Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding out there. Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise.
There is a great deal of feeling against the United States' actions in Afghanistan and
Iraq. And this has translated into support for the Taliban.
Taliban learn to hate America at an early age.
America is cruel toward the Muslims and they are cruel to our brothers in Afghanistan.
More than a third of the country lives below the poverty line. All of this and they have
nuclear weapons too.
We are sitting on a volcano. It can erupt any time.
Tonight, Pakistan, on the edge.
From ABC News.
This is Nightline.
Reporting from Washington, Ted Koppel.
We in the news media are terrific at reacting to a crisis. Give us a serial killer rampaging
through seven states or a horrifying new disease that's afflicting a few thousand people and
we're all over it. We're pretty good at covering wars, at least in their initial stages. We're
not bad at dealing with the consequences of terrorism or any other violent crime. Anything
that is new and frightening is right down our alley.
Where we tend to let you down is when something frightening has been going on for a long time.
We start to lose interest. The drug trade in Colombia is as bad as it's ever been. Somalia
is still a disaster. So is the Congo, but we've moved on.
Where we are even less effective is in stimulating your interest in places you should be worried
about but haven't focused on yet.
A few months ago, I asked a senior foreign policy specialist in the Bush administration
what he considered the most dangerous place in the world. Without hesitation, he named
Pakistan. Pakistan? Not North Korea, not Iran, charter members of the president's Axis of
Evil, but Pakistan. That, we thought, is something you probably should hear about, preferably
before a major disaster happens there.
So we asked my Nightline colleagues, producers Jay Lamonica and Rebecca Lipkin and correspondent
Dave Marish, to investigate the factors that make Pakistan such a dangerous place.
For the past decade, Pakistan has been one of the world's capitals of terrorism. Targets
have included the American consulate in Karachi, a busload of French defense workers, a Christian
church and Islamic religious sites, both Sunni and Shiite.
Pakistan today is a country filled with people armed to the teeth and divided along any number
of lines. The deepest divide is over the nature of Pakistan. Is it a modern secular state
populated mostly by Muslims or a religious state governed by fundamentalist principles
of Islamic law? Divisions over this question start at the top in the most powerful institution
in the country, the armed forces.
There's no doubt that there is a significant element within the Pakistan military that
is anti-modern, anti-secular, anti-West and perhaps a dominant element which is very opposed
to Pakistan's having taken a U-turn on the Taliban. And yes, there is hostility to the
U.S. in the army.
And Pakistan has built nuclear weapons and missiles that can deliver them up to 2,000
miles. No wonder so many analysts consider Pakistan potentially the most dangerous country
on earth.
The prime target of Pakistan's nuclear weapons is its neighbor India, the likely flashpoint,
the disputed territory of Kashmir. Just months ago, India and Pakistan were yet again on
the brink of nuclear war.
We don't want war, but if war is thrust upon us, we would respond with full might.
We've somehow become fatalistic about the whole thing. To my mind, that makes it all
the more dangerous. The more one plays on the brink, the less one is sensitized to the
dangers of nuclear conflict. And these dangers are very real.
To ordinary Pakistanis, daily life is full of deadly danger. Take these primitive furniture
factories in a working-class neighborhood in the city of Lahore. When we drove up, paint
sprayers were filling the air with fumes associated with asthma, cancer, and other diseases. But
by the time our cameras were out, the sprayers had been replaced by paintbrushes.
Neighborhood activist Agha Shahzad told us, don't be fooled. Five minutes after we left,
he predicted, the sprayers and their toxic fumes would be back, suffusing homes and three
schools on the block.
You will see the complaints there. They were filed in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003.
And when people complain?
They give something to people. We will see, we will talk, we will throw them out, we will
seal their shops. Nothing is going to happen in Pakistan.
The furniture factories are protected by corrupt politicians who combine with Pakistan's daily
poverty to produce a state that fails its citizens every day in almost every way.
The services are in shambles. You look at the electricity breakdowns, communication,
the roads, sanitation, law and order.
The essence of corruption in Pakistan is all the things that money can buy. If you're rich
enough to live in a home like that one, your money can buy you not just status and stuff,
but a virtual exemption from all of the responsibilities of citizenship and all the restraints of law
and justice.
The rich get away with everything, including murder. And this is actually why the failure
of the legal system has been a great impetus towards the Islamization of the society, because
the religious parties, the religious authorities, they promise justice.
