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The General spoke for barely an hour on national television last week, but his carefully chosen words could change the face of Pakistan for good. Suddenly, after years of dictatorships, corrupt governments, fundamentalist militancy and posturing from Islamic clerics, an army chief who seized power in a coup has offered the possibility of a radical shift in Pakistan's fortunes: the development of a prosperous, moderate Islamic welfare state. General Pervez Musharraf, the affable, tennis-playing ex-commando and self-appointed President, has brought the country to perhaps its greatest challenge.

TOUGH CALLING: Reining in the hardliners will be hard for Musharraf

The stakes have never been higher. If he succeeds in his vision, Musharraf will sideline the religious Right once and for all, tame the militants after a decade of guerrilla war in Kashmir, and propel Pakistan forward into an era of new economic opportunities. If he slips in the implementation of his promises, the country may lose its last chance to stem a tide of Islamic fundamentalism that brought the Taliban to power and threatened to overwhelm Pakistan in its entirety.

All the while, Pakistan stands teetering on the edge of a potentially apocalyptic conflict with India. One more militant attack in Kashmir or Delhi could undo all of the General's promises and plunge the subcontinent into a terrifying conflict. Soon too, Musharraf must answer his political critics, bring back democracy and accept that his vision of Pakistan can truly succeed only with an elected, civilian government. It is a formidable task.

CAN MUSHARRAF'S VISION OF A MODERATE NATION COME TRUE?

"The day of reckoning has come. Our peace-loving people are keen to get rid of the Kalashnikov culture. Do you want Pakistan to be a theocratic state? Or should it emerge as a progressive, dynamic Islamic welfare state?"

READING BETWEEN THE LINES: Successive governments have failed to tackle madarsas because they have neither been able to provide a better alternative nor match these schools in the sheer scale of the welfare work they are involved in

This was Musharraf's most important statement in his televised adddress. The country's slide into theocracy began with the secular, whisky-drinking Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. It began with a perception that has only been challenged in the wake of September 11, 2001: that the religious Right in Pakistan represent a credible, powerful force. Bhutto's hardline Islamic policies were an attempt to win support from the clerics at a time when his popularity was slipping and his socialist rhetoric was convincing fewer and fewer commoners. Then General Zia-ul- Haq, who toppled Bhutto in a coup, encouraged madarsas to flourish as the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan unfolded.

In the years that followed, both prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto feared to challenge the might of the clerics, and so the religious Right grew stronger. Now, mainstream Islamic parties have adapted history to their own ends and insist that Pakistan's identity was always tied to a strict vision of Islam. Rarely spoken now are the words of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the great founder of the nation, who told Pakistanis in August 1947: "You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in the state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or cast or creed-that has nothing to do with the business of state."

PRAYING FOR REFORM: Most students in madarsas are from lower economic strata

Instead, religious leaders insist, Pakistan's destiny has always been the Shariah, a truly Islamic system of law and government. "Jinnah has been totally misrepresented. The Pakistani people are Muslims and what Jinnah said is nothing secular. Pakistan will be a truly Islamic republic," said professor Khurshid Ahmad, vice-president of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), the largest Islamic party in Pakistan.

In the past Musharraf's efforts to revise the hardline Islamic laws met with little success. His early attempts to reform the much-abused blasphemy law ended in an embarrassing and abrupt about face after more strident opposition from the clerics.

Now it is with the madarsas, or religious schools, that Musharraf promises to start his fresh wave of reforms. Madarsas, where the clerics offer free and deeply religious education to the poorest children are at the core of support for all religious parties. The madarsas work where Pakistan's education system has failed, but with them they have brought in the dangerous culture of fundamentalism. "Now the madarsas are part of our culture, part of our being," says Ahmad. "The Government cannot control them. Because it has not provided a better education system, the madarsa is the safety valve." Musharraf's efforts to bring reform will face stiff opposition from hardliners.

CAN MADARSAS, THE FOUNT OF EXTREMISM, BE REFORMED?

"We claim Islam as deen or a complete way of life. Is this the way of life that Islam teaches us? If any madarsa is found indulging in extremism, subversion or militant activity, it will be closed."

At the crux of Musharraf's vision of a Pakistan free of religious extremism is the sweeping reforms of madarsas that he outlined in his speech. It is widely acknowledged in Pakistan that the unchecked mushrooming of these schools-often affiliated to hardline organisations and jehadi groups-has been the major factor in the spread of the culture of militancy. Madarsas, which cater primarily to students from underprivileged economic backgrounds, have been accused of propagating stilted versions of Islam and have been the prime recruiting grounds for extremist groups such as the Taliban, Sipah-i-Sahaba (sis) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

The numbers are staggering. At the time of independence, Pakistan inherited approximately 150 such religious seminaries. Today, the Government estimates that just the bigger schools-with over 40 students and residential facilities-number around 5,000. If smaller mosque schools, dotted all over the country, and places where part-time religious education is being imparted are included, the number swells to almost 11,000. According to estimates, some six lakh students are enrolled in just the larger madarsas.

