Youth Radicalization in Pakistan. The “Enabling Environment” for Radicalization
US Institute of Peace publication:
Published:
February 26, 2014
By:
Raheem ul Haque
Amid the serious threat of extremism within Pakistan’s large young adult population, author Raheem ul Haque explores the process of youth radicalization and recommends how policymakers can best confront the growing challenge.
The “Enabling Environment” for Radicalization
Violent terrorist attacks are not the product of a single actor operating in isolation, but are instead embedded in a larger social and political milieu. Indeed, violent radicalization can be represented as a pyramid, with the active terrorist at the top, the religious-political organizations in the middle and the missionary Islamic organizations at the bottom. Linkages between these three levels create an “enabling environment” that enhance the means and opportunities to advance an Islamic identity-based social movement and, in effect, the radicalization of youth to potentially militant causes.
These linkages can be categorized into three basic models:
- the loosely-coupled model, where a shared space facilitates interaction between nominal sympathizers, supporters and militant actors. For example, a mosque or large congregations of missionary organizations, such as the Tableeghi Jamaat, allows for literatures of all levels to be distributed, and political and militant activists have the opportunity to interact with lower level sympathizers.
- the bridge model, where one organization bridges the initial pool of sympathizers with more militant organizations. As an example, the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) is a religious-political party which acts as the political representative of the large Deobandi mosque-madrasa network, composed of various missionary organizations. It also acts both as an ideological guide as well as a channel for youth volunteers to join Taliban militant actors. During the 1990s, for example, the JUI-S faction led by Maulana Sami-ul Haq closed its madrasa schools to allow students to participate in the Afghan civil war alongside the Afghan Taliban. Similarly, the Jamaat-e-Islami both has a strong national student organi-zation, the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, and is connected with militant organizations such as Hizbul-Mujahideen.
- the encapsulating model, whereby an entire social network has been mobilized to form a large organizational form, encapsulating all three levels of the pyramid. For example, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa acts as a proselytizing actor with a network of mosques and educational institutions, as well as a service oriented NGO; it has increasingly taken on a political role through its messaging on culture and politics, while its militant role as the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba has been well documented.
Though the methodology of missionary organizations may be peaceful, the acceptance of their message increases the likelihood that youth will also accept the message of religious-political or militant groups as being absolute.
For example, missionary organizations such as the male-focused Tableeghi Jamaat and the female-oriented Al-Huda, which have the largest public reach, have the potential to increase youth receptiveness to more radical groups by reinforcing messages of a primarily Islamic identity, through the rejection of indigenous ethnic, national or tribal identities as well as foreign cultural and political signifiers. By popularizing an exclusive Islamic or sectarian identity, they may contribute to align-ment with more radical organizations, and the rejection of pluralistic politics.
Religious political parties like Jamaat-e-Islami and the JUI have generally maintained a cordial relationship with the state and participated in the electoral political process, endorsing violent jihad only in select situations, such as Pakistan’s policy in Kashmir or Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s. Most militant organizations such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi instead pick up this thread at the extremes, calling for youth to join in violent jihad. Militant jihad presents a call for revolutionary action to achieve the same goals, a just Islamic order against an unjust and un-Islamic system of governance at the domestic as well as at the global scale against infidels and persecutors of Muslims. While general goals are common, differences in the under-standing of a just Islamic order and competition for power also leads to sectarian violence against fellow Muslims and intra-Islamist violence. The Pakistani state has historically allowed ample space for many Islamist organizations to operate, recruit and mobilize support, including in some cases active militant and sectarian organizations. The Pakistani military’s historical practice of selective support for certain militant actors in order to support regional policy objectives in neighboring Afghanistan or India has helped build a resource base for not just militant but also nonmilitant organizations serving bridging or encapsulating roles.
Full publication available here:
http://www.usip.org/publications/youth-radicalization-in-pakistan
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