a historically besieged state. He said Pakistan was more a state-nation rather than a nation-state. It was the foreign policy which runs its domestic policy rather than the other way round. He suggested that the Pakistani State has come to be fashioned largely in response to perceived propaganda and real and imagined threats to its national security from India. Its conceptions of national security, defined in conventional military terms dominate the state thinking. All this has resulted in the lack of development of sustainable and stable democratic political culture, leading to the spawning of extra-state institutions espousing Islamic fundamentalism and Jehad.

Internal Sectarianism:

Promotion of Jehadi culture has recoiled back on Pakistan society, besides damaging Pakistan's fragile international reputation. There is growing internal sectarianism militarisation of civil society, and deteriation of law and order. The problem of Musharraf is that it is difficult to promote the "Jehad" in Kashmir and the Taliban in Afghanistan without inadvertently promoting sectarianism in Pakistan. The movements share madrasahas, camps, bureaucracies, and operatives. The Jamaat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam, the founding party of anti-Shia outfit Sipaha-e-Sahaba, also helped create both the Taliban and Harkat. Deobandi madrasahs issue anti-Shia fatwas (edicts) and boys trained to fight in Kashmir are also trained to call Shi'a Kafirs. Jaesh-e-Mohammad, an off shot of Harkat, founded by Maulana Azhar and the newest Pakistani militant outfit in Kashmir, reports say, used Sipaha-e-Sahaba personnel during a fund-raising drive in early 2000. Sipaha-e-Sahaba cadres regularly join Taliban, Harkat or Jaesh-e-Mohd--all groups with Deobandi orientation. Sipaha-e-Sahaba (SSP) recently claimed that it has opened a branch in Kashmir. The emergence of SSP and Jaesh-e-Mohammad in Kashmir has been responsible for anti-Shia orientation among the new terrorists and attacks on them. Shia leaders and congregations have been the targets of attacks by terrorists in Kashmir. Attacks on Sikhs are also being linked to these new developments.

Inside Pakistan, thousands of Pakistani have been killed in sectarian clashes since 1990. The American scholar Vali Nasr, remarks that the largely theological differences between Shia and Sunni Muslims have been transformed into full-fledged political conflict, with broad ramifications for law and order, social Cohesion, and government authority.

Liberals blame America:

There is growing concern over role of America vis-a-vis of rise of Jihadi groups and towards Pakistan government. Pakistani officials accuse US, along with Saudi Arabia, of creating the first international "Jihad" to fight the Soviet Union during the Afghan war. They ask, "does America expect us to send in the troops and shut the madrasahs down? Jihad is a mindset. It developed over many years during the Afghan war. Your can't change a mindset in 24 hours".

America has also contributed to one of the most successful disinformation campaigns launched by Pak military Junta. The Pak army seeks to sell the entirely self-serving image of being the last bastion of liberalism to a people besieged by fanatical Islamists. The Army Junta has been using this campaign to two ends. One it has been trying to seek concessions from India over Kashmir on the plea that General Musharraf's position vis-a-vis Islamists would be strengthened, and fallout of the dangers of a fundamentalist takeover in Pakistan prevented. Secondly, it has used the plausibility of denial that it is in no position to rein in Jihadi groups that operate autonomously. Buy allowing Jihadi groups to operate with impunity it has succeeded in maintaining pressure on ground in Kashmir. This is contested by Pakistan watchers. They argue that "the army and intelligence agencies, having created the Islamists, continue to wield enormous influence over them." Prashant Sareen, the area specialist observes," the problem, therefore, is not so much of the army's declining capability in reining in the Islamists as it is of ideological and policy divisions within it that prevents such crackdown".

The Prospect:

Can there be any solution which will root out Jihadi culture in Pakistan? Jessica Stern, who specialises on Jihadi groups says that "Pakistan must recognise the militant groups for what they are: dangerous gangs whose resources and reach continue to grow, threatening to destabilize the entire region". She laments that "Pakistan's continued support of religious militant groups suggests that it does not recognise its own susceptibility to the culture of violence it has helped create." The Pakistani militants' continued incursions into J&K escalate the conflict, greatly increasing the risk of nuclear war, Stern adds. With no solution aimed at making Pakistan give up this mindset stamping out corruption, strengthening democracy and broadbasing education will not help.