WORDE Specialist Mehreen Farooq with Mossarat Qadeem at USIP

Civil society actors have an immense role in peacebuilding and resolving local conflicts, especially when the rule of law is ineffective or absent. Where unreliable governance, weak economy and natural catastrophes have devastated and displaced millions of people, the burden of strengthening communities and providing services to local institutions is on civil society actors. With the added complexity of terrorist threats, how are Pakistani civil society actors actively working to counter extremist narratives, reduce violence and foster a culture of peace?

On January 19, 2012, the U.S. Institute of Peace, in collaboration with the Institute of Inclusive Security, hosted a panel of experts to examine the ways in which diverse civil society actors, including youth and women, as well as the media, religion and business communities, confront real conflicts with collaborative problem-solving approaches. The Institute for Inclusive Security has partnered with the Pakistan-based NGO, PAIMAN Trust to implement a project in the tribal areas of Pakistan to empower women to moderate extremism.

According to PAIMAN’s Executive Director Mossarat Qadeem, fear and violence has prevented the 99.5% of Pakistanis who are moderate, from speaking out against the extremists. Her work ranges from engaging students in Peshawar to the mothers of young boys who have been influenced by the Taliban. Ms. Qadeem noted that these youth have experienced a lot of trauma and abuse by the Taliban and require psychological counseling.  Since working in FATA and Peshawar she said, “We have transformed 17 extremist youth who were would-be bombers. They are now leading lives of purpose.”

In her presentation, WORDE Specialist Mehreen Farooq noted that effective programs like PAIMAN’s must be expanded and replicated. She added, “In order to create a truly national movement against the Taliban, ad hoc programs carried out through informal networks should be institutionalized, and implemented throughout the country. Nothing short of an integrated approach will work.” WORDE is currently working on a report for policymakers to provide additional recommendations for strengthening civil society level efforts to counter extremism.

Speakers

Mossarat Qadeem
Executive Director, PAIMAN Alumni Trust, Pakistan

Mehreen Farooq
Research Fellow, World Organization of Research and Development

Miki Jacevic
Chief Training Officer, The Institute for Inclusive Security

Peter Weinberger
Sr. Program Officer, Academy for International Conflict Management
and Peacebuilding, USIP

Qamar-ul Huda, Discussant
Sr. Program Officer, Religion and Peacemaking Center, USIP

Kathleen Kuehnast, Moderator
Director, Gender and Peacebuilding Center, USIP

Event
Pakistani Peacemakers: The Challenges for Civil Society Actors

Event Date
January 19, 2012 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Location
U.S. Institute of Peace
2301 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20037

General Inquiries
Please contact Brooke Stedman at bstedman@usip.org with any questions about this event.

Media Inquiries
Journalists should contact Allison Sturma at asturma@usip.org in the Office of Public Affairs and Communications.

WORDE Researchers Travel to Over 35 Cities in Pakistan to Understand Grassroots Efforts to Counter Violent Extremism and Stop Talibanization

WORDE Team Meets with Peace NGOs in Pakistan

WORDE Specialists Mehreen Farooq and Waleed Ziad recently travelled to 35 cities and villages across Pakistan to explore avenues for developing civil society’s capabilities to counter extremism. They met with over 100 organizations, from Peshawar, Swat, and the tribal frontier, to Kashmir, southern Punjab, and Sindh to discover how Pakistanis are using madrassas, mosques, shrines, and public debates to counter radical narratives at the grassroots level. The purpose of the research is to promote US-Pakistan engagement at the civil society level to not only counter violent extremism but to win hearts and minds to ensure long-lasting regional stability.

Presentations

In October 2011, WORDE hosted a community discussion Alternative Channels to Countering the Taliban: The Untold Story of Pakistan’s Civil Society with Farooq and Ziad. Shamoun Maayer, founding member of the American Pakistan Foundation moderated the discussion.

The team has also briefed policymakers in the National Counter Terrorism Center, the State Department, USAID and USIP. The research has also been presented to the Global Forum for Counter Radicalization in Paris, and the EU/US Expert Meeting in Brussels on Pakistan and Pakistani Diaspora Communities hosted by the European Commission together with the US Mission to the EU.

Project Media Coverage

In addition to interviews by Voice of America (Serbian, Pashto, and Dari, TV Ashna)  and the Associated Press, the Foreign Policy Magazine’s AfPak Channel is publishing an exclusive four-part series of articles written by Farooq and Ziad.

