"The first condition to bring peace in Pakistain is prosperity," said Muhammad Yahya Mujahid, front man for the Jamaat-ud-Dawa
...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba...
(JuD), the humanitarian wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is banned in Pakistain.
"Already people are being killed by price hikes. In such circumstances, we can't afford kabooms."
It is an official line from an organization blacklisted by the United Nations
...an idea whose time has gone...
over its links -- denied by the JuD -- to LeT, the orc group blamed by the United States and India for the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai that killed 166 people.
But the choice of subject is nonetheless indicative of the extent to which worries about the economy are gripping Pakistain, where even the military -- the former patron of the JuD/LeT -- cites these before its old obsessions about India and Kashmire.
Pakistain army chief General Ashfaq Kayani
... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI...
has begun to talk about the weakening economy as a security threat, as the country battles a Pak Taliban insurgency, rising corruption and chronic power shortages. It needs stability for economic growth.
Mujahid, who denies links with the LeT but was described in a UN blacklist as the head of the LeT's media department with an influential role in its central leadership, said Pakistain must find a way to end the frequent gun and kabooms.
"We believe security agencies of Pakistain should control the situation through any means, through negotiations, or any means. It is their duty to find a way for peace and, whatever they think is proper to keep peace in Pakistain, they should do it."
With growth forecast this year at just 2.4 per cent and inflation running at 14 per cent and likely to rise further with increasing oil prices, ordinary Paks are far more likely to worry about the economy than the Islamist snuffies who so preoccupy the United States and the rest of the outside world.
Mujahid, who insisted the JuD severed its links with the LeT in 2001 -- an assertion security analysts dispute -- picked up that theme, echoing a complaint frequently made by Paks when he bemoaned the growing energy crisis:
"You get electricity and petrol cheaper in western societies. People are looking for basics -- transport, electricity."
Preaching Through Welfare
The JuD, which follows an Islamic tradition known as Ahle Hadith -- a purist or Salafist
...Salafists espouse an austere form of Sunni Islam that seeks a return to practices that were common in the 7th century. Rather than doing that themselves and letting other people alone they insist everybody do as they say and they try to kill everybody who doesn't...
faith whose adherents say they emulate the ways of the companions of the Prophet Mohammad -- has always stressed the need to help the poor.
It runs schools, hospitals, ambulances and dispensaries and argues like many other Islamist groups that a Mohammedan society purged of modern evils, from corruption to music, would be both fairer and stronger.
"We believe in preaching through welfare," said Mujahid. "Pakistain should be a welfare state where people could get every basic necessity of life easily."
But JuD has been inextricably linked to armed jihad since its origins in the campaign against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan -- the purification of society it seeks is meant to make Mohammedans stronger when fighting their enemies.
The Lashkar-e-Taiba, once nurtured by the military to fight India in Kashmire, has also been the army's most loyal proxy, even now eschewing attacks within Pakistain itself. It has also been kept on a tight leash since Mumbai, for fear of a fresh attack that would invite retribution on Pakistain.
So does Mujahid's stress on the economy suggest at least a shift in emphasis, or perhaps even an echo of the military's own thinking that its old habits of using orc proxies to bleed India are currently taking too much of a toll on Pakistain?
Few can agree on the answer.
Pak analyst Ayesha Siddiqa, author of a book on the Mighty Pak Army, said that, far from reining in its old orc proxies, the military was building them up, including by setting up camps in the south of
Punjab province and in Sindh province."I think they (the army) have over the years developed a strategic dependence on these proxies," she said.
Others argue that it does indeed want to close them down eventually, and ascribe a decision by the authorities to allow JuD/LeT founder Hafez Saeed and others to operate openly as a means of keeping control of the group.
"It now seems that Pakistain is indeed anxious to neutralise and if possible destroy krazed killer organizations and networks, but can't make up its mind how to do it," said Brian Cloughley, a defence expert who has written two books on the Pakistain army.
Home For Armed Cadres?
As with everything in Pakistain, the same set of evidence can be given different explanations depending on perspective.
Mujahid, who like other members of the Ahle Hadith sect wears his trousers above the ankle in the tradition of the companions of the Prophet, was insistent that the JuD and its leader, Hafez Saeed, no longer had links to the LeT.
"It is highly deplorable that people in the media still call me a front man of the Lashkar-e-Taiba," he said.
But the fact that the JuD is so active despite its U.N. blacklisting -- its members were visible in relief efforts during last year's devastating floods -- is cited by some as proof Pakistain will never act against either it or the LeT.
"The JuD is best regarded as the parent group of the LeT, which is its armed instrument," said Ajai Sahni, executive director of India's Institute of Conflict Management.
"The distinction is real, because the JuD also engages in a much wider network of activities, including charitable work ... while the LeT's activities are restricted to terrorism and terrorist mobilisation."
But analysts argue the JuD can be used a front for LeT to collect funds or recruit volunteers for a jihad that it can ill afford to abandon without losing support to other Islamist groups.
"I see it (the LeT) continuing to be aggressive in India and Afghanistan and spreading its social networks in Pakistain," said South Asia expert C. Christine Fair at Georgetown University.
Yet the JuD's humanitarian activities also serve a purpose, since they would provide a useful repository into which to channel LeT cadres, were they ever to be disarmed.
"Interlocutors within and close to the Pak security establishment have suggested ... that if the Kashmire issue is settled 'appropriately', then over time LeT could be steered towards non-violent activism," Stephen Tankel, author of a book on the group, wrote in a New America Foundation paper in April.
"In other words, the above-ground JuD and its array of social welfare activities provides a possible means for demobilising its orcs," he wrote.
Mujahid said only that the fate of Kashmire should be decided by its people. "We should not talk of Pakistain or India. India should give the right of self-determination to the Kashmiris. A peaceful solution in Kashmire is good for the whole region."
The United States is so far unconvinced of Pakistain's willingness to eventually disarm the LeT, which it described in a report last month as "a formidable terrorist threat."
The army itself has said it cannot take on all orc groups at once, and will give priority to those who are killing its own people. Most analysts, therefore expect the LeT to be the last to be tackled.
But the jihad in Kashmire, which once provided the reason for Pak military backing for the LeT, has lost support both among the Kashmiris and in public opinion in Pakistain.
The army's focus is now on domestic stability and the JuD, by talking about the economy, appears to be following its lead.