Author: K.J.M Varma
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: March 17, 2001
In a major climbdown from its campaign
to crackdown on fund-raising activities of Islamic fundamentalist militant
groups, Pakistan government has reached a tacit understanding with militant
outfits permitting them to discreetly collect funds and recruit volunteers
to fight Indian forces in Kashmir, media reports here said.
"After prolonged negotiations with
the government agencies, mainstream religious organisations, involved in
armed struggle against Indian forces in Kashmir have agreed to discreetly
pursue their drive to collect donations and recruit volunteers," the News
said on Friday .
"In return, the government has decided
not to pursue, too aggressively, its pledge to force the closure of all
such activity," it said.
"The latest development has effectively
reversed the dramatic announcement made by interior minister Moinuddin
Haider, promising elimination of all such activities on February 13 last,"
it said.
The police and other law enforcing
agencies have been told not to raid or use force against any jihadi outfits
following a series of closed door meeting with the leaders of the groups,
the report said.
The decision to permit the jihadi
groups was taken after an "influential group" within the government prevailed
on military ruler General Pervez Musharraf that a "rash official action"
might provoke an armed reaction from jihadi groups and may push Pakistan
to an internal strife of the scale currently being witnessed in Algiers,
Egypt and Tunis, the newspaper said.
The report follows an official announcement
on Thursday that a new law has been framed to ban any religious organisation
found involved in sectarian violence.
But an official clarification that
followed made it amply clear that the proposed ban would be confined only
to extremist organisations involved in sectarian violence between the majority
Sunni and minority Shia sects in Pakistan.
"Though sections of the regime made
fine distinction, between the sectarian Sunni and Shia outfits that indulged
in violence in Pakistan, it is the jihad organisations fighting in Kashmir
that have registered phenomenal growth in small and big towns in Pakistan,"
the News said.
The police records in Karachi show
that in the last one year alone, Jaish-e-Mohammad, formed by Maulana Masood
Azhar, Pakistani militant released from an Indian jail following hijacking
of the Indian Airlines plane, has opened 135 contact points since last
year to collect funds and recruit militants to fight Indian forces in Kashmir.
Following this unpublicised agreement
between the government and the militant outfits, the jihadi groups have
been permitted to collect funds during the recently concluded Id festival,
the report said.
Under the new agreement, the jihadi
organisations would not be collecting funds by making direct appeals, unlike
in the past. (PTI)
