The Roots of Terrorism - continued

Fair, C. Christine (2007) 'The Educated Militants of Pakistan: Implications for Pakistan's Domestic Security', Contemporary South Asia, 16:1, 93-106

ABSTRACT This paper presents preliminary findings from a survey of 141 militant households in Pakistan, focusing on the background of slain militants in those households. The militants in the sample are well educated and are not predominantly emerging from Pakistan’s religious seminaries as is often suggested. This essay considers Pakistan’s policy options and constraints as Islamist militancy looms as Pakistan’s single most important security concern. Given that militant groups in Pakistan have been state-sponsored actors, militancy will not go away until Pakistan makes a strategic decision to abandon the use of proxies as tools of foreign policy. However, in recent years, many of these once proxies have turned against the state. Effective policy measures to contain these groups are likely to elude the Pakistani Government, posing
great risk to Pakistan, the region and the international community.

Notes: On reading the paper, you will find that "well-educated" means well-educated compared to the Pakistani average, as well as compared ot their immediate environment.

Quote: Respondents provided considerable information about the shaheed's education and work experience. On the main, the shaheed -- like the respondents -- are actually better educated than the average Pakistani. Only 6% had no formal education, 35% had some primary education but were not matriculates, 40% were matriculates but had not attained their intermediate degree (F.A.). 13% had their F.A. but not their B.A., and 6% had some sort of post-secondary education. In other words, some 58% of the shaheeds in sample were matriculates and of those many had obtained further education. When one considers that throughout all of Pakistan fewere than one in three males are matriculates, and when one considers further that the bulk of this sample was derived from the Northwest Frontier Province where educational attainment is among the lowest in Pakistan, the males in this sample are extremely well educated, again underscoring the need to interrogate common assumptions that Pakistan's militants are all uneducated, madaris products.

In addition to mainstream education, the survey also asked respondents about the shaheed's madrassah attendance. Overall, fewer than one in four shaheed had attended a madrassah (23%). Of the 33 shaheed that attended a madrassah, 13 attained a religious certificate (sanad). This represents about 9% of the overall sample, and 40% of all who attended a madrassah.

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Interestingly, this better-educated-than-average men were also more-unemployed-than-average. But you should read the whole article.