Husain Haqqani in Gulf News (thanks to Eschwapp) makes a point that I made here not long ago: that Pakistan’s banning of foreign students from its madrassas will do nothing to curb jihadism in Pakistan or by Pakistanis in other countries, because the homegrown jihadists will still be trained in those madrassas.
The Pakistani government’s decision to bar 1,400 foreigners from studying at the country’s madrassas is not the solution to the country’s problem with terrorism.
None of the terrorists involved in international attacks linked to Pakistan, even tenuously, over the past several years have been regular foreign madrassa students.
Pakistan’s real problem is the training camps established by jihadist groups in the country, which were tolerated by the Pakistani State for strategic reasons.
Some of these camps operated alongside or under the cover of madrassas.
By focusing on madrassas, and then only on foreigners within the madrassas, Pakistani officials are once again missing the opportunity to come clean on the country’s recent past and move forward with a complete roll back of jihadism.
Read it all.