The Politics and the Aftermath of the Bounty on Prof. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed

Never a dull moment for Pakistan watchers. This week has already seen two significant developments, first the announcement of the visit of President Asif Ali Zardari to India quickly followed by an unexpected US bounty, a huge one at that of USD 10 Million, on Professor Hafiz Muhammad Saeed saheb, the Chief of Jama't-ud-Dawah (JuD) and the Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT). I will interchangeably refer to LeT and JuD in this post because they are one and the same even though Pakistan attempts to find non-existent differences between these two. The UNSC (which includes Pakistan's all-weather friend China) does not share the Pakistani obfuscation and therefore we too will not distinguish between these two terrorist tanzeems. Another bounty of USD 3 Million has been announced for the capture of Professor saheb's right-hand man, top jihadi ideologue of LeT, and Professor saheb's brother-in-law Abdul Rehman Makki. One wonders why Lashkar's Head for Transnational Terror Operations, Sajid Mir was not similarly slapped with a bounty. It was Mir who was calmly directing the terrorists, motivating them and diabolically plotting the cold-blooded carnage in Mumbai on 26/11. Then, there are the officers of the Pakistani Army (PA) and the Navy (PN) who were accomplices in terror who need to be sorted out as well.

On the face of it, these bounties appear to show the US committment to fighting terror. The US has been accused by India of not being impartial in its determination to fight terror as it benignly neglected the overpowering and compelling evidence of terrorism practised by the PA and its various proxies, most notably the LeT. Of course, the US is under no obligation to help India as it pursues its own interests. But, many US decisions in the past have hurt India and helped the non-state actors of Pakistan. To that extent, the US owes a debt to India in cleansing the region of its jihadi creation. Well, Brzezinski famously said, "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?". Some stirred up Moslems, they have turned out to be.

Coming to the present, the US must have made a careful study before announcing these twin bounties. It proposes to achieve several benefits for itself by this announcement. For those Indians doubtful of the US committment, of which there are plenty, the US hopes to send a message that their doubts were misplaced. For a Pakistan which is still grappling with how to re-define its relationship with the US in the context of the massive hatred for the US among the Pakistani masses while continuing to get generous funds and arms from it, the US is sending a stern message too. The message is stark for Pakistan that the US can cause troubles if it so wishes. The UNSC Resolution 1822 has already implicated Professor saheb and the JuD and has put that organization on par with LeT (which has already come under the UNSC resolution). On Dec. 10, 2008, the venerable Professor saheb was notified as a terrorist by the AL-QAIDA AND TALIBAN SANCTIONS COMMITTEE of the UNSC. The UNSC Resolution 1822 (2008) details what steps a Government has to follow in such a case, none of which Pakistan has cared to do. And, the UNSC has kept quiet too. With the anti-America hatred at an all-time high in Pakistan, any submission to US pressure and that too involving a mard-e-momin like Professor saheb would lead to civil war and bloodbath in Pakistan. This bounty is dead even before being born.

The Indian Foreign Minister, S.M.Krishna has welcomed the bounty and felt that the latest US action vindicated the Indian stand that JuD was a terrorist organization and that Professor saheb was the master planner of the 26/11 crime. How comical is this welcome considering that it was not India which announced this bounty but another nation which comparatively lost much less in the carnage on 26/11 ! The Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram hoped that it would “prod the Pakistan government to take action.” He, however, quickly expressed pessimism about the prospect, saying “Pakistan was in denial and continues to be in denial.” He should know. Let us jog our memory and go three years back to June 2009. That month was significant for Pakistan because it successfully turned around India, for the umpteenth time in sixty two years of its unremitting confrontation. On June 16, 2009, Man Mohan Singh met Zardari on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting at Yekaterinburg in Russia. That was barely seven months after the horrendous 26/11 urban warfare unleashed on India by the Pakistani Army (PA) and its proxy, the LeT. Gen. Kayani, Lt. Gen. Shuja Ahmed Pasha, and a number of PA and ISI officers had planned the details of the 26/11 urban guerilla warfare minutely. But, the Indian PM Man Mohan Singh had decided to overlook the terrible act within seven months and had embarked on the reconciliation strategy. Yet, he played a little drama at Yekaterinburg for Indian mass consumption, by telling Zardari within earshot of the assembled TV crew, "Excellency, I am pleased to meet you. But I have a limited mandate to tell you that the Pakistani territory can't be used for acts of terror against India". Why should we consider this blunt (I, for one do not even consider this as blunt considering the magnitude of 26/11 and the scores of terror acts before, especially the promise made by Gen. Musharraf on Jan 12, 2002 after the December 2001 Indian Parliament attack) talking as hot gas is because it was this meeting that set the agenda for what followed immediately thereafter and continues to this day. After that blunt message in front of journalists, Man Mohan Singh and Zardari had a one-on-one meeting for 45 minutes that sealed India's fate yet again. Asif Ali Zardari, like all Pakistani Presidents, Generals and Prime Ministers before him, promised (a more appropriate description would be, 'lied') to take action against the terrorists and bring the 26/11 culprits to book. Man Mohan Singh believed his words and ordered restoration of 'peace dialogue'. The US was quick to welcome the meeting between Zardari and Man Mohan Singh, as were sections of Indian intelligentsia. That meeting set the stage for the even more shameful Sharm-el-Sheikh meeting in July, 2009 where Man Mohan Singh directed his Foreign Secretary to voluntarily implicate India in the internal affairs of Pakistan and get equated to a terrorism-sponsoring Pakistan in the process. Indian foreign policy was once again being shaped directly and solely by a Prime Minister who was not quite adept in the art. The choice of a docile and laid-back S.M. Krishna as the Foreign Minister in his cabinet appears in hindsight to be a deliberate decision by Man Mohan Singh to carry out his imbecilic Pakistan agenda. Mr. Man Mohan Singh’s approach to Pakistan can only be equated with a similar disastrous approach by another Indian Prime Minister, I.K. Gujral. Just as we have not yet recovered from the Gujral effect, We will take decades to recover from the Man Mohan Doctrine as well.

