Maulana Yousaf Shah cracks a wide smile as he rattles off a list of former students turned Taliban leaders, revelling in their victories over superpowers on Afghanistan’s battlefields after graduating from Pakistan’s “university of jihad”.
The Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary has churned out a who’s who of Taliban top brass — including many now on the hardline group’s negotiating team holding talks with the Kabul government to end a 20-year war.
“Russia was broken into pieces by the students and graduates of Darul Uloom Haqqania and America was also sent packing,” beamed Shah, an influential cleric at the seminary that critics have dubbed the “university of jihad”.
The sprawling campus in Pakistan’s Akora Khattak, about 60 kilometres (35 miles) east of Peshawar, is home to roughly 4,000 students who are fed, clothed and educated for free.
It has sat at the crossroads of regional militant violence for years, educating many Pakistanis and Afghan refugees — some of whom returned home to wage war against the Russians and Americans or preach jihad.
Despite its infamy in some quarters, it has enjoyed state support in Pakistan, where mainstream political parties are heavily boosted by links with religious factions.
This month, Darul Uloom Haqqania’s leaders boasted of backing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan in a video posted online — outraging the Kabul government, which is battling a surge in violence across the county as the US prepares to withdraw troops.