Pak govt to take over all madrassas: Zardari

[druidity33]

Source: Times of India

WASHINGTON: Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has said that all madrassas in the country would be taken over by the government to separate the
students from extremism and impart modern as well as religious education to them.

Speaking at a community dinner, Zardari said his government has resolved to bring reforms in the madrassa system and bring it under the government system.

Commenting on the ongoing military operation in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) against the Taliban and other terrorist groups Zardari said the government would initiate every necessary step to pull the country out of the crisis and hand over a better Pakistan to the next generation.


more at link...

Read more: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pak-govt-to-take-over-all-madrassas-Zardari/articleshow/4507446.cms

---

This seems like a good thing. Doesn't it?

Though i guess it depends on whose in power there...


:shrug:

[Aslanspal]

1. Wow! I support this

Hillary Clinton really lit a fire under these guys plus she understands their fledgling democracy starting from almost scratch....the ball is in our court to back these people. imho.

[karynnj]

5. Hillary Clinton???

The fact is that Zardari met with Obama, Biden, Holbroke, Kerry, many state department people and many Senate people with foreign policy expertise. Any - or all of them - could have called for this. I know that ending the teaching of hate was in many speeches - from many of these people. Kerry has spoken extensively about it even back before 2004 -yet, there is no reason for me to post that he advocated this - therefore, it happened - even though he did just visit Pakistan and organized a lunch meeting with Senators from fp related committees. I am sure others did the same thing as well. This is a case where many are likely all saying the same thing.

The credit here should go to Zardari, who is very likely taking a huge - but necessary risk - in doing this. The motive is quite likely as much that the Taliban has called for his death and that of other leaders. An extremist group doing that will set a fire under most leaders.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. The guy in charge "over there" is President Asif Ali Zardari.

He has a stench about him, as it turns out.
From Wiki:

He's a billionaire who was "accused of money-laundering activities in a US Senate report on private banking and money-laundering."
Also accused in Switzerland and Britain of money laundering.
I suggest a further Wiki read which may help figure out why he is so attractive to US interests.

And get this weird sentence, quoted from the India Times:
( talking about fighting the Taliban in the Swat Valley)
"I think the last count we have managed to dislodge most of the folks from the mountains and the miscreants have lost about 145 people. So that's 145 of the 'nasties' dead, and we are still in operation," Zardari said in an interview with the PBS news channel.

"folks"????

compare it to this quote of his in same article:
"We can't have the aid donors going in there and getting casualties on them also. So it is a little precarious, a little difficult situation. But the moment it settles down, they will be allowed to go there"

Notice the change in idiom?

Link:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/About-3000-terrorists-in-Swat-Valley-would-be-killed-Zardari/articleshow/4504965.cms

[PassingFair]

17. He is the widower of Benazir Bhutto.

I have read that the "charges" against
him are politically motivated.

I wish Bhutto were alive to handle this
situation....

[TheCoxwain]

3. The funding for Madrassas comes from Saudi Arabia ( or from our petroleum purchases)

So I really wonder how successful will the reform effort be

[ensho]

4. good move! shock waves must be roaring thru the madrassas

and the girls?

[ooglymoogly]

6. Good news...kr nt

[Vidar]

7. Great news.

[kirby]

8. This is the root of the problem...

It is good to see someone addressing an root cause of a problem rather than just the symptoms. The fact that children do not have education access except for extremist schools (madrassas) have been the problem for decades. Some of the most extreme 'schools' tech absolutely nothing but the Koran day in and day out. They mix hatred and indoctrination for jihad.

[Qutzupalotl]

9. I hope it doesn't cause a backlash.

I'm sure it will, I just hope he can handle it.

[Bragi]

10. So what does the Army and the ISI say on this?

Are the Generals and the ISI also on board with this strategy?

If so, it will matter.

If not, it's more of the usual stuff one gets from the Pak government.

- B

[denem]

11. The 'Taliban' have called for the death of the ISI leaders.

Concentrates the mind wonderfully. The 'Pakistani Taliban' is a loose alliance of regional groups, not to be confused with what remains of the Afghani Taliban still headed by Mullah Omar.

[ohio2007]

14. It's going to split the country apart at the seems....it seems ......if they follow up on the threat

interesting spin
Young Pakistan Army Officers May Be Turning to Taliban, Insiders Say

Pakistan's Ethnic Fault Line

snip


The Pakistani army is composed mostly of Punjabis. The Taliban is entirely Pashtun. For centuries, Pashtuns living in the mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan have fought to keep out invading Punjabi plainsmen. So sending Punjabi soldiers into Pashtun territory to fight jihadists pushes the country ever closer to an ethnically defined civil war, strengthening Pashtun sentiment for an independent "Pashtunistan" that would embrace 41 million people in big chunks of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

This is one of the main reasons the army initially favored a peace deal with a Taliban offshoot in the Swat Valley and has resisted U.S. pressure to go all out against jihadist advances into neighboring districts. While army leaders fear the long-term dangers of a Taliban link-up with Islamist forces in the heartland of Pakistan, they are more worried about what they see as the looming danger of Pashtun separatism.


snip

So how should the Obama administration proceed?

snip


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/10/AR2009051001959.html

As for the ISI, imo, they are on first name basis with the Saudi financiers of the whole ponzy game underway.
So how soon to balkanization ?
Five months ?