So, what will Pakistan do now ? Predictable. There are different parties there who will react differently, but all of them would work towards the common goal of protecting the venerable Professor saheb because jihad against the Indians and the Great Satan, the USA, needs people like him. This post in this blog explains as to why Lashkar-e-Tayba is so important for the PA in particular and the Pakistani State in general. . The Government of Pakistan (GoP) would say that neither India nor the USA has given any solid proof that could stand in a court of law to convict professor saheb. The Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani has already said so. The Foreign Office spokesperson has gone one step ahead and said that this bounty vindicates the Pakistani position that so far India has not given worthwhile evidence. I expect the Interior Minister Rehman Malik to also brazenly say on the Indian soil tomorrow, that the judiciary of Pakistan which was well known throughout the world for its fierce independence (he would even cite the examples of its on-going actions against the President, the Prime Minister and even the PA) has already released Professor saheb after a lengthy and due process of trial in the Lahore High Court and then in the Supreme Court and that there is not much that GoP can do now against him unless India shares fresh evidence. He would also say that the evidence given so far by India had been mere conjectures and not solid proof, that have been thrown out by the Lahore High Court as well as the Supreme Court and if India could furnish more evidence, he would be only too willing to prosecute Professor saheb. He would demand that the judiciary of Pakistan must be respected. He would conclude by saying that to the best of his government's knowledge, JuD was merely a charity organization involved in Daw'ah, social work like running educational institutions and hospitals for the poor and was not involved in acts of terrorism.

Nothing more should be expected from GoP, if one looks back at how it has been handling the issue of LeT, JuD and more so Professor saheb. In the second week of December, 2008, Pakistan fooled the world by enacting a farcical drama of cracking down on JuD after the UNSC resolution had included JuD and Professor saheb in its sanctions list. The Muridke headquarters was not even touched and the ostensible explanation given by both the Punjab and the federal GoP was that were JuD’s charity work to be affected, it would adversely impact millions of poor Pakistanis across the country and that these were unrelated to terrorism anyhow. In fact, the Punjab government, which under Nawaz Sharif’s brother, Shahbaaz Sharif, has always showed open alliance with various terrorist organizations, went ahead and allocated USD 1 million to JuD out of its budget for c. 2009. Later, JuD spokesman himself reacted with astonishment over this allocation. On January 6, 2009, the JuD spokesman threatened the government as follows: “Hafiz Saeed has followers all over Pakistan and it is not possible for the government of Pakistan to even think about handing him over to India,”

