Islamist and social aid in Pakistan

Peter Marton at State Failure and the NYTimes are both busy pointing out that one of the key thinks that we should be watching for is the way in with Islamist groups, particularly the Taliban are publicizing the distribution of aid in Pakistan.

… ideas of winning back popularity with a big show of airlifts of American assistance on the scale of American earthquake relief to Kashmir in 2005 were rebuffed, and not only by the Pakistanis.

American nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan discouraged high-profile deliveries of United States government aid because anti-American sentiment was too widespread and the security risk to Americans in the camps was too high... There were many Taliban in the displaced camps, and they believed the Pakistani military was fighting against them in Swat on orders from Washington, the official said.

While a fair point in being made that the restrictions on Americans (and our western Allies) publicizing the work we are doing in the region, he also doesn’t do enough to recognize the long history of social welfare projects in gathering support for the Islamist groups. This goes well beyond the immediate concerns of workers proselytizing at aid stations, and is worth thinking about how these efforts are going to play into our strategy in Pakistan.

Provision of social services, including charitable aid, education and health services is a staple project of Islamist groups, both historically and in other areas of the Islamic world (for instance in the Palestinian refugee camps). Beyond creating immediate recruitment opportunities but forming a patronage network (particularly among the families of individual members), these service also highlight the government’s failure to provide for the poor. This is particularly critical in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan were suspicion of corruption has played a big part in the high level of distrust for the central regime.

Aid provision by extremists can also undermine the regime, because they are often forced to recognize extremist groups in order to co-opt at least some portion of the credit for social programs. A good example of this can be seen in the Jordanian states acceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950’s and 60’s in part because they needed to fold Brotherhood schools into the state system to prevent the formation of a better endowed rival to the state system*

Two things currently hinder the US taking advantage of the same benefits of social service provision. First are the gag orders that prevent us from getting the recognition for emergency aid that we should be. This is basically a straightforward diplomatic problem

The more complicated bit to fix is learning to mimic the way in which social services run by extremists for strong networks then can be utilized later for recruitment and sympathy. Clinics, schools and social organizations form connection not only between the recipients of aid (who are often lower class), but also between the middle class individuals who work there, or relied on the service as children. American needs to learn how to set up our efforts so that ties between American workers and middle class locals can develop.

*Full discloser- I wrote my BA thesis on Muslim Brotherhood services in Egypt and Jordan. You’re going to get this type of example a lot.