The Foreign Policy Magazine series includes interviews with former militants, parents of kidnapped children, community activists, jirga members, and religious scholars — highlighting the lessons they’ve learned, and the challenges they face to create a bold social movement to promote peace. In addition to the articles, WORDE will be publishing a report with recommendations for policymakers this Spring.

• The Battle for Pakistan’s Soul, ( September 1, 2011), focuses on jihadi recruitment methods throughout militant hotspots in Southern Punjab.

• Pakistan’s Most Powerful Weapon, (October 21, 2011), explores anti-Taliban public awareness campaigns led by religious networks and community development organizations to spur grassroots efforts to counter violent extremism.

• Evicting the Taliban from Swat, (November 2, 2011), highlights how local communities used civil society organizations, the media, political structures and the military to create a national social movement against the Taliban.

To sponsor an event, or for media inquiries, please contact Mehreen Farooq (Mehreen@worde.org).

This is part 3 of a series contributed by WORDE researchers as they traveled to the two main theatres of Pakistan’s war against the Taliban – Swat and the tribal belt – to explore how civil society is countering extremism at the grassroots level.

In Charbagh, a quiet town in Pakistan’s fabled Swat Valley, storefronts perforated by bullet holes are a haunting reminder of how the Taliban insurgency brought militants dangerously close to Islamabad in 2009. Once romanticized as the Switzerland of South Asia, Swat is now heavily guarded by military check posts.

We attended a jirga, or assembly, in the town of Bahrain in Swat to understand how the Taliban came to power and how the locals challenged their reign of terror. According to village elders, the real problem began about twenty years ago, when Sufi Muhammad, the “godfather” of the Swat Taliban, established the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM – The Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws). In 2002 he was arrested for leading 10,000 volunteers from Swat and surrounding districts to fight against coalition forces in Afghanistan, and his organization was officially banned. He was released in 2008, by which time his son-in law Maulana Fazlullah had taken up his cause.

Fazlullah, better known as Mawlana Radio for his broadcasts, targeted the uneducated in remote villages who were unable to distinguish religious conservatism from extremism.  He presented himself as a liberator, exploiting age-old tensions between laborers, farmers, and the rich landowning class.  Many Swatis readily bought into his narrative, and were made to believe that the United States and Pakistan were orchestrating a conspiracy to destroy Islam. According to locals, women in the area donated massive amounts of gold from their dowries to support Fazlullah’s purportedly holy cause.

When the Taliban came to power in 2007 they revealed their true colors, embarking on a systematic, violent campaign to wipe out dissent. We were told the stories of countless moderate religious and political leaders who were targeted for speaking out against the Taliban. Revered Sufi leader Pir Samiullah was killed in the town of Matta along with 63 of his followers. He was hung from a tree for four days. In Kabal, Maulana Hamidullah was murdered during his evening prayers after he openly criticized the Taliban in one of his weekly sermons. Hundreds of schools were destroyed. Community leaders who refused to send their children to fight in the jihad were executed. It soon became evident that the Taliban had little to do with Islam.

To counter the Taliban’s violent tactics, community leaders chose peaceful modes of resistance. A major anti-Taliban madrasa in Swat financially supported families of scholars who had been killed, and publically honored their late loved ones as fallen heroes. In Malakand, religious scholars organized a peace jirga and issued a fatwa accusing the Taliban of treachery. In Saidu Sharif, public events were organized in mosques to raise awareness that the Taliban were operating against Islamic law. When the Taliban tried to force the elders of Bahrain to sign a declaration in support of the insurgent group, the elders turned around and challenged the Taliban to a public debate on their beliefs. According to a prominent elder, “There was no doubt we would win the debate, so with the support of the entire town behind us, the Taliban relented and let us return to our mosques in peace.”

In tandem with these local efforts, the people of Swat set out to raise awareness of the crisis at a national and global level. Zubair Torwali, a social activist from Bahrain, wrote a seminal article, “From Swat with No Love,” revealing the plight of Swat in Pakistan’s mainstream media for the first time. Others followed suit, and finally, images of the Taliban flogging a teenage girl sent shockwaves throughout Pakistan.

Torwali and other activists also set up Amankaar Tehrik, or “peace movement,” to mobilize political institutions to counter violent extremism. Bushra Gohar, a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, convened jirgas of Swati activists and public intellectuals to bring awareness of the problem to policymakers in Islamabad. Meanwhile, religious figures from the frontier region of Pakistan briefed other anti-Taliban religious leaders from across Pakistan during the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Conference in Lahore. Together they pledged their support for military operations in Swat.