Professor saheb, for his part, has already said that US had no means of knowing anything about him and its action is based on unreliable second-hand information from enemy India which has a vested interest in prosecuting him. He would also blast the unholy alliance between Hindu India and Christian USA, both kafir, that now stood exposed. He would challenge and tease the Americans to catch him if they could a la Muhammad Ali. He would not hide in a deep underground bunker or become incommunicado. He is not like a Ramzi Yousef, the nephew of Khaled Sheikh Muhammed (KSM), who was a fugitive after having been involved in the 1993 WTC bombing , the Bojinka Plot to bomb mid-air American planes over the Atlantic etc. and for whom a USD 2 Million was announced under the US Rewards for Justice (RFJ) programme. The bounty led to his tip-off. Same was the case with another Pakistani, Mir Aimal Kansi, who killed CIA employees at Langley, Virginia and escaped to Dera Ghazi Khan in FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Agencies) in AfPak region. A USD 2 Million dollar bounty did him in eventually a few years later. On the contrary, Professor saheb would use every opportunity now to interact more with the public and the journalists, spewing out more venom against the Hanud-Yahud-Nasara (Hindus-Jews-Christians) conspiracy against the Muslims. He knows pretty well that his own LeT which is a large and armed-to-the-teeth terrorist organization, as well as the other dozens of Sunni terrorist organizations in Pakistan and even those who may not see eye-to-eye with him like some factions of the Punjabi Taliban, his patron the PA, dozens of Islamist organizations, political leaders from all parties who are hand-in-glove with him, the judiciary, and more importantly the masses of Pakistan would stand solidly behind him. Nobody, would therefore be able to catch him and hand him over to the Americans, a ridiculous proposition to start with anyway.

The Pakistani political parties which are debating the recommendations of the Pakistan Committee for National Security (PCNS) would find it even more difficult to take a pragmatic and practical view anymore and perforce have to harden their stand, lest they be accused of being American agents. There was some evidence of cracks among the political leaders on the tough stand against the US and that would evaporate now. The Zardari government would try to shake off the American pressure to open the NATO supply routes, to be more cooperative in the talks with the Taliban, to allow the drone operations etc. by citing the unanimous decision of the Parliament. Anything else could see the immediate demise of the PPP government, a blow from which they might just not be able to recover because the unthinkable act of handing over a true momin Professor saheb to kafir America would be simply blasphemous and the munafiqin (hypocrites untruthful to Islam) Zardari, Gilani, Rehman Malik& Co will be branded murtad (apostate) and deservingly stoned to death.

The US knows that this bounty announcement would not pressurize Pakistan into taking any action against terrorism, much less against a national jihad hero like Professor sahib. India knows that too. So, why did the US announce this bounty and why has India welcomed it ? The reasons are starkly different for the two.

There are three reasons why the US has done what it has done now. One, it fears that the incorrigible extremist elements in Pakistan could derail the Afghan peace dialogue and therefore a successful conclusion to US/NATO presence by c. 2014. Secondly, it needs India's support in various issues and therefore has a need to appear, in Indian eyes, of being tough with Pakistan. Thirdly, the USA may have a genuine fear of Pakistan sliding into another roguish North Korea.

There are several conflicting situations that one has to face when one begins to wield more and more power in career or in life. This is the same for nations as well. The sole super power runs into similar predicaments regularly every other day in different corners of the world, especially as it practises realpolitik furiously. The situation was vastly different when the comity of nations was generally divided into black and white between the West and the Soviets with a tiny shade of gray in the form of inconsequential non-aligned countries. The situation has been fraught with more danger for the US since the demise of the Soviet Union. The US finds itself in the same tight-corner, fine-balance situation with respect to AfPak and the Indian subcontinent. The US needs Indian support in various issues such as those involving Iran, China, South East Asia, Asia-Pacific, global economy, etc. It has to constantly bait India but it also knows that India can be baited easily because it is normally quickly satisfied with symbolic gestures from the US by attributing deep friendly motives of a strategic nature for the far away future. The need for Pakistan in the short and medium terms is enormous for the US. The US is very reluctant to use its leverage against Pakistan. The widening trust deficit since c. 1962 between these two countries is almost at rock bottom today. The US has nothing to lose in Pakistan. Its image among the frothing-at-the-mouth-corner Pakistani Abduls (which is practically the entire country) is simply not going to improve even if it gifts each Pakistani a million dollars. The only way it can redeem itself is if it sides diplomatically and militarily with a Pakistan that attacks India and humiliates it. Anything short of this, would simply not work. This is something that the US will not be able to do for various reasons.

