The general at war

摘要

First came the news that at least two of the bombers responsible for the London attacks visited Pakistan, possibly for religious training; then came a big series of raids by Pakistani security services on the country's many madrassas. Two old questions have now returned with new urgency: why are terrorists still able to operate in Pakistan and is General Pervez Musharraf, the country's president, doing enough about it? Estimates of the number of students who attend Pakistan's madrassas vary wildly, from half a million to three times that number. Many of the schools are located in the country's wild north-west and may be unknown to the government altogether, and determining which madrassas breed terrorists is hard. "Many of them are just schools, and good for poor children," says Robert Templer, Asia director of the International Crisis Group (ICG). But some do incite religious hatred and sectarian violence. Jamaat-e-Islami, a religious party whose views tend towards the extreme end of the spectrum, called the London bombings "the continuation of the conspiracy of 9/11 to victimise Muslims all over the world."