A Tragedy that will continue to claim lives…

The fears I had for a while now are “official”.

I am talking of the recent earthquake in PoK (Oct ’05) and parts of Kashmir and the subsequent millions in aid that have been promised to the region.

While the need for aid and assistance is undeniable, the concern that I had for some time now was that in the absence of proper distribution channels and adequate oversight, much of it would find its way into ‘jihadist’ coffers, thus further strengthening the ISI-sponsored terrorist activity in Kashmir.

The first confirmation of my fears came early.
Here is what Indrani Bagchi and Rajat Pandit wrote in The Times of India on Oct 10, ’05, two days after the quake: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1259120,curpg-1,fright-0,right-0.cms

Indian officials are now also concerned about the diversion of the flood of international aid to Pakistan in the aftermath of the earthquake. After 9/11, a series of international finance laws by the UN and US had effectively shut off the funding tap from Islamic charities, which were being used to fund jehad by outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. The earthquake opens Pakistan to funds from all manner of organisations in the world, and Indian officials fear that some of these may be diverted to oil the jehadi wheels again

The very real prospect of relief aid being diverted to fund Jihadi terrorism did not go un-noticed by the international media either. In a report on Nov 28 in Der Spiegel (the largest selling German newspaper) titled, �Can the Survivors Survive?�, this is what Susanne Koelbl wrote: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,387995,00.html

The rescue campaign in the mountainous region has in effect become a battle for the hearts and minds of the survivors, a competition amongst the Pakistani army, the Americans and various Islamic religious groups. Javel ul-Hassan, a teacher of Islamic studies in Muzaffarabad, says his Muslim brothers from the “Society of Preachers” Jamaat-ud-Dawa, arrived on the scene with shovels and pickaxes to rescue the injured from the rubble and care for the survivors only two hours after the earthquake struck.

The “Preachers” are an offshoot of the banned militant group Lashkar-i-Toiba, which trained its supporters to launch attacks on the Indian army. Now Jamaat-ud-Dawa operates well-organized field hospitals in the disaster region and uses donkey caravans in an attempt to reach even the most remote villages. Wearing the long beard of the strictly devout, Hassan says that Jamaat-ud-Dawa has more than 15,000 active supports in Kashmir, most of them volunteers from the group’s own schools and madrassas

Lest anyone forgets, the Taliban also started almost as �harmlessly� more than a decade ago from the madrassas in North West Frontier Provinces in Pakistan, along the border with Afghanistan (see e.g. http://www.himalmag.com/2004/february/essay.htm) that were meant to �educate� the poor orphans from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The Lashkar�s similarities with Taliban were also picked up in this report in the New York Times datelined October 18th, titled, �In a Remote Camp, Help From an Unconventional Source�: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/international/asia/18kashmir.html

�Much like the Afghan mujahedeen parties of the 1980’s, Lashkar-e-Taiba was a political organization that ran relief programs, medical services and schools, in particular in camps for Kashmiri refugees. The group has turned out tens of thousands of radical Islamic students over the years, as well as training and supplying an estimated 200,000 fighters for the fight against security forces in Indian-run Kashmir�
�Jamaat ud-Dawa is known to run training camps and mujahedeen activities on both sides of the Line of Control, which separates the two regions of Kashmir. Two of those camps were badly damaged in the earthquake, and hundreds of Lashkar-e-Taiba militants died, according to mujahedeen interviewed around Muzaffarabad�

A day earlier, in a report by Tim McGirk from Islamabad, �Picking Up The Pieces�, TIME Magazine mentioned that: http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501051024/story.html,

��worryingly, Islamic radical groups were the first to bring aid to Pakistani villages, which may boost their popularity �
�.Organized and hardworking, the jihadis seized on the catastrophe to blame Musharraf’s alliance with the U.S. in the war on terror for incurring Allah’s wrath. The quake may have helped the radicals’ cause. In Chehla Bandi village, members of an outlawed organization known as Lashkar-e-Taiba, sympathetic to al-Qaeda, were the first rescue workers to arrive. They cooked food, helped to bury the dead and shoveled through the debris to find the living. “They saved us when nobody came from the government,” says one survivor, Ali Geelani, 28, “and if they ask me, I will go for jihad with them…”

Regardless of who was reporting, the role of Jamaat-ud-Dawa was prominently mentioned in almost all the stories about relief efforts in the region. The Jamaat is of course nothing else but a front organisation of the (banned) Lashkar.

While the creation of Jamaat-ud Dawa gave Lashkar a �legitimate� cloak for its activities, it was the earthquake (and its relief efforts in the aftermath) that pushed Jamaat to the frontline of relief efforts in the region. In the process of course, it also gained enormous goodwill and credibility from the occupants of the Valley � thus creating a ready-made support base for continuing the �Jihad� against India – something that otherwise would have taken years and significant resources to build.

With its pretensions towards being a charity, the Jamaat evades sanctions and any ban on its activities while also acting as a conduit for channelling money to the cause of �Jihad� in Kashmir. Worse, by highlighting its relief efforts and its reach, the organisation can credibly claim to be the most effective channel for distributing aid amongst the victims and thus garner an even larger share of the aid amounts.

