...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba...
and its charity wing, Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, is significant.
On Thursday, the National Security Committee, with the prime minister in the chair, took the decision, with the Prime Minister’s Office later saying that the state cannot be allowed to "become hostage to extremism".
The JuD is of course an avatar of 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...
, one of the many jihadi groups that dot this country’s landscape. However,
corruption finds a dozen alibis for its evil deeds...
making an announcement about the group’s proscription is not enough; if the state has evidence of the outfit’s involvement in militancy it should present the facts and pursue the legal course so that JuD’s leadership can face justice.
As has been witnessed for nearly two decades now, the state moves to ban krazed killer outfits, but, in very little time they are back, up and running, with new names and the entire structure of violence intact. For example, in 2002 the Musharraf regime banned a host of jihadi and sectarian groups, yet this effort had little practical effect because with a mere change of nomenclature, the groups continued to peddle hate and violence, making a mockery of the proscription.
Moreover, the establishment’s attempts to ’mainstream’ violent actors ‐ eg presenting them as legitimate religious scholars or relaunching the jihadi lashkars as political parties ‐ have also failed to steer these groups away from violence and hate. For example, a sectarian party has been repeatedly allowed to take part in general elections, but its big shots have failed to cease spewing venom.
History has shown that while low-level jihadi and sectarian party cadres perhaps can be deradicalised and mainstreamed, their leadership is committed to the ideology of violence and can only be silenced through the legal path. These parties’ fundraising, communications and organizational systems must be targeted to put them out of business; imposing mere ’bans’ is futile.
In the delicate post-Pulwama period, Prime Minister Imran Khan
... aka
Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems...
must be praised for saying that those who use this country’s soil to attack others are enemies of Pakistain. The government has now started to take action. For instance, reports emerged on Friday that a key madressah associated with 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...
in Bahawalpur ‐ another krazed killer outfit accused of orchestrating cross-border attacks ‐ was taken over by the Punjab
1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots....
government.
These moves indicate that the leadership has perhaps realised that taking half-baked steps against violent actors is dangerous for Pakistain’s internal security, as well as its external relations. Now the elected leadership and the military establishment must take this campaign ‐ as envisaged under NAP ‐ to its logical conclusion by ensuring that non-state actors are not able to raise armed militias, and that those spewing hatred against other countries or spreading sectarian views are prosecuted.
It was unwise to allow these outfits to operate in the past, and efforts are needed to shut them down permanently.