Pakistan has a hard job rooting out militancy. But it cannot let Jamaat-ud-Dawa carry on fooling people about its aims.
By Anthony Loyd
Wriggling under the illumination of media scrutiny after accusations of its involvement in the slaughter in Mumbai, Jamaat-ud-Dawa's response last week was a workmanlike PR counter-move. Journalists were taken on a guided tour of the organisation's headquarters, 30 miles from Lahore, where a civilised lunch of spiced chicken and rice accompanied declarations of innocence, condemnation of the terrorist attack and claims to be nothing more than a charity group involved in relief work.
Terrorists? Not us, guv. But in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, just three weeks before the Mumbai attacks, the advice of PR gurus was noticeably absent when I met a leading official from the group. “We don't like democracy,” Atiq ur-Rahman told me, eyes ablaze. “Our struggle is to establish an Islamic caliphate throughout the world. Whichever force tries to resist it shall be shattered.”
He bubbled with the internal rage so characteristic of militants, and having given a perfunctory resumé of JuD's relief work among Pakistani civilians displaced by fighting and natural disaster, launched himself into a diatribe against India and the West. The rant concluded with an amazing on-the-spot attempt to recruit my interpreter, citing the abuse of Muslims by infidel forces in Somalia, Chechnya and Kashmir. In the embarrassed silence that followed his departure we were left to flick through a copy of Why We Are Performing Jihad, the jihadist manual that he had handed us to further his case. Read more ...
By Anthony Loyd
Wriggling under the illumination of media scrutiny after accusations of its involvement in the slaughter in Mumbai, Jamaat-ud-Dawa's response last week was a workmanlike PR counter-move. Journalists were taken on a guided tour of the organisation's headquarters, 30 miles from Lahore, where a civilised lunch of spiced chicken and rice accompanied declarations of innocence, condemnation of the terrorist attack and claims to be nothing more than a charity group involved in relief work.
Terrorists? Not us, guv. But in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, just three weeks before the Mumbai attacks, the advice of PR gurus was noticeably absent when I met a leading official from the group. “We don't like democracy,” Atiq ur-Rahman told me, eyes ablaze. “Our struggle is to establish an Islamic caliphate throughout the world. Whichever force tries to resist it shall be shattered.”
He bubbled with the internal rage so characteristic of militants, and having given a perfunctory resumé of JuD's relief work among Pakistani civilians displaced by fighting and natural disaster, launched himself into a diatribe against India and the West. The rant concluded with an amazing on-the-spot attempt to recruit my interpreter, citing the abuse of Muslims by infidel forces in Somalia, Chechnya and Kashmir. In the embarrassed silence that followed his departure we were left to flick through a copy of Why We Are Performing Jihad, the jihadist manual that he had handed us to further his case. Read more ...
Source: Times Online
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