http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/w...official-tolerance-of-militants.html?ref=asia
KARACHI, Pakistan — Violence and mayhem are the hallmarks of
Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani group that waged the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks. But this week, the group publicly expanded its operations in an entirely different domain: health care.
On Monday, Lashkar’s founder,
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, inaugurated an ambulance service run by the group’s charity wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, in the bustling port city of Karachi. Two days later a fleet of gleaming new vans, emblazoned with the charity’s distinctive flag and loaded with stretchers still wrapped in plastic, were parked outside the group’s Karachi headquarters, waiting to make their first runs to hospitals on this city’s often chaotic streets.
The group already operates a similar service in 100 towns and cities across
Pakistan, a spokesman for the charity said, and was seeking donations to help fund the new service in Karachi.
Even as Pakistan is experiencing a wave of anti-militant sentiment after the Pakistani Taliban’s massacre of schoolchildren in Peshawar last month, the aggressively public profile of Lashkar-e-Taiba, particularly through its Jamaat-ud-Dawa affiliate, suggests that some militant groups still enjoy official tolerance.
In fact, some analysts saw the unveiling of the new ambulance service this week as a calculated rebuke to speculation that the Pakistani authorities were finally going to enforce international sanctions against Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
That speculation picked up after Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip to Pakistan on Jan. 12. Afterward, a State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, suggested that Pakistani officials had promised to move against at least 10 militant groups. But when Pakistani officials were asked follow-up questions about the issue, it became clear that no new banning was imminent, and some officials said that an internal debate was still underway about which course to follow.
Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa insist that the groups are distinct entities with different operations, and many Pakistani officials honor that distinction. But the United Nations Security Council does not, describing Jamaat-ud-Dawa merely as an alias or front for Lashkar on the international sanctions list.
Tasnim Aslam, a spokeswoman for Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in an email that Pakistan complied with United Nations resolutions imposed against Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa in 2008.
But she also conceded that Jamaat continued to operate openly in the country. “I am aware that JuD had an ambulance service,” she said.
Mr. Saeed, who founded Lashkar-e-Taiba but later sought to publicly recast himself as the charity-minded leader of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, responded to the new round of pressure to blacklist Jamaat by ramping up its operations.
Speaking publicly in Karachi on Monday — despite a $10 million United States government bounty on him — he accused “foreign enemies” of plotting against him and accused Western aid agencies of using relief work as a cover for “devious” aims.
The tirade seemed almost tongue-in-cheek, because critics often make the same charge against Jamaat, which is seen as a front for militant fund-raising and recruitment.
After years of steady expansion in Karachi, for instance, the Punjab-based group now operates a network of clinics, seminaries and schools, while its clerics rail against India and the United States at Friday sermons across Sindh Province.
The group’s freedom of movement, despite the wave of anti-militant sentiment since the Peshawar massacre, shows that Pakistan’s crackdown on some jihadist groups will not extend to Jamaat, analysts say.
“There’s a different part of the brain that operates when officials are talking about these groups,” said Moeed Yusuf, director of South Asia programs at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington.
The different treatment stems in part from Lashkar’s specific vision of jihad — its attacks are aimed mostly at India — and its close ties to Pakistani intelligence, which has a long history of playing favorites with militant groups.
Other groups with similar aims are also flourishing. Posters across Karachi this week advertised a Feb. 5 rally organized by Jaish-e-Muhammad, which was officially banned 13 years ago after its fighters tried to storm the Indian Parliament.
And yet there are signs that Pakistan’s troubled relationship with extreme Islamist groups may be changing somewhat.
After the Peshawar attack, protesters gathered outside the Red Mosque, a center of Islamist extremism in the center of Islamabad, to yell anti-Taliban slogans and demand the arrest of Maulana Abdul Aziz, the mosque’s chief cleric.
The movement, which calls itself “reclaim our mosques,” succeeded in registering criminal charges against Mr. Aziz — a move that, at the least, held symbolic importance. And though the movement’s numbers remain small, its leader, Jibran Nasir, says it will continue to agitate on the streets and through legal action. “We are going to come out week after week, month after month and encourage more people to join in,” he said in a phone interview. “We are not going to leave.”
Still, many Pakistanis remain cowed by the threat posed by the Pakistani Taliban and other jihadist groups, and the authorities have shown little enthusiasm for the protesters’ bravery. The Islamabad police have yet to initiate a criminal investigation against Mr. Aziz, much less arrest him, Mr. Nasir admitted.
For the military’s part, even as it has cracked down on the Pakistani Taliban, it has showed little determination to expand its militant-fighting campaign to include Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliates and allies.
Some analysts, like Mr. Yusuf at the United States Peace Institute, say that the hands-off policy is at least partly a product of fear: That even if army commanders and Pakistani officials had a mind to move against Lashkar, they worry that it might provoke a violent backlash that would destabilize the country.
“The state of Pakistan, civil and military, is petrified at the prospect of touching militants based in Punjab,” Mr. Yusuf said. “The paradigm is shifting. But you can be sure that you’re not going to see action against Jamaat-ud-Dawa any time soon.”
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