...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba...
with Lashkar-e-Taiba
...the
Army of the Pure,an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is
banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
, it would not be possible to proscribe the former, which he termed a 'charity' outfit. The statement seems to echo the 'good holy warrior, bad holy warrior' line apparently pursued by Pakistain's security establishment. While the minister is yet to discover any solid evidence, and while JuD chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed
...who would be wearing a canvas jacket with very long sleeves anyplace but Pakistain...
may deny all links, the fact is that Jamaat-ud-Dawa and LeT enjoy a symbiotic relationship. After the latter was banned in 2002, it began operating under the JuD moniker -- itself a new take on Jamaat-ud-Dawa wal Irshad formed in the 1980s at the height of the Afghan jihad. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed was a key figure in LeT and it is no coincidence that both groups' infrastructure and memberships overlap. The minister's remarks in the Senate point to the persistent problem of holy warrior groups rebranding themselves after proscription and carrying on as usual.
This phenomenon is not limited to JuDeT. Jaish-e-Mohammad
...literally
Army of Mohammad, a Pak-based Deobandi terror group founded by Maulana Masood Azhar in 2000, after he split with the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. In 2002 the government of Pervez Musharraf
bannedthe group, which changed its name to Khaddam ul-Islam and continued doing what it had been doing before without missing a beat...
, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain
...a Sunni Deobandi organization, a formerly registered Pak political party, established in the early 1980s in Jhang by Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi. Its stated goal is to oppose Shia influence in Pakistain. They're not too big on Brelvis, either. Or Christians. Or anybody else who's not them. The organization was
bannedin 2002 as a terrorist organization, but somehow it keeps ticking along, piling up the corpse counts...
and Tehrik-e-Jafariya Pakistain -- all supposedly banned-- have renamed themselves after proscription. Only the names have changed; the leaderships, infrastructure and activities remain the same. The problem is that despite much outrage, especially after the APS Beautiful Downtown Peshawar
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
tragedy, we do not have a comprehensive counterterrorism plan to neutralise holy warrior actors. Confronting the forces of Evil on the battlefield is one option, but to crack down on groups active in the cities, the best course is to build cases against leaders and workers of holy warrior groups, freeze their funds and prevent them from carrying out propaganda activities, not merely 'ban' them. Unless the National Action Plan is recalibrated towards fully neutralising holy warrior groups our counterterrorism efforts will continue to deliver unsatisfactory results.