EFL
I went in and was ushered into a room where my friend was sitting with a senior leader of the Jamaat ud-Dawa (a reincarnation of the dreaded Lashkar-e-Taiba). For the next two and half hours we had a long (and very civil) conversation in Punjabi, during the course of which we discussed and argued over the present state of jihad and its future, the JuD’s perspective on Indo-Pak relations, and about the organisation itself. The conversation started with the JuD leader saying that he believes that 9/11 was a disaster for the jihad. He was candid enough to say he will never admit this in public but his own feeling is that jihad suffered a great setback after 9/11.
| You know losing Afghanistan, the Islamist Promised Land, with all its explosives, must have hurt... |
He said that there is great pressure on them from the regime to stop their jihadi operations and that a close watch is being kept on them. When I asked why JuD had not been banned along with the reincarnated Jaish-e-Mohammed, Harkatul Mujahedin and other extremist organisations, he said that after the attack on the Indian parliament, the Lashkar leadership had decided to bifurcate their activities inside Pakistan from their jihadi activities inside Kashmir. He said that in December 2001, the Jamaat ud-Dawa had been formed and that the Lashkar-e-Taiba had nothing to do with the JuD anymore and that it was a completely separate organisation.
| And my left arm is a completely separate appendage of my body... |
As to the provocative speeches being made by the JuD chief, Hafiz Saeed, I was told that all he is doing is making speeches and that’s not a crime (which it is if the Pakistan government was to apply the law). He said that after the formation of the JuD, the leadership had lost control over the operations of the LeT, and while they still had contacts with the organisation, they no longer exercised any control over its operations.
| Kind of like Pakland with the jihadi movement itself, huh? |
Pakistani journalists covering the jihad beat however debunk any distinction sought to be drawn between JuD and LeT. They said that they are still one and the same. They pointed out to the JuD annual congregation at Pattoki and said that the fiction of JuD and LeT being separate organisation became clear at this congregation where the entire security was provided by the LeT cadres. JuD offices still double up as offices of the LeT inside Pakistan and recruits for the LeT are still being recruited by the JuD.
| My heart! The surprise... [thud] |
The conversation then turned to how the JuD viewed the thaw in relations between India and Pakistan. The JuD leader was not very optimistic about the future of the peace process. Of course, if the peace process did succeed then the JuD would not stand in the way of its success. But he added that the solution to Kashmir that India sought would ensure that the stalemate continued because even if Pakistan accepted the Indian solution the Kashmiris would not, and they would continue their struggle against ‘Indian occupation’. He appeared to be on the defensive when confronted with the negligible Kashmiri presence in the violence in J&K. He first tried to put a Kashmiri face to the jihad but then admitted that most of the jihadis are Pakistani. But he said that in recent months a large number of Kashmiri youth are joining the jihadi ranks.
| "Yeah! We got 'em lined up for miles, just waitin' to sign up! Really!" |
He repeated the rhetoric about Muslims coming to aid of ‘oppressed’ fellow Muslims. But when asked why people like him never thought of the 140 million Indian Muslims and only of the 4 million Kashmiri Muslims, he once again appeared to be caught in a dilemma. Perhaps he was wanted to say that his organisation is actually involved in arming and training the other Indian Muslims, but this then would have amounted to mea culpa that neither he nor his country could afford. He took great pains to convince me that his organisation isn’t against peace and the last thing they want is for the subcontinent to undergo yet another 1947 type holocaust. I then asked him to list a few steps that he feels the Indian government needs to take to convince the Pakistanis about its seriousness in seeking a peaceful solution to Kashmir. For a few minutes he was caught speechless. He then kept fumbling for words and tried to sidestep the question. It was almost as if they had never even thought about searching for a non-jihadi solution to Kashmir.
| Hafiz Saeed denies that there is one... |
The meeting with the JuD leader led me to four conclusions. First, I got a feeling that the meeting took place because the JuD wanted to convey a message of being an organisation of reasonable people and not the mindless fanatics they actually are they are often made out to be. There was a visible softening in the stand of the JuD, something which was simply not there when I met the Lashkar chief, Hafiz Saeed some three years back.
Second, the meeting probably took place with the concurrence of the JuD’s handlers. But if this is the case then it probably means that the JuD has been kept in reserve to raise the jihadi temperature if the Pakistani establishment feels that the peace process with India is not going in the desired direction. The implication of this is that the Pakistani establishment is still playing a double game as far as jihad is concerned and hasn’t forsaken jihad as an instrument of state policy.
Third, the jihadis are unable and perhaps incapable of imagining a world without jihad. For them jihad is an article of faith without which they would lose their sole purpose of existence.
And finally, the JuD is the one jihadi organisation that for now at least remains under the complete control of the Pakistani establishment and either for reasons of short-term expediency or as part of a long-term strategy is not willing to confront the establishment just yet. The question is for how long the JuD will continue to take directions from the Pakistani establishment. Here one thing that the JuD leader said keeps ringing in my ears. Sounding an ominous warning for the Pakistani regime, he said that there is only so much humiliation and pressure that a man or a people can take. Once the pressure become unbearable and humiliation crosses the limit, there is bound to be retaliation.
Ahah! The old Humiliation™-Dire Revenge™ cycle...
I think the writer might be correct, though. Based on the evidence, JuD-LeT is the only jihadi organization Perv's not cracking down on, at least on paper. That implies it's the only one that actually remains under ISI control. That's always assuming the crackdown is for real, of course. But given LeT's involvement with al-Qaeda and its worldwide scope it also opens up some new areas of investigation. It makes us wonder just how involved with Qaeda the ISI remains, and what kinds of plans for world domination are on the boil in its sanctum sanctorum. |
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