Artists look to counter extremism
ACTIVISTS IN KARACHI HAVE ASSEMBLED 300 PEOPLE TO PAINT OVER VIOLENT GRAFFITI
At a militant training camp in Pakistan, a new recruit asks his instructor why his comrades are attacking churches and mosques rather than enemy bases.
“This world is full of sin. It needs to be bathed in blood,” the instructor replies, nurturing seeds of doubt that will eventually lead the young man to turn away from violence.
It’s a scene from a three-part comic book, titled The Guardian, that a private group has started to distribute in Pakistani schools to help combat extremism. The author, 31-year-old Gauher Aftab, says it was inspired by his own experience of nearly joining militants fighting in Kashmir as a teenager.
Pakistan has been battling extremists for more than a decade, but despite $30 billion (Dh110 billion) in US aid and an American drone campaign, the country still hosts powerful armed groups that have killed tens of thousands of people.
A growing number of civil society initiatives are aimed at what many see as the source of the problem — indoctrination of youth.
In the southern port city of Karachi, friends of the late Sabeen Mahmoud, an activist gunned down in April because of her liberal views, have assembled 300 local artists to paint over violent graffiti. The group says it has created some 2,000 murals depicting historic buildings and nature scenes.
“If you read hatred all the time, it is leaving a mark, especially on young minds,” said artist Adeela Sulaiman, who’s taking part in the project.
Brainwashed
Aftab recalls his own experience in the late 1990s at Aitchison College, an elite school in the eastern city of Lahore where a former student who had become a well-known militant was revered as a cult hero. The militant, Ahmad Omar Saeed Shaikh, would go on to kidnap and kill Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
Aftab says he was brainwashed at the college by his religious studies instructor, a veteran of Afghanistan’s civil war, who convinced him to join militants fighting India in Kashmir.
He had worked out a plan with his teacher to travel to Kashmir after the school year ended. But two days before then, his parents showed up unannounced because there had been a death in his family. “Being a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old with limited access, I couldn’t leave home and join that particular struggle.”
After three months at home with his parents, he reconsidered the decision. He eventually graduated at the top of his class and went on to attend Knox College, a liberal arts school in Illinois.
Now Aftab works with a group called CFXcomics, which aims to counter extremist propaganda. His comic book has been translated into Urdu by a legendary Pakistani playwright, Amjad Islam Amjad. The group has distributed 15,000 copies in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, focusing on areas of militant recruitment, says Managing Director Mustafa Hasnain.