As the Taliban drew closer to Islamabad in 2009, the Pakistani military also waged a campaign to win “hearts and minds” in the region. Omar Tirmizi, a young army captain who lost his leg fighting in Bajaur explained how his unit gave their rations to villagers to gain their trust. The response was positive. That summer, with enough political capital and public awareness, the military successfully waged its offensive against the Taliban.  A community activist in Swat explained, “Once the military arrived, we all hoisted white flags on top of our houses to signify our support for the state.”

Today, Swat is once again considered safe, and tourists are slowly returning. According to Nasat Iqbal from the government’s Social Welfare Organization, women are playing a major role in promoting education and leading rehabilitation projects. In nearby Malakand, the Jamia Subhaniyya Rizvia is building one of the first religious and vocational schools for women in the tribal belt, with accommodations for up to 200 students. There are other signs that people are gradually rebuilding their lives. Vibrant cultural traditions, which had been prohibited by the Taliban’s puritanical decrees, are once again being celebrated. A week before we arrived in Swat, Mr. Torwali had co-sponsored the Simam Cultural Festival, attended by thousands.

Swat’s success hinged on an integrated approach, which should be replicated at the epicenter of Pakistan’s war against extremism, the tribal belt. There as in Swat, civil society actors, including religious and political leaders, elders, and educators, lead daring resistance efforts against all odds. We visited a flagship madrasa within a network of anti-Taliban educational institutions in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). In the surrounding hills, an infamous Taliban commander is waging one of the bloodiest wars in the region. A local educator explained, “When militants began threatening the schools, hundreds of our teachers publically pledged never to allow extremism to enter our campuses.” His students established lashkars (militias) and even set up a radio station to challenge extremist narratives. However, given the increasing threats from militants and waning support from the government, these endeavors were ultimately short-lived.

Parallel efforts are being waged by Shi’a Muslim community leaders in FATA to reinforce mainstream Islamic principles of religious freedom and pluralism. According to Dr. Javed Hussain, a former member of Parliament from Parachinar (just across the border from Tora Bora), thousands of members of minority groups have been persecuted by the Taliban since 9-11. Just this summer, community activists from his region organized a major press conference at the National Press Club to demand greater media coverage of the targeted killings in FATA. “There was a time,” a local Shi’a leader explained, “when we used to host musical evenings with our Hindu and Sikh neighbors. In the dead of winter, we even housed Christian families in our homes when they didn’t have any heating sources.” Today, at great personal risk, he affords safe passage for those fleeing the region. He added, “Every morning I think of my mother and pray that she doesn’t have to witness the pain of her son passing away.” Despite courageous efforts at the grass-roots level, much more is required to mobilize all of Pakistan behind a full-fledged counterinsurgency operation in the tribal areas.

Without ongoing action to counter radical ideologies and support the efforts of moderates, militants could eventually resurface under a different alias. Let’s not forget that the Swat Taliban have already done this twice in the last two decades. As we were leaving Peshawar, a prominent poster on the road read, “Allah is our God and Jihad is our way!” This is a chilling reminder that military offensives have to be followed by a sustained campaign to counter Talibanization at its roots.

Waleed Ziad and Mehreen Farooq are leading a project to analyze the role of Pakistan’s civil society in countering extremism for the Washington DC-based World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE).

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Articles from WORDE’s Contributing Authors:

Young girls in a village near Rawalakot, Kashmir

Specialists Farooq and Ziad Publish second article in Exclusive Foreign Policy Magazine Series based on their travel to over 35 cities in Pakistan to explore grassroots efforts to counter violent extremism and stop talibanization.

October 24, 2011
For Immediate Release

This summer WORDE Specialists Mehreen Farooq and Waleed Ziad travelled across Pakistan to explore avenues for developing civil society’s capabilities to counter extremism. They met with over 100 organizations, from Peshawar, Swat, and the tribal frontier, to Kashmir, southern Punjab, and Sindh to discover how Pakistanis are using madrassas, mosques, shrines, and public debates to counter radical narratives at the grassroots level.

The Foreign Policy Magazine’s AfPak Channel series includes interviews with former militants, parents of kidnapped children, community activists, jirga members, and religious scholars — highlighting the lessons they’ve learned, and the challenges they face to create a bold social movement to promote peace.

The first article, “The Battle for Pakistan’s Soul,” (September 1, 2011), focuses on jihadi recruitment methods throughout militant hotspots in Southern Punjab

The second installation of the series “Pakistan’s Most Powerful Weapon,” (October 21, 2011), explores anti-Taliban public awareness campaigns led by religious networks and community development organizations to spur grassroots efforts to counter violent extremism.

