Madrassas and suicide bombers

KARACHI: This is with reference to Ifthikar Firdous’ “What goes into the making of a suicide bomber” (July 20). Although I’m not a fan of Benazir Bhutto, this reminds of a comment she made about terrorism and the involvement of madrassas. The failure of the government in providing education to all citizens (partly due to the misallocation of our national budget) leads to a situation where other places of “education” such as madrassas crop up. Short-term efforts like mobile phone tapping, security cameras within cities, additional security etc are reactive solutions. In the long-run, we need reform of the whole system of education provided by

madrassas, more allocation of resources to free education, and employment-promoting government schemes.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 21^st, 2010.