Recently the New York Times Magazine carried a cover story “Jihad U” about a religious school located in the Northwestern hinterland of Pakistan.

According to Jeffrey Goldberg, the writer of the article, this particular religious school or madrasa, is not only the hot bed of militant Islamic fundamentalism it is also the spiritual center of gravity for the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan. There are hundreds of similar madrasas in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

How a religious school located along the turbulent North Western Frontier of Pakistan come to be the training ground for the likes of Taliban of Afghanistan and their supporters in Pakistan is an interesting question. The answer however lies not in the devastated Afghan countryside or in Pakistani but in Langley, Virginia the home of Central Intelligence agency.

After the Soviet withdrew from Afghanistan, the country was engulfed in a bloody civil war. The Taliban were the answer to the nasty conflict between the warring factions of Afghan freedom fighters or Mujahideen. To understand the Taliban phenomenon we need to rewind to the early days of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The US was caught off guard when the Soviet forces entered Afghanistan in 1979. Though an indigenous Islamic resistance movement had arisen against the Soviets, it had no chance of succeeding on its own. America, for its own strategic reasons, was eager to help but needed a common link that the Mujahideen could identify with. That common link between America and its allies and the hapless Mujahideen turned out to be religion. From that point on the struggle was between the camps of believers and non-believers or as was stated at the time between Dar-ul-Islam the abode of the faithful and Dar-ul-Harb, the abode of the infidels. This medieval concept envisioned the world into two distinct camps. Once inside the abode of the faithful the West became a full partner in jihad against the Soviet infidels.

For ten years (1979-1989) the CIA and Pakistan Army trained and equipped Mujahideen and Muslim mercenaries from around the world to fight the Soviet infidels. Armed with latest American weapons and burning with religious zeal the Mujahideen took on a super power and defeated it. But at an enormous cost. Five million Afghans were forced to flee the country, the land was devastated and a pervasive gun and drug culture permeated Afghanistan and next door Pakistan. Once the Soviet forces left, the Mujahideen turned on each other. The Taliban were the creation of the US with the active support of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as an alternative to the warring Mujahideen.

During the Afghan conflict, Pakistani strongman General Zia-ul-Haq also exploited religion to hang on to power. He channeled large sums of foreign aid to the religious parties to open madrasas through out the country. These schools operated in the old medieval tradition taught only religion and that too of the most orthodox persuasion. Most of the current Taliban leadership was educated in these schools. At the time the Taliban were centered in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. With the active support of the US and Pakistan the Taliban (Persian for students or students of religion) emerged from Kandahar and in a short span of few years captured most of the country from the warring Mujahideen. They were able to restore a much needed law and order in Afghanistan. And they enforced a ritualistic, authoritative and archaic version of Islam that is brazenly anti-feminist and anti-West. This is the Islam they had studied in the dusty madrasa in Akora and elsewhere. This Islam considers America as its main enem.

It supports and protects any one who is against America as it has done with Osama bib laden the alleged mastermind behind the embassy bombings in East Africa two years ago. Even though Afghanistan is in desperate need of outside help, its protection of Osama remains the main stumbling block in the way of improved relations with the West. Given the black-and-white mindset of the Taliban they would go to any length to protect him. This stand has won them many supporters in Pakistan.

A Taliban style religious revival is gaining ground in Pakistan. The call for such revival is emanating not only from the religious parties and the teachers and students of the madrasas but from the spick and span brass of the Pakistan army as well. During Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization campaign the well disciplined and highly efficient Pakistan army also went through an ideological metamorphosis. Even though General Pervez Musharaf, the current head of the country, is considered a moderate, his support rests with generals who are more conservative and orthodox than the Sandhurst trained officers of the past.

The Afghan war of liberation was a long nightmare that did not end with the withdrawal of the Soviet forces from that country and subsequent disintegration of Soviet Union. It left behind not only a devastated Afghanistan and rise of militant fundamentalism but also a week and unstable nuclear Pakistan with a pervasive arms and drug culture and three million semi permanent but restive refugees within its borders.

The Jihad University that the New York Times featured in its magazine is but one of the legacies of the abode of the faithful. The distance between the dusty town of Akora, the home this particular madrasa and Langley, Virginia, the home of CIA, is rather short if one looks at the whole picture.

The writer is a professor of surgery at the Medical College of Ohio and an op-ed columnist for the daily Toledo Blade. His e-mail: aghaji@toledolink.com