At the same time, the USA also needs a lot of Pakistani assistance in concluding its campaign in Afghanistan and effecting an orderly and less bloody withdrawal with its pride somewhat in tact. The US may also not want a nuclear Pakistan to become another North Korea and destabilize the region and world order even more than what it already is. Pakistan is increasingly coming under the Dragon's influence just like North Korea. {See 'A Perspective of the American and the Chinese Presence in Pakistan'}These compelling reasons to balance India against Pakistan and vice-versa drives the US to take different decisions at different times. The de-hyphenation between India and Pakistan in US calculations that President George Bush Jr spoke about does not go so deep after all. The bounty on Professor saheb has seemingly earned the gratitude of a senile and impotent Indian leadership that is satisfied with mere symbolism without substance while the US might have assured the Pakistanis, behind the Indian backs, that the threat against Professor saheb would never materialize and remain only on paper. While Ms. Wendy Sherman came to India and announced the US decision on Professor saheb, Washington simultaneously dispatched Tome Nides, Deputy Secretary of State to Islamabad as a balancing act. Pakistan's Interior Minister, Rehman Malik claimed that the US has not conveyed to it any information about the bounty. That might have been said to preserve the honour & dignity (H&D), but one heard no counter from the US administration. Pakistan escapes every time by pretending not to have received any tough message from its friends or adversaries and the friends and adversaries do not shame Pakistan by countering such false claims by GoP hoping that by not publicly shaming Pakistan, it would mend its ways. Nothing of that sort has ever happened. It is time that such falsehood by GoP is not allowed to go unchallenged. Even if it may not change Pakistan's behaviour, this tactic will at least be different from the policy of appeasement that has been tried for decades now and found to be an utter failure.

The reason why India has welcomed the US move is very different. India has no other option. We have eschewed any option other than showing our other cheek to persistent and increasingly hard slaps from Pakistan. Our Government is labouring under false assumptions. It thinks that improving Indian economy is the prime target (which is a sensible thing that any normal nation-state tries to achieve) and buying peace with Pakistan is important for that. The false beliefs here are that the ever widening gap will eventually make Pakistan see the futility of it all and drop its 'enduring hostility' with us or that the economic strength will translate into a military, political and diplomatic clout at some time in the future that we can then use to put a stop permanently to Pakistani transgressions if Pakistan was still about and around two decades hence. Both are inherently flawed, but now is not the time to discuss that. Therefore, India has abdicated the responsibility of being a 'bad cop' to the USA and wants to be recognized by Pakistan as a 'good cop'. India and the US might have come to some understanding on this or simply India is riding piggyback on the US predicament with Pakistan here. At the same time, the Indian leadership has to be seen as pursuing the Mumbai 26/11 case (and other such issues) vigorously and hence this welcome to the US offer of bounty.

So, overall, the US and India are pursuing different routes with only a partial overlap of the goals vis-à-vis Pakistan. In the 1980s, the US Administration made noises but discreetly allowed Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons and their delivery platforms clandestinely. Since c. 2002, it has generously supplied the Pakistanis with offensive weapons and platforms that would be useless in counter-terrorism operations and would be useful only against India. It allowed an evil David Coleman Headley escape Indian investigators and legal process. Who knows, even the RFJ bounty against Professor sahib may be to stake a US first claim on him in case he is somehow caught in the unlikeliest case, thus preventing him from falling into the hands of Indian investigators and legal system. I realize that it is a very cynical view but one never knows what the USA is up to and we need to be cautious. That is their reputation.

For an Indian administration that is clueless, docile and even senile, there is no worthwhile option left than to welcome such useless US announcements.

Prof. Hafeez Saeed, LeT, and the Support from the State of Pakistan

26/11 was a defining moment, even for an India that has borne stoically and patiently for long, wave after wave of terror attacks from Pakistan. There have been other such 'defining moments' as well like the Dec. 13, 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. But, this was the first time an urban warfare was unleashed on the financial nerve centre of India. The megapolis of Mumbai, ever subject to serious terrorist attacks from Pakistan for close to two decades now, was to experience one of the worst massacres by terrorists from that country. As many foreign nationals were butchered on religious grounds, the world took notice of LeT (Lashkar-e-Tayba) and its leader Prof. Hafeez (or Hafiz) Saeed. Pakistan was quick to call them innovatively as ‘non-state actors’. The word ‘non-state actors’ was meant to convey two messages; one, the State was not connected with these terrorists and two, Pakistan was not responsible for their actions. Neither was true as we shall see. However, the UN was forced, based on incontrovertible proof, to declare Prof. Hafeez Saeed as a terrorist linked with Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

For the first time, Pakistan was compelled to act under the glare of the world, against terrorism directed towards India. Since that time, Pakistan has taken refuge under the term 'non-state actors' to deny its own complicity in terror. If we look at the saga of Prof. Hafeez Saeed, we can dismantle the fraudulent theory of ‘non-state actors’ quite easily. In the case of LeT and Prof. Hafeez Saeed, it is a mind-boggling web of fraud that Pakistan, as a nation state, has played not only against India but also the entire world.

