Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Every nation has an army, Pakistani army has a nation

Author: Tejinder Singh
16 December 2008 - Issue : 813

Pakistani establishments have acquired great tenacity to strongly believe their own bluffs even in the face of unquestionable proof. President Asif Ali Zardari's first statement that the sole surviving Mumbai terrorist is not a Pakistani to another statement of Foreign Minister that there is no proof against Jamaat ud Dawa proves the point.

The unmasking came in the form of an interview to the Pakistani Dawn newspaper by Amir Kasab, the father of Ajmal Amir Iman alias Ajmal Qasab, the lone Pakistani gunman arrested for the Mumbai terror attacks. The old man, a father of three sons and two daughters, from Faridkot in Okara district of Punjab in Pakistan, has unequivocally admitted that the captured terrorist, whose pictures were beamed across the world, was indeed his son.

Earlier, Britain's Observer correspondent had located Iman's home in Faridkot, Pakistan and got hold of the voters' roll which had the names of his parents Amir Kasab and Noor as well as the numbers on the national identity cards. BBC had also reported that Iman is indeed belonged to Faridkot and had joined the Lashkar-e-Taiba sometime ago.

Iman also revealed to Indian security personnel the identity of his nine other slain gunmen and their addresses in Pakistan. Despite all the accumulated evidence, Pakistani leaders, its expert commentators on electronic media and its diplomatic staff around the globe went to the town to prove that the terrorists are not Pakistanis but Indians. They shamelessly called the heinous terrorist attack as the handiwork of Hindu extremists or Indian Muslims or could be RAW or CIA.

Now, the UN Security Council has succeeded in placing not only Jamaat ud Dawa, the front organization of the Lashkar-e-Taiba on the list of terrorist groups but also four of its top leadership, including its chief Hafiz ul Mohammed Saeed. The earlier attempts by the UNSC to do so for the past three years failed as China conveniently came to the rescue of this terrorist organization by putting a "hold" on the resolution.

Hafiz ul Saeed demanded proof for he ever heading the Lashkar-e-Taiba or he ever promoting terrorism and jehadism. Had he cared to re-read the publications of the organization he is heading he would have got all the proof he needed.

Addressing a press conference in Lahore on December 24, 2001, Hafiz Saeed announced his resignation and the appointment of Maulana Abdul Wahid Kashmiri as the new LeT chief, stated the magazine, Jamaat ud Dawa. He made this announcement soon after the US State Departent had designated the Lashkar-e-Taiba a foreign terrorist organization, and a few weeks before the then President Musharraf was forced to ban the group on January 13, 2002.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa published in its April 10 edition an address by Hafiz ul Sayeed to convocation of students, where he proudly announced that his organization has sacrificed 4500 youth for the Jihadi cause and that preparation for Jihad was a must. He urged students to pray to God so that they could have a chance to sacrifice their lives for Jihad.

According the US Treasury Department, Hafiz Saeed "in 2005, personally determined where graduates of an LeT camp in Pakistan should be sent to fight and personally organised the infiltration of LET militants into Iraq during a trip to Saudi Arabia."

Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, who was one of the four Lashkar leaders placed on UN Security Council list of terrorists, was the supreme commander who had coordinated the Mumbai terrorist attacks and guided the gunmen on the action to be taken while they were holding the hostages. As Lashkar's chief of operations. Lakhvi has directed LeT military operations including in Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq and southeast Asia. Lakhvi was born to Hafiz Aziz-ur-Rahman, a cleric linked to the neoconservative Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadis, on December 30, 1960. He lives in Chika 18L of the village of Rinala Khurd, in Okara—the same south Punjab district from where Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman, the terrorist arrested in the course of last month's massacre in Mumbai, grew up.

Mahmoud Bahaziq, another Lashkar leader to be declared a terrorist, is a Saudi citizen of Indian origin. He is considered the main financier of the LeT and its activities in the 1980s and 1990s and coordinated LeT's fundraising activities with Saudi non-governmental organisations and Saudi businessmen. He is allegedly the brain behind recruiting Indian expatriate Muslims in Arab countries, particularly in Saudi Arabia, and sending them to Pakistan for training and subsequently launching them into terrorist activities in India.

Haji Mohammad Ashraf has assisted the expansion of the LeT in Saudi Arabia and Iraq and coordinating the terror activities there. Ashraf was born on March 1, 1965, and holds Pakistani passport.

Producing evidence to prove the culpability of Pakistan-based terrorist groups and their handlers in the military establishment is not an issue. There is enough now on Mumbai attacks. There was enough evidence of the involvement of Pak military establishment and Lashkar elements in the attack on Indian mission in Kabul in which two senior diplomats were killed besides several others.

The problem is that Pakistani military leadership views the Jehadi groups as their first line of offence and defence and the most effective weapon to bleed India, while maintaining its deniability. The 1999 Kargil war, designed and executed by the former Army chief and President Musharraf, clearly established this strategy. The Northern Areas Scouts, a wing of the Pakistani army, were sent as part of the jehadi groups. President Zardari himself is a victim of the jehadi outfits that the Pakistani army and ISI gave birth and nourished to an uncontrollable giant.

Enjoying "tea" at a Pakistani restaurant in Brussels, Belgium, this journalist, Tejinder Singh was told by Cheema Saheb, Head Chef citing something he heard on a TV talk-show: "Every nation has an army while Pakistani army has a nation."

The day the political leadership tames the army, that day augurs well for Pakistani people and their status in the international community. Until that happens, the world community will have to do the dirty work of corking up these "middle age" mammals.

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