Indian Journalist In Pak LeT ‘Terror Camp’
An Indian woman journalist has provided a detailed on-the-spot report from the headquarters of Pakistan’s controversial Lashkar-e-Taiyyebba, or Taiba, (LeT), allegedly the epi-center of “new wave of terrorism”.
Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist who was captured alive in Mumbai, is supposed to have studied here. (See my earlier post “Terror Update: Pakistan, USA and Mafia Don” here…)
Writes Harinder Baweja: “Nestled between tall trees and a meshed wire boundary, the 75-acre complex has manicured lawns, turnip farms and a fish-breeding centre. The students who enroll in the school pay a fee while those who study in the madarsa and pass out as masters in Islamic studies can come for free.
“Learning English and Arabic from class one on is elementary and so is a course in computers. The administrators of the complex, drawn from the LeT’s political wing, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, are clearly at pains to disassociate themselves from the group widely believed to be behind the terror attack in Mumbai on 27/11.
“None of us went there thinking we would see firing ranges or target shooting in progress, but the tour itself is surreal. As you walk through the neatly trimmed lawns and veer left or right to see the hostel or the mosque or the hospital, the conversation itself is dotted entirely with words like terrorism, Lashkar and in my case, Kashmir.
“Even though the gates have been opened – after clearance from Pakistan’s security agencies (read ISI) – to dispel the impression of Muridke being the training camp that “India has made it out to be,” the conversation is not about the school syllabus but wholly about how India is an enemy…
“A day after I visited Muridke, I met a family whose sister-in-law lives right next to the complex. ‘But of course it’s a training ground. You can hear slogans for jehad blaring out of loud speakers in full volume and you can also sometimes hear the sound of gunfire,” members of this family confided.
“Jamaat ud Dawah, banned by the US in 2005 for being a Lashkar alias, draws patronage from the ISI and though proscribed abroad, has a free run in Pakistan. It has branches all across the country and is as famous for its social work as for its terror activities. It sees itself as a movement and not an organisation and has appeal to many in rural and urban areas.
“When a correspondent from London’s The Observer newspaper went to Kasab’s village in Faridkot, close to the border with India, to establish if he indeed was a Pakistani, he was told that ‘religious clerics were brainwashing youth in the area and that LeT’s founder Hafiz Sayeed had visited nearby Depalpur.
” ‘There was a LeT office in Depalpur but that had hurriedly been closed down in the past few days. The LeT paper is distributed in Depalpur and Faridkot’.
“The Jamaat ud Dawah has a wide base and operates 140 schools and 29 seminaries in different towns and cities of Pakistan.
“Even after the Lashkar and Jaish were banned, neither was their back accounts frozen, nor was they’re any attempt at forcing them to shut shop. The Army and the ISI continued to support fronts like the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, which does more than just equip men with arms.
“Kasab’s journey from a remote village in Faridkot to Mumbai is a testimony to this. So is his revelation to his interrogators that a ‘Major’ trained him.
“The switch from one alias to another – Lashkar-e-Toiba, Markaz-e-Toiba, Markaz-e-Dawah-Irshad, Jamaat ud Dawah – speaks of the Establishment’s (the Army and ISI combine are referred to as the Establishment in Pakistan) more than subtle support of groups that are used against India.”