Immediately after the UN ban, Prof. Hafeez Saeed was house-arrested, for a period of one month, along with Col (r) Nazir Ahmed on 11th Dec. 2008. The December, 2008 UN ban also included JuD (Jama’at-ud Dawah) and recognized it simply as nothing but another name by which LeT was known. The LeT had already been placed under the UNSC list in circa 2005. On January, 10, 2009, the government announced that the house arrest of Prof. Hafeez Saeed was extended by another sixty days. Later, the Review Board of the LHC (Lahore High Court) extended the house arrest on March 9, 2009 by another two months. Prof. Hafeez Saeed appealed against this and a full Bench of the LHC was constituted to hear the case. In the meanwhile, a review board of the Lahore High Court on May 5, 2009 extended for a further period of 60 days the detention of Prof. Hafeez Saeed and even ordered his family to be paid a subsistence allowance of Rs. 25000 !

The Government contended, before the full Bench of the LHC, that Prof. Hafeez Saeed was 'kept in confinement in pursuance of the United Nations resolution 1822 of 2008', a contention that was rejected by the LHC (Lahore High Court) later on because there was no such requirement in the UNSC notification. Instead of independently investigating the UN charges and indicting Prof. Hafeez Saeed, the Pakistani government blamed the UN for his arrest. The Punjab government had presented ‘in-camera’ to the judges the 'classified information', but apparently the court was not convinced. Prof. Hafeez Saeed was released by the LHC on 2nd June 2009 on a habeas corpus petition. The court held that there was no material to detain him under 'preventive measure' and the UN resolution did not specifically require an arrest. One of the judges pointedly asked the state prosecutor as to why Pakistan should be so concerned by a UN Resolution when India had not cared to implement several UN Resolutions on Kashmir, a totally irrelevant reference which betrays the Pakistani mindset. Anyway, this was one more instance when the Pakistani State was unable to detain, leave alone prosecute and punish, Prof. Hafeez Saeed. Even before the official judgement could be released and the police-picket outside his house could be withdrawn, he met the press and hailed the judgement as the ‘first success’.

Prof. Hafeez Saeed was not new to this drama of arrest and release for lack of evidence. On August 10, 2006, he was house-arrested for raising funds for 'war victims' (an euphemism for 'jihad') in Palestine and Lebanon as well as for putting Pakistan's relations with its 'neighbours' in danger. In fact, it was due to Indian pressure on Pakistan after the seven simultaneous bomb blasts on the Mumbai commuter trains on July 11, 2006 which killed 207 people and injured over 700 others. The judge of the Lahore High Court struck down these charges and pointedly said that Pakistani judiciary cannot be influenced by 'neighbouring countries'. He was re-arrested within a few hours of his release on August 28, 2006 under 'Maintenance of Public Order' but he was again released on October,18 2006. This time the judge asked the Government with which of the neighboring countries, India or China or Iran or Afghanistan, was the relationship jeopardized. The intention of the judge was obvious because, among the names of the countries mentioned, only India was the ‘mortal enemy’ and how could standing up to such an enemy ‘jeopardize relations’ ? The court released him on the technical ground that when he was detained, the Punjab Police “failed to show Mr. Saeed his detention order or inform him of the grounds.” It is inconceivable that the Punjab police, one of the top most police units in Pakistan which handles dozens of terrorism-related cases at any point of time, failed in such a basic matter of law especially when arresting a top terrorist like Prof. Hafeez Saeed. Either it was a deliberate oversight to allow Prof. Hafeez Saeed an escape route or the police was hand-in-glove with the LeT.

As expected, India reacted very negatively to the June 2, 2009 release of Prof. Hafeez Saeed. India accused the Western nations of being soft on Pakistan for India-related terrorism as the Pakistani Army was beginning to take some action against the Pakistani Taliban in FATA. Predictably, Pakistan reacted by saying that it was “best not to comment on a court decision”. In an editorial on this issue, the Daily Times questioned the sincerity with which the Pakistani State pursued the Hafeez Saeed case by saying "It is moot whether the state even intended to go through with the process without endangering the government . ." The editorial in DAWN was more explicit as it said, "It may have been a full bench of the Lahore High Court that ordered Saeed’s release, but the fact is the court was left with little option given the prosecution’s reliance on weak grounds. . . " implying that a weak case was deliberately presented by the State.

