Jamaat-ud-Dawa says Pakistan needs peace

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Over tea in Lahore with the man who some see – wrongly he says – as a spokesman for the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, one subject dominates the conversation. It’s not jihad, not Kashmir, but the economy.
“The first condition to bring peace in Pakistan is prosperity,” said Muhammad Yahya Mujahid, spokesman for the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the humanitarian wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is banned in Pakistan.
“Already people are being killed by price hikes. In such circumstances, we can’t afford bomb blasts.” It is an official line from an organisation blacklisted by the United Nations over its links — denied by the JuD – to LeT, the militant 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 Pakistan, where even the military – the former patron of the JuD/LeT – cites these before its old obsessions about India and Kashmir.
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 Pakistan must find a way to end the frequent gun and bomb attacks. “We believe security agencies of Pakistan 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 Pakistan, they should do it.”
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 Pakistanis 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 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 Muslim society purged of modern evils, from corruption to music, would be both fairer and stronger.
Pakistani analyst Ayesha Siddiqa, author of a book on the Pakistani army, said that, far from reining in its old militant 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.
“It now seems that Pakistan is indeed anxious to neutralise and if possible destroy extremist organisations 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 Pakistan army.
HOME FOR ARMED CADRES?
As with everything in Pakistan, 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 spokesman of the Lashkar-e-Taiba,” he said.