But a minister in the government of the province of Baluchistan, a member of the religious
political alliance, the MMA, admits something other than corruption has pushed his coalition
to power in two provinces.
The Islamic parties never had such a majority in history. It was because of America's undemocratic
attitude and inhumane attitude towards the Muslim world.
This mosque in Rawalpindi has a reputation as moderate. Imam Jamil I Rahman's sermon
at Friday prayers was on the mild topic, your conduct is influenced by the company you keep.
Does Pakistan keep good company when it becomes the ally of the United States government?
It gives us evidence that America was never any good to Pakistan. They are only interested
in their own interests.
The imam's congregation seems to agree.
All America wants to do is dominate others. They don't care anything about Pakistan.
They want to dominate all the Muslim countries and they want to demolish all the Muslim countries
and that's not fair for our Muslims.
You can't go wrong in Pakistani politics by beating up on the USA.
This is ABC News Nightline brought to you by IBM.
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The governor of Baluchistan province blames the American military for the fact that his capital city Quetta is drowning in the products of cross-border smuggling.
From Afghanistan come refugees, guns and more than in recent years the raw materials for a narcotics epidemic.
There's a huge amount of poppy cultivation on the Afghan side.
We expect something like over 4,000 tons of heroin to be produced now.
Moving in the other direction from Pakistan to Afghanistan more guns and fighters.
Jihadis they're called rallying to the side of the Taliban.
If you think of the Taliban jihad in Afghanistan as a river which this summer has filled once again to a dangerous level.
Neighborhoods like this one on the Pakistani side of the border are the reservoir from which those waters flow.
The students who study the Quran at this Quetta religious school called a madrasah learn to recite the words in Arabic, a language they do not understand.
Some of them like the boy Hamidullah interviewed on Nightline two years ago by correspondent Bob Woodruff also make speeches they can barely comprehend.
I'm telling the Americans listen he said we will gouge out their eyes with our fingers.
The speech that you gave at the rally did you memorize that?
Did you learn that by heart?
The words, the gestures, everything.
Two years later Hamidullah chants his Quran every day but still understands no Arabic.
Certainly there's been no change in two years in Hamidullah's politics.
America is cruel toward the Muslims and they are cruel to our brothers in Afghanistan and to Osama bin Laden.
When you grow up are you going to go on jihad? Would you like to fight for the Taliban?
God willing we are all going to go.
Cannon fodder, that's what these boys are to become.
From the testimony of recently captured fighters in Afghanistan they go from the madrasah classroom to the caves of eastern Afghanistan to the battlefield with little training and sometimes even without weapons.
We were told the youngsters about to graduate from a second Quetta madrasah represents something different.
A few moments after our cameras set up the speaker switches from academic celebration to political exploration.
America has stopped worshipping God and has started worshipping Bush the mullah proclaimed.
Muslims do not take the Jews or the Christians as your friends.
They are your enemies. This is the order of God.
After that we were ordered to stop taping and leave.
It's one of the few moments we were happy to have the large heavily armed security force which the government had insisted surround us for our entire visit to Quetta.
The Pakistani government put madrasah mutla ul aloom on our schedule.
Headmaster Hafiz Khalil Ahmed told us it was among Pakistan's oldest and most respectable religious schools.
In 61 years he told us we have not had a single graduate join al Qaeda, the Taliban or any terrorist group.
We are for peace he told us. Unfortunately his classrooms told us something else.
We should all be ready for jihad all the time the teacher said.
Yes we are ready for jihad.
Among those specifically cited for jihad support not other than Mullah Mohammed Omar the leader of the Taliban.
Jihad is not preached hate not fomented in all madrasahs.
But our experience suggests that both ideas predominate in a madrasah system that has grown from 2000 schools in 1987 to an estimated 13,000 today.
The explosive growth of the madrasah movement can be explained in part by the pull of militant Islam.
But even more so by the push from a Pakistani public school system frequently described as catastrophic.
This for example is considered a model school despite its meager resources.
And then there is the nexus of education and corruption, the ghost schools.
Ghost schools are those which take resources from the government but which have neither students nor teachers.
And according to General Musharraf I heard him three years ago he said there are 20% ghost schools in Pakistan which if you multiply by 170,000 makes it about something like 30,000 ghost schools in this country which is an abomination.
Ironically some of the best schools in the world are in Pakistan but they're private.
They accept the children of the rich and powerful and by and large offer no scholarships.
