The Hindu : `Banned terror outfits resurface in Pak.'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 11, 2003

International

International

`Banned terror outfits resurface in Pak.'

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

ISLAMABAD SEPT. 10. The five banned militant and sectarian Pakistan outfits are back in business as the Government has failed to curb their activities, according to a leading Pakistan English monthly, Herald.

In a detailed investigative report, the magazine quoted from the assessment of a purported intelligence agency on the subject. An official spokesman, however, dubbed the report as ``baseless'' and asserted that the Government has enforced the ban strictly.

According to the magazine, the five outfits banned by the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, in his much-publicised address to the people on January 12, 2002 have resurfaced with new names. "Clearly the ban imposed on these organisations has failed to work. Observers in Islamabad believe that there can be no real breakthrough in blocking the activities of these militant outfits till the Government takes action against the individuals leading them," it said.

Among the outfits proscribed by Gen. Musharraf are the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad. Besides two extremist outfits and another organisation, which advocated taking on the Americans in Afghanistan, were banned.

"According to a report prepared by the Pakistani intelligence earlier this year to assess the situation a year after the ban was enforced, the move has failed to check either the activities or the relentless funding of these terror outfits from all corners of the world," it said.

Pakistan has been able to do little to stop the "relentless funding" from Saudi Arabia and other countries to the terror groups, even in cases where Pakistani missions abroad were aware of the identities of the financial sponsors of these organisations, the magazine said.

The most glaring of them was the Sipha-e-Sahaba of Pakistan (SSP), a radical Sunni outfit which was banned along with its armed wing, Lashkar Jhangvi. The SSP subsequently changed its name to Millat-e-Islamia after the ban and continues to draw huge amounts of money from its foreign patrons, while its leader, Maulana Azam Tariq, has contested the last general elections to the National Assembly and won as an independent.

Similarly Jaish, which was formed by Maulana Masood Azhar, after his release from the Indian prison following the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu to Kandahar in 1999, now operated with a new name — Khadam-e-Islam. It said military training camps in Batrasi and Syed Ahmad Shaeed in Manshera and Balakot are back in action.

Jaish finances were handled by five men from Lahore and Shekhapura in Pakistan and the outfit has a network of donors from different countries, the report said and identified five men who collected funds. They were Hafiz Tariq Masood, Qari Eshan and Shabaz Haider of Lahore and Qari Abdul Hafeez and Mohammad Tariq in Shekhapura.

"These men were the key to the Jaish's organisational gains in Lahore, where the group has established 21 local offices in a short span of three years," it said.

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