In a report dated October 16th �05, this is what the Washington Post had to say about Jamaat and Lashkar http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/15/AR2005101501392_pf.html

�MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 15 — The army was slow to respond, and international aid agencies are in some ways just getting started. But here amid the rubble and the rain at the heart of Pakistan’s earthquake zone, the zealous foot soldiers of Jamaat ul-Dawa, one of the country’s most prominent Islamic extremist groups, are very much in evidence�Jamaat ul-Dawa is no ordinary charity. Founded in 1989 under a different name, it is the parent organization of Lashkar-i-Taiba, one of the largest and best-trained groups fighting Indian forces in the disputed Himalayan province of Kashmir. Lashkar-i-Taiba has been linked by U.S. authorities to al Qaeda and in 2002 was banned by Pakistan’s government as a terrorist organization…
Jamaat ul-Dawa is one of several hard-line Islamic groups that have assumed a prominent role in relief operations following the devastating Oct. 8 earthquake in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and adjacent areas…
�Other groups with a visible presence on Saturday in Muzaffarabad, the largest town in the area, were the charitable wing of Jamiat-i-Islami, an Islamic political party with ideological links to the Palestinian militant group Hamas; and the Al-Rasheed Trust, a Karachi-based charity whose U.S. assets were frozen by the Bush administration in 2003 on grounds that it channeled funds to al Qaeda. The group has denied the charge and says it is focused purely on social welfare��

The Washington Post article also noted that:

Lashkar-i-Taiba operated for years with the blessing of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, which provided the group with arms and training and helped launch its fighters across the cease-fire line separating Pakistani and Indian forces in Kashmir. It was founded by Hafiz Sayeed, a former Punjab University engineering professor who also started Jamaat ul-Dawa. The two groups shared the same headquarters in the town of Muridke near Lahore�
During the height of the insurgency in the 1990s, Lashkar-i-Taiba fighters assembled openly in Muzaffarabad and nearby training camps. In early 2002, under intense pressure from the United States, Musharraf banned the group and froze its assets. Sayeed was subsequently arrested, although a Pakistani court later ordered his release��
Sadly however, none of the reports did any in-depth follow up on the links between the Jamaat and Lashkar and the certainty of some (if not most) of the money flowing into Jihadi coffers.

I had given up on anyone seriously taking up this issue when, last week, this news-item caught my eye.

In a story datelined December 18, 20 and titled, �Don’t use terrorists for quake relief: US to Pak�, PTI reported that: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=60132# compstory

�The United States has expressed grave concern over the involvement of militant outfits in quake-relief operations in Pak-occupied Kashmir (PoK)� Expressing concern over the involvement of ‘banned groups’ in the relief operations, US envoy to Islamabad Ryan C Crocker has said it should be a matter of concern for the Pakistan government that groups involved in violence were associated with relief activities.�

So this is now as �official� as can be � unfortunately, this does not appear to have changed anything.

Even as the US Ambassador was saying that he did not see any role for these groups in the relief activities, the DG of ISI made the bland comment that, �their (Islamic organisations) activities are being monitored but there is no bar on their activities as long as they serve a humanitarian purpose”. Unbelievable!

The amounts involved in all this effort are staggering. Some reports suggest that the total tally may cross $ 5 billion. The pledges in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake itself were in several hundreds of $ millions (including pledges of ~ $350 million from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states)

In a story datelined 19th November �05, BBC reported Pakistan�s PM as saying that, �The rough total we have as of now is $5.4bn�. The story went on to mention that �The figure exceeds the $5.2bn Pakistan had been asking for� and that �The Muslim states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Turkey were the largest donors� http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4451514.stm

Even if one (cynically) assumes that the actual aid on the ground will only be 20% of the total, we are talking sums in excess of $1 billion � the bulk of which will be funnelled through Jehadi channels who will no doubt take their cut. Even if you were to further assume that the amount appropriated by these channels (or their �cut�) would �only� be 10% of the aid on the ground, we are talking of funds to the tune of $100m.

To put this in perspective, ��the CIA has estimated, for example, that it cost Al Qaeda� some $30 million a year to sustain itself during the period preceding 9/11� http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/Jan/comrasJan05.asp (this fascinating report also describes the role of Islamic charities in supporting Al-Qaeda)

If nothing else, these amounts would ensure that the Lashkar will continue to operate on its own for at least several years (possibly a decade). There is also the possibility that the Lashkar will �inflate� its looses to attract more funding from the Islamic charities and the Gulf states. I need not even mention that most of these �Islamic Charities� operate well beyond the pale of any international oversight or accountability.

Worse, the �new� terrorist camps that will no doubt come up to replace the ones in Muzzafarabad and Balakot will in all likelihood be earthquake-proof and therefore more likely to withstand any air-strikes.

I find it hard to explain the almost complete lack of sensitivity (and apathy) amongst the general public towards the fact that many terrorist groups are based in this region and that earthquake aid could very easily end up as arms for these groups. One recalls the storm kicked up by the �secular� media about the earthquake aid disbursed in Gujarat and its effect on “extremist Hindu groups” in 2001.

Such a discussion is conspicuously missing even as millions of dollars are going to an area infested with Islamic terrorists.

Is it not time to make the wider world aware of this?