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In the name of charity

Nirupama Subramanian

The Jamaat-ud-Daawa, a renamed version of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, operates freely in Pakistan under the guise of a charity organisation.

— PHOTO: AP

A CONSTITUENCY FOR PEACE: A girl writes a message on a banner during a peace march organised in Mumbai on Sunday to express solidarity with the July 11 bomb blast victims.

HAS PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf matched words with deeds in taking action against militant outfits in Pakistan? With the speculation about the role of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Mumbai blasts, this must be the question uppermost in the minds of many in India and elsewhere.

In January 2002, President Musharraf banned five militant outfits. Two of these — the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed — were groups waging jihad against India in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Hizb-ul-Mujahideen was not among these. In May 2003, when India and Pakistan were preparing for a fresh peace initiative, Islamabad said it would not allow the HuM to carry on any "illegal activities" on the soil of either Pakistan or the territory controlled by it, that is, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) but said there was no ban on the outfit.

Pakistan's then Interior Minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, had said that since the Hizb was an organisation functioning in the Kashmir under Indian control "the ban on Pakistan-based militant outfits was not applicable" in its case.

Following the Musharraf regime's 2002 action, the Jaish reappeared as two groups — Khuddam ul-Islam and Jamaat ul-Furqan — and the Government banned both in 2003. But Pakistan has allowed the reincarnation of Lashkar-e-Taiba, known as the Jamaat-ud-Daawa, to operate freely in Pakistan, with its headquarters near Lahore.

JuD spokesman Yahya Mujahid told The Hindu that the group had no links with LeT, and that it was now involved only in "social service." But as recently as April 2006, the United States designated it a terrorist group. India has also raised concerns about it.

The JuD first emerged as the renamed version of the Markaaz-ud-Daawa-al-Irshad, the parent organisation of the LeT, which the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control put on its list in October 2001. In November 2001, a month before the U.S. outlawed the LeT, and two months before the Musharraf regime moved against militant and extremist groups, and perhaps in anticipation of these developments, the JuD announced that the LeT, its armed wing, was withdrawing from Pakistan and would henceforth restrict its operations to Kashmir under a new leadership.

Hafiz Saeed, the former MuDI/LeT leader, said he would confine himself to the leadership of the Jamaat-ud-Daawa, which describes itself as an Islamic charity. Although Saeed, a former teacher of Islamic studies at Lahore University, was arrested in 2002 after Pakistan outlawed the LeT, he was released a few months later because the Government did not press any charges against him. The JuD website says it is a movement that aims to spread the true teachings of Islam and to establish a pure and peaceful society. It invites everyone to visit its headquarters in Muridke on the Grant Trunk Road outside Lahore, so they can convince themselves that it is not a training camp for militants.

The JuD did appear on the Pakistan Government's "watchlist" in 2003 but was among the first organisations to surface in the relief and rehabilitation work following the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The Pakistan monthly Newsline reported in November 2005 that the JuD aside, half-a-dozen other militant groups, including the two banned offshoots of the Jaish, were active at the time under different names, their quick response showing they had retained their operational skills despite being outlawed for over three years.

The former Inter-Services Intelligence chief, Hamid Gul, describes the JuD as a non-governmental organisation that should be rewarded for its "tremendous" work in the earthquake-hit areas. He accepts that the JuD is the renamed version of the LeT but insists it is now engaged only in charitable work. "It has won a lot of sympathy from the people. People are a bit chary that its work has not been recognised by the state," said Mr. Gul, a harsh critic of the Musharraf regime for its action against religious and militant outfits under pressure from the U.S.

Yet for all this work, six months after the earthquake, in April this year, the U.S. State Department put this "NGO" on its Specially Designated Global Terrorist list. The State Department said the JuD was the same as LeT and that it also had links with the Al-Qaeda.

Puzzling

It has to be one of the lasting puzzles of the Pakistan-U.S. partnership in the "war on terror" that Washington has not forced Islamabad to ban the JuD too. Following the U.S. action, its frontline ally said the group had been banned under U.S. domestic law, and that did not oblige Islamabad to take follow-up action.

Asad Durrani, the former chief of Military Intelligence, has an explanation, only half-joking, for why Pakistan has not banned, the JuD: "We have more differences with the Americans on how to fight terrorism than we probably have with the Indians."

Mr. Gul is more direct. "A ban on the JuD will be unacceptable to Pakistan." He says the U.S. knows that it can push Islamabad on this only at the risk of further alienating the people from President Musharraf.

Whenever incidents have occurred in Kashmir, Pakistan has said it has no connection with the groups that may have carried out these incidents. It has also said in its defence that there may be several freelance militants and that it is impractical to demand of Pakistan an assurance "that not a bird will fly" across the Line of Control. In any case, Pakistan asks, why with a fence on the LoC has India still not been able to ensure that no infiltration takes place.

However, some analysts in Pakistan believe that by allowing groups such as the JuD to operate freely, President Musharraf is sending out the message that if the peace process with India is seen as failing to deliver the results that Pakistan wants, he has not given up the "unconventional military option."

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