Srinagar, Aug. 4 -- Some retired generals regularly appearing on TV in Pakistan - the army chief is on record saying they are not briefed by the army - have been recommending the "mainstreaming" of religious elements, dubbed "terrorist" at the UN. They presume that the "mainstream" is "normal" and "harmless". Some mainstreaming was visible during the last election which brought Imran Khan's Tehreek-e-Insaf to office. The "parties" fronting such madrassas, as the terrorist-declared Lashkar-e-Taiba, did rather well by cutting into the vote bank of the rightwing Pakistan Muslim League, which lost the election and was pilloried for "corruption".
Notwithstanding the FATF ban on some madrassa-based non-state actors, the madrassa is powerful in P...