Pakistan was under pressure, as was India, to somehow re-start the stalled peace dialogue. The US Home Secretary, Ms. Hillary Clinton, embarking on a trip to India on the eve of the Sharm-el-Sheikh meeting stated that she expected some ‘movement’ from Pakistan on the Mumbai issue. A face saving development was desperately needed by both the countries. So, the federal and the Punjab governments went to the SC (Supreme Court) in appeal against the release of Prof. Hafeez Saeed and Col (r) Nazir Ahmed. The Punjab Government, through its PAG (Punjab Advocate General), contended that it had substantial evidence against them, “but it could not be made part of the case record because it was confidential.” However, the newly restored CJ (Chief Justice) Iftikhar Chaudhry wanted the State to present a more compelling reason than merely the UNSC resolution, thus betraying what was in store. It was no coincidence that simultaneously a judge was also appointed to the Anti Terrorism Court at the Adiala prison, Rawalpindi, after a gap of more than a month, to conduct the trial against the seven arrested suspects and thirteen other ‘proclaimed offenders’. Thus, Pakistan presented an appearance of simultaneous proceedings against Prof. Hafeez Saeed and the other LeT terrorists.

However, a day before the two Prime Ministers were to meet and after the two Foreign Secretaries had already met, and exactly a day after its own PAG assured the SC of confidential information, the Punjab Government withdrew from the proceedings in the court citing ‘lack of evidence’. Later, the Punjab Law Minister, Rana Sanaullah of PML-N, dropped a bombshell when he said that ‘confidential information’ was never shared by the federal government with the Punjab Government and so they could not proceed against Prof. Hafeez Saeed. The SC also noted a technical flaw as Prof. Hafeez Saeed was arrested under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance 1961 which was not mentioned in the detention order. Later, the AGP (Attorney General of Pakistan), representing the federal government, which had not dropped out of the case, contended that since the Punjab AG held all the files and since he had resigned from his position, they were unable to continue the case. The SC then adjourned the case indefinitely. Anyway, the Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh met at Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, as part of the NAM Summit Conference on the next day. And, Pakistan achieved what it wanted, make India talk and concede grounds.

Later, two FIRs (First Information Reports) were filed on September 16, 2009 by the police under 'Anti terrorism Act 1997' for Prof. Hafeez Saeed’s reported incitement to jihad against the infidels US, Israel and India in two speeches he gave on August 27 and 28, 2009 at Faisalabad. Obviously, these hastily filed cases were once again in view of the upcoming UNSC General Assembly meeting where Pakistan wanted the foreign secretaries of both countries to meet. Significantly, this was the first time that ‘Anti terrorism Law’ was invoked against Prof. Hafeez Saeed as earlier arrests were under the simpler ‘Maintenance of Public Order Act’. The cases were registered under Section 11 F (4) of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which clearly states that it applies to organisations that are proscribed under the Act. However, the Lahore High Court quashed them on October 12, 2009 as the court observed "Anti-terror law does not apply to Saeed and in the name of terrorism we cannot brutalize Law". The Punjab Assistant Advocate General admitted that JuD  was not declared as a terrorist organization either by the Federal or by the provincial Punjab Government and that its activities were merely 'restricted' based on the UNSC Resolution of December 2008 as JuD was only on the 'watch list' and not on the 'ban list' of the Government. In his judgement, therefore, the LHC Judge allowed JuD to organize congregations, carry on membership and collect funds without any let or hindrance.

But, the perfidy was that just two months earlier, on August 5, 2009 to be precise, interior minister Rehman Malik had categorically announced in the Pakistani National Assembly that JuD “was ‘banned’ following its designation under Security Council Resolution 1267.” Rehman Malik also announced that similarly Al-Akhtar and Al-Rashid trusts were ‘banned’. Later, it came to light that no ban notification was issued and Pakistan had simply ‘removed JuD’s name from the list of registered charities’ and had informed the UN that all necessary action had been taken. Again, such perfidy is understandable when Rehman Malik himself says that Pakistan could not do much as JuD was only running schools and hospitals. Within days of the UNSC ban, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in Paris that the JuD-run madrasseh and regular schools would not be shut down as “there was no evidence to suggest that the outfit was promoting extremism or violence there.” Reacting to this, the US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said, “ . . . these are too intertwined with organizations that have terrorist ties and that have just been designated here. And so we will be pressing all member-states to adhere completely and to the letter of the designations that the United Nations has taken.” Pakistan simply ignored such criticisms.

