The institution has been the ideological training ground for several hundred Afghan Talibs (students), who have gone on to join the ranks of the Taliban militia in Afghanistan. The Afghan border lies a five-hour drive via Peshawar, the capital of the Frontier province and an important way station for Afghanistan.

The institution, which comprises primary and secondary schools and a seminary where hundreds of students study and live, is headed by Maulana Sami-ul Haq, a former Senator and religious figure in his own right. In a hall, the Maulana holds court. He is busy lamenting that his institution has to pay electricity charges when it is working in the cause of Islam. ``In a Muslim country like Pakistan, our institutionsshould be exempt,'' he says to no one in particular.

Sami-ul Haq has gradually withdrawn from public life and engrossed himself more in his work at the madarassas and towards what he calls, the ``glorious spread of Islam.''

The bearded Sami-ul Haq, nearing 70, has been a bitter critic of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ever since the two parted ways in the early '90s. This parting resulted in the now infamous media cell of Sharif's PML-N party publicising the interviews of a certain Madam Tahira, who is supposed to have kept a house of pleasure in Islamabad and whose clients included the rich and famous. In her interviews, Madam Tahira talked about Maulana Sami-ul Haq and certain ``positions'' he favoured. The media lapped it up and had a ball. Even today, some papers refer to Sami-ul Haq as ``Sammy Sandwich'' in reference to those interviews.

While Sharif managed to get Sami-ul Haq off centrestage politics in Pakistan, he may have helped propel the maulana's energies in working towards a ``true Islamicrevolution in Pakistan,'' in the words of the maulana. At his institution in Akora Khattak he trains young men who go forth and propagate the supremacy of the Quran. ``There is no other way,'' says Sami-ul Haq, adding ``unless we have supremacy of the Quran, we cannot thrive as a nation.'' But the maulana isn't impressed with the efforts of Sharif towards Islamisation. Commenting on the proposed Shariat Bill, Sami-ul Haq says that its is ``only a lollipop.'' He says that politicians in Pakistan ``take refuge in religion when there are other problems at hand.'' Turning his attention to Afghanistan, he says that the Taliban are not the bad people they have been made out to be. ``Look at the violence that was prevailing because of the in-fighting of the so called Mujahideen.

Nobody was safe. Now things have changed for the better,'' he says. He says Pakistani politicians have used the Taliban card to gain sympathies for themselves from the West: ``Benazir Bhutto tries to sell her self as a moderating force.'' If there is any development that Maulana Sami-ul Haq welcomes in the past year in Pakistan, it is the detonation of a nuclear device. ``We have proved our manhood to Mother India,'' he says with a hint of sarcasm. But he warns that the Pakistani bomb is in the wrong hands: According to him, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will sell out to America. A tour of his institution reveals a wide array of classrooms, prayer areas, dormitories and exercise grounds. There is even the office of a magazine which the institution publishes and a library. Most interesting was a block for Central Asian students. Buried in one courtyard is Maulana Abdul Haq, the founder of the institution and father of Maulana Sami-ul Haq, who came to Akora Khattak from Deoband to establish this centre for religious instruction in 1947. When asked whether he sees an Islamic revolution taking place in Pakistan, Sami-ul Haq predicts: ``In the next few years.'' He argues that things have got so bad and people are so frustrated with their leadersthat Islam is the only force that they can turn to. And as an afterthought, the maulana says: ``And it is here at places like the Dar-ul Uloom that we will provide the next generation of leaders, like we have done for Afghanistan. Here we give our pupils the ultimate weapon -- the power of the Islamic knowledge.''