To sponsor or schedule an event, and for media inquiries, please contact Mehreen Farooq: (202) 595-1355, Mehreen@Worde.org

This is the second installment in a series contributed by researchers from the World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE) as they traveled throughout Pakistan to explore how civil society is countering extremism at the grassroots level.

In a pristine, remote valley in Kashmir, far from the theaters of war, some families are abandoning their religious and cultural traditions in favor of extremist ideologies. The trend began after the 2005 earthquake, when several Islamist organizations – notably Jamaat ud-Dawa (JuD) – came to the forefront, providing food, shelter and health supplies to devastated communities. A village elder lamented, “Many of us were impressed by their sophisticated ambulance services, and families willingly joined in their relief efforts.” Most of these families had no idea that JuD was in fact a front for the banned militant organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistanis, particularly in such remote areas, require tools to recognize extremist ideologies and terrorist organizations so that they can create counter-movements within their own communities. We travelled throughout Northern Punjab and the Hazara region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to learn how certain grassroots organizations have designed effective awareness campaigns within a religious paradigm that are palatable even to the at-risk population.

We began with the leaders of Pakistan’s moderate religious networks. Since 9/11, dozens of religious scholars have issued public statements and fatwas against terrorism.  Dr. Raghib Naeemi — son of Dr. Sarfraz Naeemi who was killed in 2009 after he publically denounced terrorist activities as un-Islamic — appears regularly on TV to promote peace and social cohesion.

Traditional Muslim networks have organized nation-wide anti-Taliban public rallies from “Save Pakistan” to “Ulema and Mashaikh” conventions, bringing together religious scholars and community leaders. Last November, a “Long March” was organized from Islamabad to Lahore to protest the increasing number of suicide attacks on Pakistan’s cultural and spiritual landmarks. Over 20 major shrines across Pakistan were bombed last year alone. One of the core organizers of the Long March explained, “As we proceeded, the participation grew by the thousands, and in every city, we gave speeches and handed out fliers teaching people how to recognize extremism.”

Religious leaders have also developed rapid response mechanisms to denounce terrorism following major suicide attacks. Last year when the soup kitchen at the shrine of Lahore’s patron saint was bombed, the imam Mufti Mohammad Sialvi invited the media and mobilized leaders from different mosques to condemn terrorism. When we visited the shrine a year later, we found that students groups had maintained the campaign with freshly painted banners.

To form a stronger unified voice against the Taliban, religious scholars have also created a number of new NGOs. In the rural outskirts of Rawalpindi, Pir Mudassir Shah, a dynamic young leader versed in 14 languages, established the think tank Center for Innovative Research, Collaboration and Learning (CIRCLe). Pir Mudassir was a prominent organizer in a 25,000 man National Flag Day march to demonstrate support for the military counterinsurgency operations in the Swat Valley. The march brought together various elements of civil society, from conservative Muslim groups to the Christian Progressive Movement of Pakistan. CIRCLe will soon launch a poster campaign, for which they are seeking international support. One of the posters features a girl crying with a caption: “The Taliban Took my Father.”

Schools are another critical channel through which Pakistanis generate awareness. Our journey took us to Bhera, an ancient village known for its classic Mughal mosques, Hindu temples, and carved wooden balconies. Deep in the heart of Punjab, Bhera’s Dar ul-Uloom Muhammadia Ghousia is the hub of a network of educational and social welfare institutions providing free education grounded in the Sufi ethos to over 25,000 women and men. Pir Amin al-Hasanat, who leads the school, explained, “We teach all of our students that it is not their duty to fight jihad, but to look after the wellbeing of their community – regardless of one’s faith or ethnicity.” Just last year, the school and its affiliate philanthropic and social welfare organizations distributed hundreds of hygiene kits, established medical facilities for over 7,000 people and rebuilt homes for flood victims. They targeted remote areas at risk of falling under the influence of radical groups who use relief as a means to win recruits.

We encountered other successful models. The Pak Turk International School system has campuses throughout Pakistan, including volatile regions like Quetta and Peshawar. Their teachers challenge radical narratives by providing students and their families the necessary tools for interfaith dialogue and mutual understanding, which allow them to deconstruct the tribal, cultural, and religious stereotypes that feed militancy. Successful counter radicalization, we were told, is not taught in a specific class or manual but rather by example. In the Pak Turk schools, teachers are available at all times for guidance, and visit students in their homes. Through these civil society efforts, Pakistanis are becoming aware of the dangers of violent extremism. According to recent public opinion polls, a greater number of Pakistanis have a negative view of al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban than before. “At first people were hesitant to speak out against the Taliban,” explained Pir Mudassir Shah, “but now they are becoming more comfortable challenging extremism because the issue is mainstreamed.” Today, while barriers and police checkpoints can be seen lining the streets of Pakistan’s capital, and the army mobilizes in the tribal belt, a parallel war is being waged in Pakistan’s heartland by local communities.