[Igel]

12. Not a new idea.

A few years ago there was a push to secularize, to a large extent, education at the madaris. Essentially to bring all the madaris under control of the central education bureaucracy, with a curriculum that included science, languages (other than classical Arabic), math, etc. To a limited extent it worked, but only to a limited extent.

Many political parties opposed it, there were demonstrations.

Many in the west opposed the idea simply because Musharraf was behind it and anything he did had to be wrong. Sharif was against it. I don't recall Bhutto's response; Zardari was Mr. Benazir and his response would have been irrelevant at the time, since she hadn't died and he hadn't inherited her political party, members of parliament, and political apparatus.

[ohio2007]

13. Did they let the Taliban in on the discussion of this plan ?

oh, details details.

Who's boot will step foot in the mountain mans madrassas first ?

show of hands ?

[Bozita]

15. NYT 10/14/01 - A NATION CHALLENGED: SCHOOLS; Shaping Young Islamic Hearts and Hatreds

This was the NYT Magazine's cover story. Not much change occurred during GWB's reign. I wonder why.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/14/world/a-nation-challenged-schools-shaping-young-islamic-hearts-and-hatreds.html?scp=8&sq=madrassas%20saudi%20pakistan&st=cse&pagewanted=all

A NATION CHALLENGED: SCHOOLS; Shaping Young Islamic Hearts and Hatreds
By RICK BRAGG
Published: Sunday, October 14, 2001


A thousand years ago, in the days of the camel caravans, storytellers gathered here in the tea shops and brought the outside world and all its thoughts and ideas to the bazaar. As the vendors hawked silk, spice and rich tapestries and traders herded beasts through streets thick with smoke from cooking fires, travelers from distant lands and differing religions told stories about moguls, magic, wit and wisdom. In time, the bazaar came to be known as Qissa Khwani -- the Bazaar of the Storytellers.

Now, the streets are still choked with donkey carts, and meat still sizzles on open pits, but the vendors are poor men selling simple things. Blaring car horns drown out all other sound, just as the teachers and students in the Islamic seminaries that surround this bazaar have drowned out all conflicting ideas, all unacceptable thoughts.

The storytellers no longer come. There is just one story now, at least one acceptable story. It is the one taught in the seminaries, called madrassas, that have become incubators in Pakistan for the holy warriors who say they will die to defend Islam and their hero, Osama bin Laden, from the infidels. In many of the 7,500 madrassas in Pakistan, inside a student body of 750,000 to a million, students learn to recite and obey Islamic law, and to distrust and even hate the United States.

''Jihad,'' shouted a little boy, from a high window in a madrassa just steps from the Khwani Bazaar. He grinned and waved as foreign journalists snapped his photograph, but, on the streets below, older students had massed for demonstrations that would end in clouds of tear gas and smoke from burning tires, as young men jumped through fire to prove their faith and ferocity.

President Bush and diplomats from the West have taken great pains to point out that the war on Mr. bin Laden and the Taliban of Afghanistan is not a war on Islam, but in many madrassas here in Pakistan -- especially those near the border with Afghanistan -- militant Muslims lecture students that the United States is a nation of Christians and Jews who are not after a single terrorist or government but are bent on the worldwide annihilation of Islam.

more...

[Vehl]

16. good idea, but how practical is it?

This idea targets the core of the majority of Pakistan's problems....the religious fundamentalism spewing out from these madrassas. But i dont think this is going to be easy to implement.


The Pakistani Army(at least elements of it) and the ISI seem to have an agenda that's quite contrary to the one being espoused by its government.How much power Does Zardari actually have if these elements work against him?


also; i doubt that this plan would have any "immediate" effect on the current situation because already there is a HUGE% of religiously-fundamentalist populous ...thanks to these madrasses. This policy might affect the newer "batches" that might pass out from these madrassas but not the last 20 years worth.


The only way this could be won is if the pakistani public is unanimously behind the secular forces

[bemildred]

18. Pakistan: Taliban 'on the run'

Pakistan's armed forces have put Taliban fighters "on the run", the country's interior minister has said, as the military steps up its offensive in the Swat valley.

With warplanes bombing alleged Taliban strongholds in the region, Rehman Malik said on Monday that up to 700 fighters had been killed in four days of fighting.

"The operation will continue until the last Taliban is flushed out," Malik said, adding that the offensive was "continuing successfully."

"Our strategy has succeeded. We haven't given them a chance. They are on the run. They were not expecting such an offensive."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/05/2009512125756141.html

[bemildred]

19. Obama admin has full faith and confidence in Zardari: US

WASHINGTON: Expressing "full faith and confidence" in Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, the Obama administration has asserted that it has received assurances from him about safety of the nuclear weapons and on continuing the fight against terrorism in his country.

"We were assured by President Zardari that they have complete command and control of the nuclear weapons in Pakistan," the state department Spokesman, Ian Kelly, told reporters in response to a question at his daily press briefing.

When asked how the US would verify that, Kelly said "we have full faith and confidence in President Zardari."

The state department spokesperson termed the last week's meeting of President Obama and Zardari at the White House as "very productive".

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/US/Obama-admin-has-full-faith-and-confidence-in-Zardari-US-/articleshow/4512387.cms