A banned charity accused of links to the Mumbai attacks has resurfaced in Pakistan, this time running an extensive aid programme for the people fleeing fighting in Swat, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Wednesday.The Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) offers food, medical care and transport to villagers fleeing into Mardan district, it said. But the paper said, citing experts and some FIF members, that the group was a renamed relief wing of Jamaatud Dawa, a group the Pakistani government banned last December after the UN declared it a terrorist organisation.
Dawa volunteers have now re-emerged under a new name to collect relief supplies for the internally displaced persons (IDPs). Their first relief camp is located outside Sher Gur in Mardan, a few hundred metres from the border with Malakand, where the fighting is concentrated.
Present at the camp was Abdur Rauf, the FIF head and the former head of Dawa's welfare wing. Rauf told Guardian that the group's 24-hour kitchens had fed 53,000 people in roadside camps and in schools where people were living, adding that a fleet of 23 minibuses had transported victims from the battle zone and seven ambulances took the injured to hospital.
Relief work: He said the FIF was willing to pay bus fares for people fleeing to Lahore and Karachi, and was organising emergency lodgings in madrassas for those remaining behind. The charity also intended to build two tented camps catering for 3,000 displaced families in the coming month, the paper said.