New political party ‘Milli Muslim League’ under the umbrella of banned organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa with Hafiz Saeed as its chief is designed to give militants a political cover amidst international pressure on Pakistan
Santosh Verma
Banned outfit Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) the parent organisation of dreadful terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), has entered the political sphere by launching the Milli Muslim League (MML), a new political party on August 8. Saifullah Khalid, a religious scholar and longtime official of the group, is the president of the newly-formed Milli Muslim League party.
Saifullah Khalid said at the time of launching the party, that his party would work to make Pakistan “a real Islamic and welfare state” and that it was ready to cooperate with like-minded parties. Tabish Qayoum, a JuD activist who will work as spokesman for MML, said the charity had filed registration papers for a new party with Pakistan’s electoral commission. Khalid has been a member of the JuD’s central leadership. In June this year, he led funeral prayers in absentia for those killed by Indian security forces in Kashmir.
This is notable that United States (US) has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of JuD’s founder Hafiz Saeed. The Pakistan Government placed him under house arrest earlier this year under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997. The JuD and its wing the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) were placed on the watch list and put on the second schedule under Section 11-EEE (1) of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 after then the Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan declared that the Government was taking steps to fulfil its international obligations.
Khalid said that the MML will work in close conjunction with JuD, which has a network of thousands of volunteers across Pakistan who work mainly in education field and disaster and medical relief sectors. “We will maintain coordination with JuD and all other like-minded organisations that hold the ideology of Pakistan… we will offer them our cooperation, and accept theirs.”
JuD, which the US also says is a front for banned militant group LeT and is run by Hafiz Saeed, the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people. Saeed has been under house arrest since January after living freely in Pakistan for years, one of the sore points in the country’s fraying relations with the US. While Saeed was unable to attend the MML’s launch event in Islamabad owing to his arrest, Yahya Mujahid, a close aide and also subject to UN terrorism sanctions, was present at the news conference.
Ayesha Siddiqa, a security analyst, told the Reuters news agency that the new party was designed to cloak the group amid heightening pressure from the international community on Pakistan to crack down on LeT and JuD. “The making of a party indicates the need of JuD to hide itself further to avoid criticism,” Siddiqa informed the news agency.
The UN listed LeT on an international sanctions list in 2005 for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of supplying, selling or transferring arms and related material to or otherwise supporting acts or activities of” al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani Government also lists JuD as “under observation” on a list of banned “terrorist organisations”, rather than banning the group outright. LeT has been listed as a “terrorist organisation” by Pakistan since 2002.
This is a well established and worldwide phenomenon that Islamist political parties provide support to terrorist groups and this is quite usual in across Islam dominated countries. For example it’s the subject of ties between Islamic Salvation Front and Islamist terrorist group “Armed Islamic Group” (GIA) and Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (SGPC) in Algeria or in Egypt, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Islamic Group (Gammat Islamiya); in south Asian country Indonesia where Indonesian Nahdvatul Ulama and Jemmah Islamiya have cordial relations. In Jordan Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas; and in India Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Hind (a branch of Jamaat-e-Islami which was founded by Abul ala Maududi in 1941, and has been playing an important role in politics of Pakistan in course of time) and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), a banned organisation due to their religious fanatic and terrorist approach. All these political parties have a relationship with Islamic terrorist groups. But this is a rare case when a terrorist organisation turned itself into a new outfit with their cadre into an entirely new field where their fate depends on ballot, not on bullet. And in Pakistan it’s more surprising. But this does not mean that they shun their arms or the path of terrorism. It’s a simple new outfit by and for their own instead of supporting other Islamist political parties.
Is this a Wahhabi spurt?
On August 4, Pakistani newspaper “The international News” published news that three religious groups of Ahle Hadith school of thought have joined hands to form a political alliance under the name of Ahle Hadith Ittehad Council (AHIC) and contest next elections from a single platform. At the occasion AHIC president Maulana Ziaullah Shah Bukhari said, Our doors are open for other Ahle Hadith parties like Jamiat Ahle Hadith (Sajid Mir group) and JuD, and we will strive for protecting Islamic articles of the Constitution and Blasphemy laws’.
Hafiz Saeed is Ahle Hadith, or Wahhabi in common parlance, educated in Saudi Arabia — some say he has a Saudi wife — and is supposed to have met up with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda’s founder Abdullah Azzam there. When the two shifted to Peshawar to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Saeed opened his own Dawat wal-Irshad jihadi office next to their office. (Later, Irshad morphed into LeT, which is now a terrorist outfit still killing people in Afghanistan.)
Saeed is today’s one of the most powerful man in Pakistan, running charities and educational facilities all over Pakistan. He has networks in 260 cities across the country; his Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) — declared terrorist by the US, is the largest NGO. Jamaat and Saeed also have stronghold on Wafaq ul?Madaaris al-Salafia (Ahl-e-Hadith) which holds 1,400 registered (and many more ghost madarssas) madaaris affiliated with Wafaq ul-Madaaris al-Salafia in Pakistan which propounds religious teachings of Abdul Wahab. The madaaris of the JuD are also registered in Wafaq ul-Madaaris al-Salafia. They completely reject all schools of thoughts including the Hanafi. Institution like this will act like factory for terrorism which produced large number of terrorist year after year.
House of Saud promotes the intolerant and extremist Wahhabi creed not just domestically, but unfortunately, for decades the Saudis have also lavishly financed its propagation abroad. Exact numbers are not known, but it is thought that more than $100 billion have been spent on exporting fanatical Wahhabism to various much poorer Muslim nations worldwide over the past three decades. And Pakistan got a large chunk from it. The Saudi-Qatari standoff poses a great diplomatic challenge to Pakistani authorities as they enjoy close economic and geopolitical ties with both Riyadh and Doha and Pakistan’s hesitation to obey the rulings from Riyadh which has been honoured for years.
Pakistani military’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has deep rooted connections with this Wahhabi nexus of Terrorist, Ideologue and Fund providers. The role of Pakistan’s (ISI) representatives was very suspicious and Nawaz’s counsel Khawaja Harris Ahmed lambasted the role of ISI representative, retired Brig Mohammad Nauman Saeed, before the three-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan, describing him as one of the most aggressive members of the JIT. So it may be possible that in the wake of ouster of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, The Army, the Saudi’s and such more players acted behind the veils and now this is the prelude to foray in this play called Politics of Pakistan.
(The writer is a Pakistan observer)