The Pakistani State itself has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect LeT. The efforts to place LeT on the UNSC declared list of terrorist groups was vetoed thrice by the Peoples' Republic of China. This could not have come about without a request from Pakistan to intervene on its behalf. When the State admitted before the Learned Judge of the LHC that JuD was not declared by Pakistan as a terrorist organization, it exposed the deep perfidy the state has played against the United Nations. This admission went directly against the promise Pakistan made on December 10, 2008, just a day prior to the UN Resolution on JuD, when it said it “will ban Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) the political arm of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been recruiting fidayeen killers like the captured terrorist Ajmal if the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) declared JuD a terrorist outfit.” Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Pakistan's permanent representative in the UN said further “After the designation of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD) under resolution 1267, the government on receiving communication from the Security Council shall proscribe the JuD and take other consequential actions, as required, including the freezing of assets,”. He gave an undertaking to the same effect to the world body the same day. Prime Minister Gilani assured Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte that Pakistan “would fulfill its international obligations” even as the Interior Minister revealed the wily Pakistani plan. He said that “Jamaat-ud-Dawa would be put under monitoring and its offices sealed if necessary”. That was exactly what happened. Pakistan never banned the organization and never proscribed it as the Additional Attorney general was forced to admit before the LHC.

Earlier too, Hafeez Saeed was handled ‘lightly’ by the State of Pakistan. On Dec. 13, 2001, a few weeks after the 9/11 incidents, the Indian Parliament was attacked in a fidayeen cum suicide attack jointly organized by LeT and JeM (Jaish-e-Mohammed). In response to that, India demanded the arrest of Prof. Hafeez Saeed and threatened to launch a war against Pakistan. Under US pressure and to avoid a war, Pakistan detained him on December 21, 2001 again under a simple house-arrest. Three months later, he was released on March 31, 2002. He was arrested again on May 15, and was placed under house arrest on October 31 of the same year, only to be released a short while later. The arrest was made as India launched Operation Parakram. This time sedition charges were slapped on him but the court once again found no evidence.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who preferred to call himself the CEO of Pakistan, proscribed the LeT on Jan 12, 2002 in a televised speech to the nation, but by a sleight of hand allowed an escape route for Prof. Hafeez Saeed by carefully omitting PoK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) and FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Agencies) from the list of territories where it was banned. In fact, a few days before this ban was to be announced, Prof. Hafeez Saeed had already declared that he was stepping down from the Emirship of the LeT and was moving the JuD to PoK. It later came to light that money had also been withdrawn from all LeT-owned bank accounts that were eventually 'frozen'. How did he know about the impending ban and more importantly how did he know that PoK was to be excluded ?

After the UNSC ban was announced in December 2008 and even as Prof. Hafeez Saeed was kept under house-arrest in his mansion in central Lahore area of Chaudburji, named Jamia Al Qudsia, named after the historic victory of the Ummayad Caliph against the Persians in circa 636, he was allowed to give a press conference. In this press conference, he lambasted the UNSC for taking a hasty decision against himself and his ‘charity’ organization of JuD without giving him a chance to present his side of the case. He likened the UNSC decision to an attack on Islam and Pakistan. The New York Times, in its issue dated Dec. 13, 2008 exposed how the house-arrest was a farce and Prof. Hafeez Saeed was almost free, meeting people and visiting the mosque.

JuD’s international jihadi ambitions have come to light on various occasions. The top Al Qaeda operative, Abu Zubaydah, was arrested from an LeT safehouse in Pakistan. JuD offered 'fateha' (prayers) for the terrorist, Abu Musa'b al Zarqawi, when he was killed in Iraq. UN documents, based on which the December 2008 ban of JuD was announced, provided other details about Prof. Hafeez Saeed directly overseeing the infiltration of LeT terrorists into Iraq and Saudi Arabia. He also arranged for sending an LeT operative to Europe for purposes of fund raising. Earlier the LeT had taken part in Bosnia in the 90s. LeT’s Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi was the head of the Pakistani unit of ‘El Mujahid’, a unit that gained notoriety amongst the Serbs for its brutality. The US counter-terrorism experts have always expressed concern about LeT’s global footprint

On Jan 4, 2009, a few weeks after the UNSC ban of JuD, the Pakistani Information Minister, Ms. Sherry Rehman said it was the responsibility of the Punjab government to enforce the ban and thus washed the federal Government’s hands off it. It comes as no surprise either because the current Pakistani Ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, in his article, ‘Ideologies of South Asian Jihadi Groups’ written in circa 2005, has the following to say, “The most significant jihadi group of Wahhabi persuasion is Lashkar-e-Taiba (The Army of the Pure) founded in 1989 by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. Backed by Saudi money and protected by Pakistani intelligence services, Lashkar-e-Taiba became the military wing of Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad. . . .Pakistani authorities have been reluctant to move against either Lashkar, which continues to operate in Kashmir, or Jamaat-ul-Dawa, which operates freely in Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ul-Dawa scaled down their military operations against India to help Pakistan honor its commitments to the U.S. and India. But Saeed remains free and continues to expand membership of his organization despite divisions in its leadership.”

