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| India-Pakistan |
| Pak police crack down on Lashkar-e-Jhangvi |
| 2003-02-07 |
| Pakistan's most feared Islamic militant group, branded by Washington last week a foreign terrorist group, has been severely weakened by a crackdown on extremism, intelligence officials said on Friday. But others warned it was too early to write off the Sunni Muslim Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) group. "Lashkar-e-Jhangvi itself is very badly weakened now and I don't think they have the steam to re-group at this moment," said a senior intelligence official on condition of anonymity. They always say something like that just before some beturbanned lunatic shoots up a church or slaughters a few other infidels... "But there are other splinter groups - those people who have been in Afghanistan have maybe groups of seven, eight or 10 people together operating in the country." Yep. Those are the guys... Fayyaz Leghari, a senior Pakistani official in the province of Sindh, said last week the crackdown by Pakistani intelligence and police, helped by FBI agents, had given the authorities the edge over militancy, saying groups were "in disarray". "Straighten up that turban, Mahmoud! When was the last time you cleaned that rocket launcher? Suck in that gut! You look like Qazi!" Since President Pervez Musharraf banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in August, 2001, its notorious leader Riaz Basra died in a shoot-out with police. ... twice, in fact... Basra's successor Akram Lahori is in custody and Asif Ramzi, another senior member, blew himself up in December. Not intentionally, of course... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |