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NBC followed up on Pakistani politics. Monday Today newscaster Ann Curry profiled Benazir Bhutto and her Karachi-based militancy against radical Islamists. Now Richard Engel files In Depth from the northern city of Peshawar on the Islamists' growing strength there. Peshawar, Engel reminded us, was the birthplace of al-Qaeda and the onetime home of Osama bin Laden. "Now al-Qaeda and Taliban militants are moving back to raise funds and find new recruits." The city is turning puritanical in its religious observance, with stores intimidated into halting sales of movies and music and barbers warned to stop shaving beards. The recruits are found in Pakistan's 20,000 rural madrassas, schools whose role is "to teach Islam and equip holy warriors with education and morals." Responding to pressure from the United States, President Pervez Musharraf tried to close some madrassas this summer "but the crackdown seems to have backfired." Madrassa administrators told Engel "the more the United States and Pakistan are perceived as fighting Islam, the more students enroll."
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