The involvement of highly educated youth from the middle class backgrounds in the recent terrorist attacks,particularly in Karachi,is not an extraordinary phenomenon. It has become more of a norm. There is a long list of high profile terrorists from petit bourgeois backgrounds.Sarosh Siddiqui was a postgraduate physics student who escaped last Monday’s attack and Ahsan Israr, who was killed, hada PhD degree and professor at a private engineering university.
The gang involved in the Safoora Carnage in 2015 comprised of highly qualified graduates from different varsities. Daniel Pearl’sassassin Omar Saeed Sheikh, Al Qaeda IT expert Naeem Noor Khan, Al Qaeda operative Dr Arshad Waheed, Time Square bombing planner Faisal Shehzad, Danish embassy bombing perpetrator Hamad Adil, and hijacker of a navy frigate at Karachi dockyard Owais Jakhrani also came froma middle class educated elite. Its also the relatively well-offsections of Muslim diaspora in the West from which the terrorists involved in the New York the WTC attacks to the Daesh recruits including young Muslim women in the peculiar Islamicist modernist fashion mostly come from.
In Pakistan the organised Islamic fanatical tendencies were fostered by the state at the behest of the US imperialists to launch a terrorist insurgency notoriously known as the ‘Dollar Jihad’ to overthrow the left-wing government in Afghanistan after the Saur Revolution of April 1978. Ever since then this menace has spread in the whole region and is ravaging societies as far beyond. Pakistan has been plagued for decades by this ‘home grown’ bestiality. Historically after the failure of the PPP government’sreforms to deliver in the 1970’s and ebbing of the 1968-69 revolutionary tide there was a certain increase of the reactionary tendencies that emerged from the resultant despair in society. This was more profoundly reflected in the educational institutions with violence and killings of the left student activists mainly by the IJT (Islamic Jamiat a Talaba), the student wing of the Jamaat a Islami.
The left students organisations had played the pioneering role in the revolutionary movement of the late 1960’s and had a strong basis in the campuses where these religious outfits were tiny sects in the colleges and universities. Ironically the CIA sponsored these religious outfits. But the student’s politics, elections and students unions at the time were based more on ideological basis and the role of the proxies of wealthy financers was limited. After the state power was grabbed by the reactionary Islamicist dictator Ziaul Haq the religious students’ organisations became more viler with their lethal vigilantes carrying out heinous brutalities against the left-wing students activists, unions and organisations. But such was the resistance and struggle of the left wing students against this vicious dictatorship that Zia banned the students’ elections and unions first in October 1979 and then again in 1983.
It’s only through a mass revolutionary insurrection that this cancer of educated terrorists can be excised and the system transformed
Ever since, despite several democratic regimes being in power Zia’s ban on students unions has not been lifted. The democratic rulers of different parties that came to power were as terrified of students’ movements as was the dictator Zia. The judiciary quashes any parliamentary move to the relief of these democratic rulers.
However crisis amongst students has worsened. Privatisation of educational institutions has made education an economic burden for the parents and an ordeal for the students. The semester systems, relentless examinations and the cutthroat competition in education have made studyingagonising. The class system of education, disparity in the syllabi and the lavish flaunting of wealth by students from the moneyed classes creates inferiority complexes amongst less well-off students. The consequential infuriation finds no ideological and political outlets. Such strains are bound to create greater revulsions.
This psychological condition drives, these mostly lower middle class students, into fundamentalist obsessions and terrorist tendencies, an escapist shortcut from a traumatisingsystem with ambitions of heroism without much heroic deeds, abscondingthis cumbersome life.There is only a veneer of piety and religiosity to camouflage this venturing into realm of crime and terror.
Religious sectarian organisations are there for the taking.Funded by the massive primitive capital of the black economy these sects have become toxic. They have penetrated the state, politics and society. The clergy has morphed into fabulously rich entrepreneur in all trades. The sectarian groupings have splintered violently into dozens of rival outfits escalating terrorist savagery in this harrowing contest for plunder.
Some are still sheltered by the powers that be for strategic interests. Other splintered groups have become Frankenstein monsters for the imperialists and the deep state. The Tehreek Taliban Pakistanis in the forefront. The al Qaeda and the so-called Punjabi Taliban emerged from Wahabi, Deobandi and Salafists fundamentalist groups.
The state’s response to these terrorist cellsfostering in the universities has been pathetic. After failing to comb the data of religious sectarian seminaries, state’s agencies are now planning to scrutinise students enrolled in the Karachi’s universities. It will only create more hardships for the ordinary and poor students who have no access to wealth and connections in state and politics. This is not an issue that can be solved through administrative means. It’s a socio economic issue of a sick society drenched in misery and cultural anguish. This fundamentalist terror is the distilled essence of a rotting system. It’s a cancer that has metastasised into every organ of thesocioeconomic system and its state.It’s only through a mass revolutionary insurrection that this cancer can be excised and the system transformed.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, September 11th 2017.