Pakistani Artists Look To Counter Violent Extremism

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — At a militant training camp in Pakistan, a new recruit asks his instructor why his comrades are attacking churches and mosques rather than enemy bases. Pakistan has been battling Islamic extremists for more than a decade, but despite $30 billion in U.S. aid and an American drone campaign, the country still hosts powerful armed groups that have killed tens of thousands of people. In the southern port city of Karachi, friends of the late Sabeen Mahmud, an activist gunned down in April because of her liberal views, have assembled 300 local artists to paint over violent graffiti. Aftab says he was brainwashed at the college by his religious studies instructor, a veteran of Afghanistan's civil war, who convinced him to join militants fighting India in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. The group has distributed 15,000 copies in Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, focusing on areas of militant recruitment, says Managing Director Mustafa Hasnain. Aftab says he began working on the comic book after a mass shooting at a military school in Peshawar in December, in which Taliban militants shot dead 150 people, nearly all of them students. The comic book's message could still prove a tough sell in Pakistan's schools, where much of the curriculum is devoted to the glorification of past Islamic conquests and jihad against Pakistan's enemies.

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