The country's intelligence services stand accused of using the impressionable madarsa students for their military interests in Afghanistan and Kashmir. But what has become alarming for the Government is the fact that a good number of these schools have been linked to acts of terrorism within the country-in particular sectarian killings-and to being under the influence of foreign powers, challenging the writ of the state. A study conducted by the Punjab provincial government in 1996, for example, indicated that of the 2,500 madarsas in the province at the time, almost 750 were engaged in providing some form of military training for their students, while 1,700 had foreign sources of funding. The situation has spun so much out of control that officials openly talk of the militant cadre produced by these seminaries as a "state within a state".

The main reason all governments so far have been unwilling to tackle the madarsas is the scale of welfare work they are involved in, a fact even Musharraf admitted in his speech on January 12. Not only do madarsas provide free or very cheap education for a large number of poor children, they also often provide shelter, clothing and food for their wards as part of their private charitable work. This is something the cash-strapped public education system is unable to match.

Most madarsas sustain themselves on private donations and foreign funding largely from the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia. While some also receive aid from the government- through zakat (mandatory donation) funds-their number is not more than a third of all madarsas. Some schools have refused government grants altogether to assert their independence from official control. "The government has done nothing to facilitate the functioning of the madarsas, nothing to help us," says Mufti Mohammad Usman Yar Khan, principal of Jamia Darul Khair. "Why should it now come in and question us?" The annual budgets of the madarsas is over Rs 1.5 billion, more than what the Government allocates to all universities in the country.

The politicisation of madarsas began in earnest during Zia's reign. He promoted religious parties to counter the political forces opposed to his martial rule. The madarsas recorded a phenomenal rise in number during this time, receiving a further boost after Zia's decision in 1984 to induct its students as Arabic teachers in the education departments. More importantly, the CIA-supported jehad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the concurrent financial support from the Middle East, provided the right environment for the madarsas to flourish.

Their influence on Pakistan's body politic continued to rise because the successive governments weren't strong enough to take on their street power. In fact, the madarsa graduates began to play increasing roles in mainstream politics. The sis and Tehrik-e-Jafria (TeJ) leaders made it to provincial and national assemblies. Besides, the recruitment drives in madarsas for participation in militant Islamic movements throughout the world added a whole new dimension to Pakistan's foreign policy. According to the Interior Ministry, around 20,000 foreign students, mostly from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Central Asia and West Asia, also study in these religious schools.

Hardline activists recruited from madarsas comprise private armies such as the recently banned Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM). The TNSM faced off in 1994 against the Pakistan Army during tnsm's drive to enforce Islamic Shariah law in Malakand in the tribal areas of the North West Frontier. Others regularly threaten to march to Islamabad for various reasons, indicating the security threat they now pose. Most officials understand this. "If you want to control the extremist groups, you have to cut off their source of strength," says a senior member of the establishment. "And their source of strength are the ill-educated, brainwashed youth of madarsas. We can't do away with the madarsas, so we need to reform them."

This is exactly what Musharraf is trying to do. Among the measures suggested are revision of the curricula to include subjects other than religious studies, official registration of schools and foreign students, their monitoring, and the banning of foreign funding and arms training.

The problem for him, though, will be implementation. In fact, the Government had moved even before September 11 to integrate the madarsas into the general education system, with poor results. On August 18 last year, it had issued an ordinance banning foreign funding for these schools without state approval, and had also circulated a questionnaire asking the madarsa administrations to provide details of their enrolments, number of their teachers and their academic qualifications, sources of funding and the content of their syllabi. According to official sources, less than 10 per cent of madarsas returned the forms, while most refused to participate.

In fact, major madarsas banded together to form the Difa-e-Deeni Madaris Council (Defence of Religious Schools Council) which met in Lahore recently to announce a policy of non-cooperation. "When the Government is not providing any financial aid to these schools, how can we allow it to implement and impose a policy of model religious schools?" says Mufti Abdul Qayyum Hazarvi, one of the leading lights of the council. Many administrators have also rejected the reforms as a "western conspiracy". "There is a threat to religion and religious values," says Maulana Saleemullah Khan, head of the Wafaqul Madaris Al-Arabia, the non-governmental body coordinating the running of all Deobandi madarsas in Pakistan. "We will not permit any check of accounts or funding sources, nor a review of curriculum."

Unless the Government backs its intentions with financial support, even the more willing administrators could shrug off Musharraf's measures as impractical. There are indications, however, that the Government is negotiating with western countries, including the US, to invite financial backing. As for the recalcitrant madarsa administrators, Interior Minister Lt-General (retd) Moinuddin Haider warns: "For those who don't obey the law, we will have to enforce it."