BRIEFING: Afghanistan seen ripe for faith healing

A Washington-based group that helped negotiate the release of 21 Korean hostages last summer hopes to build on that experience by promoting reconciliation between Afghanistan’s political and religious leaders.

With roots in the U.S. religious and diplomatic communities, the group thinks it can help prepare the ground for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, where more traditional government efforts have fallen short.

“It is supremely ironic that the United States, one of the most religious nations on the planet, should find it so difficult to deal with religious differences in hostile settings or to counter demagogues like [Osama] bin Laden, who manipulate religion for their own purposes,” said Douglas Johnston, president and founder of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD).

“U.S. diplomacy suffers from a proclivity to use our separation of church and state as a crutch for not doing our homework to understand how religion informs the worldviews and political aspirations of others,” said Mr. Johnston, a Naval Academy graduate and former executive vice president of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In terms of reconstruction, little has been accomplished in Afghanistan. Militants have killed Western aid workers, and many of the simplest projects — like rebuilding one-room schoolhouses and repaving roads chewed into rubble by Soviet tanks in the 1980s — remain unfinished.

Mr. Johnston, author of “Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft,” has managed to contact and speak with the leaders of some of the most militant madrassas in Pakistan.

His goal, he said, is to encourage these religious schools to expand their curriculum beyond mere memorization of the Koran by emulating the madrassas from the early days of Islam.

Not only did Muslim religious schools keep classical learning alive during Christendom’s Dark Ages, they ultimately served as models for the university system developed later in the West.

“Wherever we go, we always partner with an indigenous institution that has credibility with, and commands the respect of, the people with whom we will be working,” Mr. Johnston said.

“Our project director, who is the point of the spear in our madrassa effort, is a Pakistani-American who grew up in Karachi and who attended a madrassa himself. He is a superb trainer and educator and also one of the more likable gents you will ever meet.” Mr. Johnston asked that the Pakistani partner not be further identified for his own safety.

Growing out of the madrassa effort, Mr. Johnston, an evangelical Christian, met in April with 57 Taliban leaders in the mountains of Pakistan to explain why the U.S.-led war on terrorism is not a war against Islam — an idea widely accepted throughout the Muslim world.

He began by pointing out the obvious: The U.S. went to war to help Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Somalia.

But he also explained U.S. policies in terms typically missing from U.S. statecraft — hospitality, loyalty and revenge — that are integral to Afghanistan and the Taliban’s tribal culture.

“Before certain al Qaeda members were recognized as a threat,” Mr. Johnston said, “the U.S. offered them hospitality by accepting them into the country.”

He was referring to the September 11 hijackers.

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