Lashkar’s Muridke base opened for journalists

LAHORE: Fearing a possible Indian Air Force attack on the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Toiba founder Prof Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the sprawling 200-acre compound in the Muridke district of Pakistan’s Punjab province was Thursday opened for inspection by foreign journalists to belie the Indian propaganda that it was a terrorist training facility.

Speaking on the occasion, Yahya Mujahid, a close aide of Hafiz Saeed as well as the spokesman for Jamaatul Daawa, the front organisation of Lashkar-e-Taiba, refuted the Indian media reports that the sole Mumbai attacker captured alive by the Indian security forces was indoctrinated and trained at the Murdike centre called the Markaz-e-Toiba or the Centre of the Pure. The foreign journalists were given free access to various parts of the building and shown activities at schools and colleges being run within its premises, both male and female. Spreading over 200 acres of land Markaz-e-Toiba compound also houses farms, mosques, fish-breeding ponds and stables.

Heavily armed men guard the entrance to the Markaz, which is surrounded by barbed wire and protected from view by tall trees. The foreign media was told that over 5,000 students are present enrolled with the Muridke complex who are only imparted education – both Islamic as well as modern – from the primary to the university level. Yahyah Mujahid claimed that the Muridke complex does not house the headquarters of Lashkar-e-Toiba which had shifted its base to Srinagar in Jammu & Kashmir in December 2001 when Hafiz Saeed resigned as its chief. He said the Muridke compound currently houses the headquarters of Jamaatul Daawa which is purely an Islamic charity involved in good work across Pakistan, and which has nothing to do with Lashkar-e-Toiba.

Dreaded for its guerrilla operations in Occupied Jammu & Kashmir and known for the infamous suicide attack on the Red Fort in New Delhi, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) or the Army of Pure has once again been put in the spotlight in the wake of the Mumbai attacks. The Lashkar happens to be an Ahle Hadith (Wahabi) jehadi group which was born as the military wing of Markaz Dawatul Irshad (MDI) or Centre for Proselytisation and Preaching. The MDI was set up in 1988 by three Islamic scholars – Prof. Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and Prof. Zafar Iqbal, who were teachers of the Islamic studies at the University of Engineering Technology, Lahore, and Dr Abdullah Azzam, a professor of International Islamic University, Islamabad. Azzam is also described by many as the ideologue for the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, besides being the religio-political mentor of the al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. The main purpose of the MDI was to promote the purification of the society, and to build a society on the basis of Koran and Sunnah.

Later talking to newsmen, Yahya Mujahid reacted sharply to the media reports that the United States has asked the Pakistan government to arrest Hafiz Saeed, saying the Professor was not a criminal but a religious leader who is not wanted in any terrorist activity anywhere across the globe. He added that Hafiz Saeed has never, at any time, advocated or supported the use of terrorism, nor is he a proponent of clandestine terrorist activities of any kind and any move to arrest him would be resisted with full might by his followers. Yahya said Saeed has nothing to do with the Mumbai attacks and the Indian allegations were simply baseless. Instead of blaming Pakistan, he said, the Indian authorities should have shown patience and focused on investigation of the attacks to find out the real culprits.

To a question, Yahya said Pakistan too, should demand extradition of the killers of thousands of Indian Muslims, as well as extradition of other Hindu terrorists, such as L. K. Advani, Narinder Modi, Bal Thackeray, and serving Indian Army officer, Col. Prohit who has been found involved in Samjhota Express tragedy. However, a Hong Kong based online newspaper – Asia Times – has claimed in its latest report that ten young men from the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) were sent on a sacrificial” mission to Mumbai out of whicxh nine were killed.

The report filed by the Pakistan bureau chief of Asia Times states: “What did not go according to plan was the capture of 21-year-old Ajmal Amir Kesab, who has given details of the militants’ plot that was hatched by elements of Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), including the training of the mission’s members at PNS Iqbal (a naval commando unit in Karachi) and at Mangla Dam near the capital Islamabad. This single arrest has played very badly with the separate plans of the Pakistani strategic quarters, the LeT and al-Qaeda.

The report quotes a middle-ranking member of the LeT as saying: “Everybody wishes for a war between India and Pakistan. Had prayers not been prohibited for the battle to happen, today all mujahideen would have been praying Qunoot-e-Nazela for battle between India and Pakistan as this is the key for success for the mujahideen from Afghanistan to India.” (The Qunoot-e-Nazala is a prayer offered when there is extreme pressure from the enemy and God is asked to remove all fear and pressure and grant victory.) The militants obviously want their war, but the United States now wants war on the militants, and therein lies a major problem.

US Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is in Islamabad, as is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, following her visit to India. Mullen’s and Rice’s overriding message for Pakistan was to get serious about the LeT, and the ISI officers involved in the Mumbai plot. But much will depend on the days ahead. Specifically two issues will determine the level of tension between India and Pakistan: one, the evidence India can present to prove a Pakistani link to the Mumbai attacks; and, two, the demands India makes on the basis of that evidence. There is clearly deep anger in India over the Mumbai attacks and that anger may yet shatter the carefully crafted détente that the US officials have been able to achieve. At the same time. The pressure exerted by the American officials has puts the Pakistani military on the spot, and it will be a real test for Army Chief General Ashfaq Kiani, as well as the army’s relationship with militants.

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