In one instance in rural Abbottabad, not far from the compound in which slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was living,  a group of radical mullahs offered to build a mosque on the condition that the clerics could provide their own teachers. Not long after, families were alarmed to see that their children were being radicalized in classes taught at the new mosque. When parents learned that their children were being taught that “J” stands for “jihad” and “K” for “kalashnikov” the community held the mosque under siege until the mullahs were forced out.

150 miles south, in a village near Bhera, a father learned that his son was being brainwashed by a fundamentalist community member to believe that he would enter paradise if he became a suicide bomber. The father, supported by the Dar ul-Uloom community, rescued the children by publically exposing the radical mullah. He challenged the mullah: “After sending my child to paradise, why don’t you send your own son to join him so that mine won’t be lonely?”

Even some segments of the population that had been involved in militancy are now condemning extremism. Irfan, a former “toll collector” for a militant outfit along the Pakistan-Afghanistan Durand Line explained, “After the Taliban bombed the shrine of the Rahman Baba, the great Pashtun poet-saint, I realized that militants are destroying our country.” Now as a taxi driver, Irfan makes it a point to lambast the Taliban in conversations with all of his passengers.

Waleed Ziad and Mehreen Farooq are leading a project to analyze the role of Pakistan’s civil society in countering extremism for the Washington DC-based World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE).

On Tuesday, October 18, 2011  WORDE President Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi began a Southern California college campus tour series to address “How America Should Confront Radical Islamism.” Her first college engagement was at the Center for Middle East Development at her alma mater UCLA where she joined Acting Law Professor Asli Bali in a discussion about radical Islamism.

Later that evening, she continued her tour at the Religious Studies Program at UC Irvine’s Center for the Study of Democracy.

On Tuesday, October 18, 2011 Dennis Prager featured WORDE President, Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi on his daily radio show.  Dr. Mirahmadi highlighted WORDE’s two pronged approach in promoting an authentic, moderate Islam.  WORDE’s approach is to both shape public policy by explaining to law enforcement and government officials the difference between mainstream Islam and radical ideology so the United States’ counter terrorism policy is effective and also to build resilience within the Muslim community to  make sure they have the tools to combat radical Islamism.

On Sunday October 9, 2011 WORDE hosted a community discussion on “Alternative Channels to Countering the Taliban: The Untold Story of Pakistan’s Civil Society” with WORDE Specialists Mehreen Farooq and Waleed Ziad. Shamoun Maayer, founding member of the American Pakistan Foundation moderated the discussion.

The presentation was based on WORDE’s latest project in Pakistan to understand how civil society is building community resilience to extremism and to explore opportunities for future engagement.

In this unique WORDE project, Mehreen Farooq and Waleed Ziad traveled to 35 cities and villages across Pakistan. They met with over 100 organizations, from Peshawar, Swat, and the tribal frontier, to Kashmir southern Punjab and Sindh to discover how Pakistanis are using madrassas, mosques, shrines and public debates to counter radical narratives at the grass roots level.

“Although we met with both faith-based and non-faith based organizations,” Ziad explained, “our analysis focused on traditional Muslim networks that can counter radical ideologies from within an orthodox framework that is palatable to the at-risk population.”

The team also explored potential areas for faith-based and non-faith-based to collaborate. Farooq explained, “Both groups have different competitive advantages. On one hand, faith-based groups have immense grassroots capabilities and legitimacy, whereas non-faith-based organizations tend to have better institutional capacity. With this in mind, we can network the two groups.”

In their remarks, Farooq and Ziad stressed the importance of rebuilding trust between the US and Pakistan through Pakistan’s civil society.  “Without engaging organizations with grassroots legitimacy,” Waleed Ziad noted, “it will be an uphill battle to hold and build in areas where militants have been cleared.”

The presentation featured dozens of photographs from their journey. Foreign Policy Magazine’s AfPak Channel is publishing a series of articles written by Farooq and Ziad. The series includes interviews with former militants, parents of kidnapped children, community activists, jirga members, and religious scholars — the lessons they’ve learned, and the challenges they face — to create a bold social movement to promote peace.