Pakistan: Links between jihadisation and education - the US connection

In her 2004 article on the subject Sarwar had strongly cautioned the state against links between continued terrorism in Pakistani cities and the jihadisation of the curriculum.

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Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: Ahmadiyya Times staff
By Imran Jattala | November 10, 2011

“The findings of the report “Connecting the Dots:  Education and Religious Discrimination in Pakistan” are dire, but not new,” writes Beena Sarwar, a Pakistani journalist and filmmaker.

The policies of the Pakistani governments of the last three decades, weather civilian or military, have been in bed with the US foreign policy and many aspects of the current state of education in Pakistan have CIA to thank for its roots in the US policy towards Afghans and Taliban during the eighties and the nineties.

Sarwar complained, in a recent update on her blog entitled "Pakistan curriculum urgently needs change," about the deaf ear turned to Pakistani academics who have long sought “a reform of the curriculum.”

“But, lest we forget, the idea of Jehad was incorporated into the Pakistani curriculum after the start of the Afghan war,” says Sarwar.  “because it suited Washington, and Pakistan to encourage and glorify the ‘Mujahideen’ (holy warriors) in the war against the Soviets.”

Sarwar cites the example of an American education institution whose help was enlisted by the CIA “to formulate textbooks for Pakistani schools accordingly.”


According to the references cited by Beena Sarwar, Dr. A.H. Nayyar, who co-edited a report entitled “The Subtle Subversion” (Sustainable Development Policy Institute, 2003), said:

“The institution was University of Nebraska at Omaha, which has a center for Afghan studies which was tasked by CIA in the early eighties to rewrite textbooks for Afghan refugee children. The new books included hate material even in arithmetic. For example, if a man has five bullets and two go into the heads of Russian soldiers, how many are left, kind of stuff. This was exposed in a research thesis from the New School, New York in about 2002.” 

Sarwar has repeatedly written about the state of education in Pakistan and the state's resistance to the proposed changes fearing a revolt by some individual Islamists and the religious parties.

In her April 2004 article on the subject Sarwar had strongly cautioned the state against links between continued terrorism in Pakistani cities and the jihadisation of the curriculum.

"Those who blew themselves up... taking dozens of innocent lives with them, would also undoubtedly affirm that they are devout Muslims, and deny that they are terrorists," wrote Bina Sarwar. "But actions speak louder than words, and those who think that by killing others they are participating in a jehad, obviously have a very narrow and distorted view of Jehad, its principles and its true spirit."

"Where does this view come from?," Sarwar had asked.

In the same article Sarwar had gone on to a great length to present a detailed analysis of the state of education in Pakistan.

If the call had not gone unheeded,  the country would have been 7 years ahead by now.

  -- Links between jihadisation and education - the US connection

  -- Ahmadiyya Times
  -- By Imran Jattala - Follow Imran Jattala on Twitter: @IJattala