I believe a link to this was posted earlier, but I think the article as a whole is worth posting.
Pakistan's Punjab province is the nerve centre of the jehad directed against India and nearly 50 per cent of jehadis belong to this region, says a new book. Quoting a survey of ten large jehadi groups, journalist-author Sushant Sareen's The Jihad Factory reveals that over | 10,000 people from Pakistan's Punjab have died for jehad, or Islamic holy war. Of this figure, Afghanistan accounted for some 4,000 deaths while the rest occurred in Jammu and Kashmir. |
10,000 people from Pakistan's Punjab have died for jehad, or Islamic holy war. Of this figure, Afghanistan accounted for some 4,000 deaths while the rest occurred in Jammu and Kashmir. The book, published by the Observer Research Foundation, says during a 1998 congregation, the Markaz Dawa al Irshad, the parent organisation of the Lashker-e-Taiba terror group, revealed that during 1993-97, the Lashker lost ten leaders in Jammu and Kashmir. Eight of them were from Punjab. From 1990 to 2002, the Lashker lost 1,500 jehadis in Kashmir, and more than 1,100 of them were from Punjab.
Just a reminder that Pashtuns are hardly the only Jihadi cannon fodder in Pakistan, although it is worth pointing out that Punjabis make up about half of the Pak population, so these statistics aren't as suprising or overwhelming as the article seems to imply.
"Economic disparities, lack of alternative sources of income, the social and geographic structure, existence of semi-literate population and unemployment are all forcing youths in Punjab to succumb to indoctrination," Sareen told the agency.
Of the 500 Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen guerrillas killed in Jammu and Kashmir till 2003, 215 were from Punjab, while 45 were from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, 49 from Sindh and 70 from Jammu and Kashmir. Among the 650 Harkat-ul-Jihad cadres killed in Kashmir so far, 200 were from Punjab and of the 840 Harkat-ul-Mujahideen militants killed there, over 350 were from that province. Since its formation in 2000, Jaish-e-Mohammed has suffered 179 casualties in Jammu and Kashmir. A majority of Jaish guerrillas are from Punjab, especially from Multan, Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan districts, the book says.
The casualty rates are interesting in the sense that we never hear about Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen, but it is apparently a pretty big player in the Kashmir Jihad. Also the other Jihadi groups casualties are dwarfed by Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been around for less time than most of them.
| There were 500 killed through 2003, at which point they were pulled offline, so it would seem. |
Speaking about the plight of the Punjab province, Sareen said: "Punjab is not only the nerve centre of the jehad factory, it is also the province that has been most affected by sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis inside Pakistan." Quoting a Pakistani newspaper, Sareen writes that in Punjab alone, there are more than 2,500 madrassas, most of them concentrated in the southern part of the province. This is one of the reasons why southern Punjab, next to India's borders, is under constant threat of sectarianism. While the Pakistani province provides the maximum cannon fodder for jehad, in recent years guerrilla groups have made considerable inroads in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Sindh and Baluchistan.
From what I have read, a great many of these Punjabi Jihadis are actually the descendents of Muslims who fled across the border during the slaughter of partition, and while they were able to integrate with their fellow Punjabis fairly easily, many of them have grown up nursing a deep hatred towards the Hindus who drove them out of their parents homes, making them more susceptible to Jihadi recruitment.
| This article starring: |
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| Observer Research Foundation | | |
| Sushant Sareen | | |
| Harkat-ul-Jihad | |
| Harkat-ul-Mujahideen | |
| Jaish-e-Mohammed | |
| Lashker-e-Taiba | |
| Markaz Dawa al Irshad | |
| Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen | |
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