Pakistan to crack down on Islamic schools

The Pakistani dictatorship has revealed plans to crack down on the country’s Islamic schools, state-funded institutions that sent hundreds of young students to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.

A new law will boost funding to the madrassas if they adopt modern subjects like science, English, computers and maths.

Schools which the government believes are still breeding Islamic fundamentalists will have their funding cut.

Most of the madrassas currently teach subjects like Islamic law and the Koran.

These schools are found mainly in the North West Frontier Province, a section of Pakistan that used to be part of Afghanistan until the British rearranged the borders to provide a buffer zone between Afghan tribes and what was then British-controlled India.

The North West Frontier is populated mainly by ethnic Pashtuns, the ethnic group from which the Taliban drew its support and which makes up the majority of the Afghan population.

Most of the Taliban’s leadership was educated in madrassas during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.