Educational apartheid, Professor Hoodboy calls it.
But Pakistan's education minister says better things are coming perhaps represented by this impoverished school being rebuilt and expanded with American aid pumped in after 9-11.
Now we have more and more money for education and health and that is why now the whole opportunities and opening up of appointments of teachers is going to happen.
I am a girl.
Few students, parents or educators seem to share the minister's optimism.
They worry that Pakistan's future is being created in the image of its turbulent past.
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The sound of Islamist politics in Pakistan.
The opposition of the National Assembly.
Disrupting discussion of President Musharraf's political agenda by slamming desktops and shouting chants of, No Musharraf.
The battle between the religious parties and Pakistan's secular majority is being played out everywhere from the halls of government to the streets.
This defaced woman is a casualty in Pakistan's cultural war.
A paint across her face a token of militant Islamist objections to a woman put on public display.
You can find such splatter wounds across Pakistan, but the defaced women are outnumbered hundreds to one by unblemished billboards featuring smiling women selling everything from coffee to soft drinks to the latest in home entertainment technology.
There's nothing like this in the northwest frontier province and its capital Peshawar where videos showing women's faces have been publicly burned.
Women have been out of the picture since the MMA, the Islamic Political Alliance, won a majority in the local legislature.
Women are not on posters or billboards.
We haven't imposed any restrictions on the billboards, but it's the people who are paying respect.
Provincial political power Sardar Mohammed Idris admits representatives of his party have met with advertisers and passed on to them the quote, wishes of the people and the advisability of heeding them.
We appreciate that they're not using the woman in advertising the faces of women you can't see.
And this is we respect all companies that they're respecting the values of the people.
Many of the biases that are prevalent in the religious right are there in parts of our culture also.
Shayla Zia, one of Pakistan's first female law school graduates admits restrictions on the display of women or on opportunities for women are popular among many Pakistanis.
The rise of Islamist political parties like those in the MMA, she says, threatens to institutionalize many biases against women.
What happens later down the line we do not know, but certainly the MMA has a very clear official policy of segregation both in workplaces as well as in educational institutions.
Segregation in Pakistan is separation that is in no sense equal.
Even in the red light district of Lahore where painter Iqbal Hussein has his restaurant Cuckoo's when the so-called wishes of the people are pressed there's no mistaking the meaning.
My life is on risk any minute anybody can come and just shut me down.
Hussein is rich and famous and notorious because his paintings are soaked in the reality of his neighborhood of singers and dancers and prostitutes.
But it was another representation of a woman, a wooden sculpture that brought an ultra religious group to his door with a threat.
Look, Mr. Parusain, you have a very nice gallery and this is Islamic country and I'll suggest you to immediately sculpture out of the sight of this.
We can't tolerate that. So I got the message.
The restaurant is still open and many sculptures remain on display inside and Hussein's gallery does prove he still paints who and how he wants.
But the artist has taken on a literally fatalistic view of the battle between modern sophistication and militant Islam.
If I'm gone down, if I'm dead for a little while, so it doesn't make any difference to that. So one has to go for it. I'm ready for it.
Another battleground in Pakistan's cultural war, the campus of Punjab University in Lahore.
Islamist pressure here forced an investigation of the Department of English Literature looking for texts considered to be un-Islamic.
Among those indicted, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises because it contains a variety of sexual experiences.
Alexander Pope's classic poem The Rape of the Lock for its title alone and Jonathan Swift's Great Satire, Gulliver's Travels because it contains an image of a gigantic female breast.
The head of the Islamic Students Association at the university is all for censorship.
Young minds are chained with the wrong ideas and if they are put on the wrong path it will be dangerous for the country and for Islam.
Censorship may be winning on campus, but right next door in the marketplaces and on the streets of Lahore, secular Pakistan rules the day.
Here it's a free market for clothes and books and ideas. The question is for how long?
With all its internal divisions and a rising tide of Islamic extremism, not to mention its arsenal of nuclear weapons,
nightmares about Pakistan are more than just bad dreams. I'm Dave Marrish for Nightline in Islamabad.
I'll be back in a moment.
To receive a daily email announcement about each evening's Nightline and a preview of special broadcasts, log on to the Nightline page at ABCNews.com.
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And that's our report for tonight. I'm Ted Koppel in Washington. For all of us here at ABC News, good night.
This has been a presentation of ABC News. More Americans get their news from ABC News than from any other source.