Sitting in lotus position on worn-out rugs, the children parrot the verses that their aged teacher recites from the Quran, here in a madrasah or seminary in Seaven, on the outskirts of Peshawar near the border with Afghanistan.

Wearing white caps similar to one worn by their teacher, some 50 boys between six to 12 years old are sitting in rows in the main classroom of the Madrasah Darul Hifaaz al Tajveed-ul-Quran.

The madrasah is run by Qari Kachkol Ahmed, and the people of Seaven see his seminary as a great service because it takes in the children of the poor families in the area.

The students' classroom is spartan. All it has are three fans hanging from the ceiling, a broken cupboard standing against a wall, a few suitcases, a couple of quilts piled up in a corner and a wall clock without its glass cover.

Though the boys inside the classroom have stopped chanting verses from the holy book, one can hear similar sounds upstairs, from the girls going through their lessons on the upper floor.

Madrasah Hifaaz ul Tajveed ul Quraan is one of some 150 religious schools all over Pakistan that caters to the education of girls. The room upstairs, where males are not allowed to go, also acts as a dormitory for 160 girls.

Six female teachers, including two for mathematics, social studies and English subjects, teach the girls.

Like rest of the students at the madrasah , eight-year-old Naeem Khan appears submissive and shy. He knew 'two plus two equals four', but did not know a word of English.

His answers came mostly in ''yes'' and ''no''. Asked if he knew a verse from the Quran, Naeem promptly folded his arms on his stomach and chanted a verse in Arabic.

Poor children

Most students at the religious school come from very poor, uneducated families who can hardly afford to send their children to regular school.

Traditionally, the children of the madrasah go door to door in their communities and collect food. Same is the routine here. The parents do not have to worry about the food for children.

Moving beads in his fingers, the blind Qari Kachkol said he established the madrasah in 1983 after finishing two years of studies from a major madrasah of Peshawar. Some money for the construction came from the government, the rest was collected from thecommunity.

Apart from six female teachers, he has two male teachers, all untrained and unqualified. "I do not have the resources to hire better qualified teachers," he says. Some students who can afford pay 200 rupees (a little over US$3) fee per month.

Apart from the religious teachings, Qari said, the students are also taught subjects that are part of primary school syllabus of the regular schools.

But madrasahs like his have come under the attention of many because of the Pakistan government's attempts to have monitor such religious schools tightly, as part of its clampdown on religious extremism.

What worries the government of President Gen Pervez Musharraf is not exactly this type of religious school, but what happens to the students once they get out of them.

After studying for five or six years at this madrasah , almost all boys will take admissions in a bigger madrasah for higher Islamic studies and this is where they are cut off from the mainstream society and sometimes, turn to religious fanaticism.

Whether a madrasah trains militants or not, the government believes, they are the breeding grounds for an army of fundamentalists.

Qari says that the educational reforms pushed by the government are not easy. "We spend most of our time in giving religious education, which is our priority. I don't know how we will find time to teach all the subjects the government wants us to,'' he says.

Everybody is talking about terrorism, said he, but there is no terrorism here. Those who give military training to the youth are other organisations, he added.

The number of madrasah has grown significantly in the two decades. There were only a couple of big madrasah in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and adjoining Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) when Pakistan came into existence in 1947.

But in the mid-80s and through 90s, the number of seminaries went up. News reports say there are some 800 registered and a similar number of unregistered seminaries in NWFP and the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Unofficial estimates say more than half-a-million students are enrolled in madarasah throughout the country. Of these, some 70,000 study in NWFP. Unofficial estimates put the number of 'madaris' in NWFP and the tribal areas at 2,500.

In comparison, according to the Bureau of Statistics in 1999-2000, the number of regular schools (class one to 10) in NWFP and the tribal areas stood at 40,736 with some 2.82 million students.

The increase in Islamic schools came in the wake of the then Soviet Union's occupation in Afghanistan, which fuelled the involvement of Islamic fighters, and the subsequent U.S.-sponsored intervention.

With the help of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and rich Middle Eastern states, the United States and its allies encouraged Islamic fundamentalism to breed 'holy warriors' and sent them to neighbouring Afghanistan to fight jihad or holy war against the Soviets, thus helping plant the seeds of militarism.

The then military dictator, Zia-ul-Haq, relied heavily on religious elements to Islamise society and patronised such institutions.

In the eighties, the traditional madrasah became a recruiting place for young 'holy warriors' who became a major concern for the United States and rest of the western world when they began reaching out to other places.

With the advent of Taliban in Afghanistan, "the religious parties in Pakistan started identifying themselves with Taliban militia and got inspiration from them. In fact some started describing Taliban's system as a model Islamic system," says Dr Fazle Rahim Marwat, a professor at Pakistan Study Centre, University of Pakistan.

Militants recruited in Pakistan and trained in Afghanistan were reported in conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Philippines and the Middle East.

The Child Soldiers Global Report 2001 said that around 20,000 children below 18 were recruited by 'madaris' in Pakistan to fight in Afghanistan in the last few years.

The report quoted Pakistan's official figures as saying that only one percent of 'madaris' sent their students for militarytraining in Afghanistan.

The Sept 11 attacks in the United States drew more attention to the religious extremism in Pakistan, and its support for the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Under pressure in the 'war against terrorism', Musharraf said in January it was time bring an end to Talibanisation and militancy that were marring the country's image.

Foreign funds

A presidential ordinance prohibits madrasahs from receiving foreign funds without the knowledge of the state, and calls for the integration of madrasah with the general educational system.

But for the government to make real headway in quelling extremism, it has to deal with the religious-political parties, all of which run their own madrasah and follow syllabi of their own depending on the sect and Islamic school of thought.

The Jama'at-i-Islami Pakistan runs 96 madrasahs , the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman) has 816 seminaries, while the other faction of Jamiat Ulema-I-Islam led by Maulana Samiul Haq runs 58.

The Ahle Hadith runs 29 seminaries, the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan as 176 and the Tehreek-i-Jaafria Pakistan operates 129 religious schools.

To be really effective, Musharraf's reforms have to reach the educational system of Pakistan, where a major chunk of society hardly has access to quality and cheap education  and where the poor rely on madrasah because it is often the only accessible schooling for their children. (IPS)