The proof of the close proximity between the Pakistani Army and Prof. Hafeez Saeed was openly and brazenly flaunted when the Rawalpindi Corps Commander of the X Corps, the Corps that is responsible for Kashmir, invited the UNSC-designated terrorist Prof. Hafeez Saeed for an iftaar dinner on September 12, 2009. When the Interpol issued a RCN (Red Corner Notice) against Prof. Hafeez Saeed in August 2009, the reaction of the Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, was revealing. He said, “even if a red corner notice had been issued against him, the government was not obliged to immediately arrest him. The country makes its own investigations against the person, and only then decides”. Apparently, Pakistan has never been able to make independent investigations and pin Prof. Hafeez Saeed down.

Prof. Hafeez Saeed enjoys close confidence of the politicians as well. When there was a bereavement in his family in August 2009, top notch politicians like ex-President Rafiq Tarar, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (Chief of PML-Q), Mushahid Hussain (PML-Q Secretary)and Sheikh Rashid Ahmed condoled with him. They did this even after Prof. Hafeez Saeed had been declared a terrorist by UN Security Council and he was being implicated by India in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack as the mastermind and the Interpol had issued a Red Corner Notice.

Ambassador Hussain Haqqani’s description of Prof. Hafeez Saeed as being close to the State was not surprising either because he had been appointed to the CII (Council of Islamic Ideology), a Constitutional body of Pakistan that ensures that the laws framed in the country conform to the Islamic Shariat, by none other than the then President of Pakistan, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq himself. This enabled Prof. Hafeez Saeed to get closer to the Pakistani Army as well. He was later appointed as a Professor of Islamic studies in the University of Engineering and Technology (Lahore). Willie Brigitte, the Frenchman who was trained by LeT and sent for terrorism to Australia, has elaborately described the LeT camp where he underwent training. He has stated that LeT was “filled with soldiers from the Pakistani Army. There was complete complicity between LeT and the Pakistani Army. Furthermore, the weapons were provided by the army. There were American M16s, French FAMS, Kalashnikovs and Makarovs. All the identification numbers had been removed. The links between the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Pakistani Army are more than close. When the camp was resupplied, all the materiel was dropped off by Pakistani army helicopters.”.

In his very first trip to the US in February 2002, President Musharraf was asked, in a press meet, by the Pakistani journalist, Tahir Mirza of the DAWN, as to why he was not taking any action against the LeT and the JeM, at which an angry Gen. Musharraf shot back, “They are not doing anything in Pakistan. They are doing jihad outside.” In an interview to Newsweek magazine’s Lally Weymouth about a month after the Mumbai 26/11 attack, President Zardari admitted candidly the following when questioned about the links between the LeT and the ISI, “We are talking about an age-old situation. This is something [that happened] in the old days when dictators used to run the country. Maybe before 9/11, that may have been a position. [But] since then, things have changed to a great extent. The problem is that long before you came to office, Lashkar-e-Taiba was used in Kashmir by the Pakistani Army to fight India. That may have been the situation then, but things have changed.”

The kid-glove with which the Pakistani State has handled Prof. Hafeez Saeed is therefore very obvious from the foregoing. His repeated house-arrests, never to be taken to a jail, the farce with which such house-arrests were carried out, release every time within a few months, no serious intention of the Pakistani Government to pursue the case, the kind of questions raised by the Judges, the technical flaws and loopholes allowed by the State which appear to be clearly deliberate attempts to let him escape, the intervention through China to prevent the ban of LeT/JuD thrice, the decision not to ban JuD even after the UNSC resolution and even as Pakistan promised to do so, the obfuscation indulged in by the federal and provincial governments of Pakistan and its ministers, the proximity of Prof. Hafeez Saeed to the Pakistani Army etc. all point to a deep nexus between the State, the LeT and its front-end JuD as well as the Emir, Prof. Hafeez Saeed.

The latest perfidy comes from Thimpu where the Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani has the gall to tell Mr. Manmohan Singh that there are some ‘judicial difficulties’ in prosecuting Prof. Hafeez Saeed. The Pakistani mendacity, duplicity and perfidy about LeT and Prof. Hafeez Saeed thus continue.