Pakistan widens terror dragnet

Eleven of the arrested students, including Gunawan, studied at Abu Bakr Islamic University, a madrassah in Karachi. Gunawan's arrest in Karachi triggered another series of raids less than a kilometer away from his madrassah. Another eight Southeast Asian students were arrested from the Jama Darasitul Islamiya Madarsa, a seminary run by the Jamaat-ud Da'awa, the political wing of a banned Pakistani Kashmiri militant group of Lashkar-i-Tayyaba. This connection has compelled investigators to explore JI's links with Pakistan's militant groups.

It is suspected that Hambali's brother and other foreign students studying at madrassahs for years may have been the bridge between Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan and JI's network in Southeast Asia.

"The organization of Al Qaeda has wheels within wheels," says Pakistani analyst Khaleda Ghaus. "The arrest of [possible] Jemmah's members by Pakistan's security agencies seems to be a new angle in Pakistan's war on terror."

During the last decade, 15,000 students from Muslim countries all over the world came to Pakistan to study Islamic teachings in madrassahs.

Gunawan was granted admission to the Abu Bakr Islamic University four years ago. Founded in 1978, the school teaches only the Koran, Sunnah (the sayings of Mohammad), and Arabic. Secular subjects such as science, mathematics, and English are not included in the curriculum. Out of 500 students, around 200 are foreign nationals mainly from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and African countries. Many of them also obtained training at Al Qaeda-run terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and fought alongside Taliban forces during the five-year rule of the Islamic militia, which harbored Osama bin Laden.

Clerics at the Abu Bakr seminary deny that the arrested militants were involved in militant activities.

"We do not give them military training. We provide them purely Islamic teachings and not the education of extremism," says Yaqoob Tahir, one of school's clerics. "They were the students of Islamic teachings and not the students of militancy."

Seated on the marble floor of the seminary's main hall, students at the seminary are worried about a government crackdown. While they say their arrested classmates were not members of any Islamic extremist group, many ideologically support Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and Jemaah Islamiyah.

"Islam is against terrorism but Islam is for jihad against the oppressors of Muslims," says a young foreign student from Thailand. "If Americans and Jews want to conspire against Muslims, then we should wage war against them."

After Pakistan joined the US-led war on terror, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf last year announced several steps to regulate madrassahs, including curriculum reform and the cessation of foreign funding. Foreign students must now register with Pakistani authorities who monitor their movements.

The focus on madrassahs has waned since. But analysts say the latest arrests will bring the spotlight on them once again. While there are around 10,000 registered madrassahs operating in the country, one estimate suggests that thousands more are functioning in the far-flung villages and towns.

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