ABSTRACT
The madrassas are growing pools of juveniles recruited to extremist causes. In addition to the registered religious schools, there are also unregistered institutions turning out students who go on to join militant groups. Babar, who was in charge of the national police as a former Interior Minister, views some of these schools as "hotbeds of terrorism".22 The Dar-ul Uloom Haqqania among them is described as "the alma mater of the Taliban movement" that rules Afghanistan.23 This school hails Osama Bin Laden, suspected of being one of the key men behind terrorism in the name of Islam and the mastermind of the U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar-es Salaam (Tanzania), as a "true believer". He was once the star recruiter by the CIA for the Afghan jehad. Ironically, the United States and Bin Laden had the common goals, about a decade or so ago, of the defeat of the Soviets and the demise of Communism. Now, he is the head of a new fundamentalist network. Some analysts are speCUlating whether he has acquired a suitcase nuclear bomb or chemical weapons from Russia.24 Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia afterthe withdrawal (1988) of the Soviet forces . Three years later, he interpreted the arrival of the American troops in Saudi Arabia during the second Gulf War (1991) as occupation of Mecca and Madina, Islam's two most sacred cities.25 He vowed to fight them and the royal Saudi family, which forced him to flee. Known as a multi-millionaire civil engineer stripped of his Saudi nationality, Bin Laden calls for attacks on American targets from his hideouts in Afghanistan, frequently changing his sanctuary from Ialalabad to Khandahar or from Khost to Nangarhar. Having generously distributed charities to Afghani orphans, refugees and widows, and having stood up against the world's only superpower, he is a popular man in Afghanistan and even a hero to groups of Muslims elsewhere.
