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Pak detains LeT founder : Possible bid to address India’s outrage

	August 14, 2006

Pakistan has placed under house arrest in Lahore Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, head of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa [JuD] and founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT]. It is, however, not known whether his detention is under US pressure or to address New Delhi’s demand after the Mumbai blasts for handing over those wanted by India on terrorism charges. The JuD dismissed the possibility that the arrest was made under Indian pressure. Instead a spokesman of the outfit linked his arrest to the group’s plan to hold a rally at the Minar-e-Pakistan, an independence monument, in Lahore, on Aug 12, two days before Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day. Police withdrew permission to hold the rally and then arrested Hafiz Saeed, a JuD spokesman said.



Saeed has been put under house arrest several times before but was released later. Saeed resigned almost five years ago from the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group suspected of involvement in the Indian rail blasts of July 11 that killed over 180 people, to become the head of a charity called Jamaat-ud-Dawa regarded as its sister organization. The Lashkar-e-Taiba was also one of the groups implicated in the December 2001 attack on Parliament which brought the two countries to the brink of war. The group was banned by Pakistan and its members say it only operates out of Kashmir these days although LeT members have been arrested in the US as well.



The US has designated both JuD and LeT as terrorist organizations. The Jamaat-ud-Dawa was added to the US State Department terrorist list earlier this year. In a report issued last year, the State Department said the Lashkar used the charity to gather funds and maintain ties with religious militant groups around the world, ranging from the Philippines to West Asia and Chechnya. The JuD has been prominent in providing relief after an earthquake killed over 73 thousand people and left around three million destitute in Kashmir and north west Pakistan in October. India and the US criticized Pakistan for permitting the JuD to take part in relief activities.



Saeed’s house arrest for a month’s period announced after sustained pressure from Washington at the behest of New Delhi has failed to win the Indian Government’s kudos. The question being asked in the corridors of power in New Delhi is not when India’s one of the most wanted terrorist would be released. Instead, the question doing the rounds here is how many airconditioners, carpets and chandeliers adorn his house where he has been “detained”.



Pakistan is probably trying to give the impression that they are doing something about these groups held responsible by India for masterminding terrorist attacks. But India remains skeptical of Pakistani action. Hafiz Saeed was arrested several times in the past but released. He was never jailed, instead kept in the luxury of his house. Officials in South Block view the development as “a revolving door arrest” of Saeed. Islamabad is pursuing a “revolving door” strategy in its so-called fight against terror wherein terrorists are arrested and let off as though they were entering and exiting through a revolving door, officials say. Such house arrests have taken place in the past as well and these leaders end up living in luxury. New Delhi’s sense is that Saeed has been put under house arrest to buy time in this moment of heat generated on the issue while the development is paraded as yet another instance of Pakistan’s role in combating terror.

Contrary to claims by Islamabad, training camps of various militant groups continue to run in different parts of Pakistan, with militants attempting to infiltrate into India through the Line of Control. In its cover story “The Waiting Game”, the HERALD magazine of Pakistan has said the Pakistan-backed group Hizbul Mujahideen had one of its training camps in Hisari near Garhi Habibulla in the NWFP where 250 militants were being trained.



The report in the HERALD news magazine includes an interview with Syed Salahuddin saying he was unhappy with Pakistan for the change in its Kashmir policy and asking President Musharraf to “reconsider his current policy”.



Indo-Pak relations at all-time low

Relations between India and Pakistan have suffered further after the expulsion of a senior Indian diplomat, Deepak Kaul, on the ground that he indulged in activities incompatible with his diplomatic status. India has called on Pakistan to act more forcefully to shut down militant organizations in the wake of the Mumbai blasts. Kaul, who crossed the Wagah border to return to India on Aug 7 after being expelled, said such kind of behaviour was totally unwarranted. India had retaliated by expelling a Pakistani diplomat, Mohammed Rafique, a visa official. The Pakistan Foreign Office spokeswoman said the expulsions should not affect the peace process. Four BJP leaders including former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, slammed Pakistan for the treatment meted out to the Indian diplomat saying it was a clear proof that Islamabad has no use for the peace process and is on the way to confrontation with India again. In a statement, Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha said the hand-cuffing and blind-folding of the Indian diplomat was in clear violation of international norms.



Political observers say the brutal treatment of the Indian diplomat does not square well with Pakistan’s insistence that the peace process must not be affected by the Mumbai train bombings. Observers say there is a reason for Pakistan President Musharraf reverting to his Kargil style anti-Indianism after empty promises of commitment to the peace process. The fact is that general elections are coming up next month and Musharraf is under a great deal of internal pressure to discard his uniform and contest as a civilian candidate. Former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have recently sunk their differences for removal of military rulers as well as an interim government to oversee elections. Many national political parties have threatened to boycott the elections if Musharraf remains at the helm. Musharraf had hoped to recoup his position by pushing through a historic peace deal with India, which is why New Delhi was subjected to a blizzard of proposals on Kashmir – each as hastily conceived and badly thought through as the last one. With New Delhi failing to reciprocate Musharraf may now be falling back on an old stratagem of the establishment – playing the anti-India card for the sake of popularity at home. If this is the case, then, political observers say, New Delhi must rethink a central plank of its Pakistan policy since January 2004, that Musharraf is its chief interlocutor in the peace process.



Even though India has not frozen the Indo-Pak peace process, the dialogue at the level of Foreign Secretaries has been kept in abeyance following the serial blasts in Mumbai. The UPA Government would like to see some concrete steps being taken by Pakistan. At the same time, India insists Pakistan needs to dismantle terrorist camps on its soil.



Manmohan Singh’s ‘non-paper’ on Kashmir to Musharraf?

Sources in New Delhi dismiss a report in a Pakistani newspaper that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had sent Gen. Musharraf a “non-paper” in response to the Musharraf proposals on the issue, which seeks to restore the pre-1953 status of Jammu and Kashmir, granting it autonomy in most subjects other than defence, currency, communications and foreign policy. Sources say Manmohan Singh had thrown up the idea of a borderless LoC for the free flow of goods and enlarging people-to-people contacts. He has made it clear that the question of redrawing the border does not arise. The idea was to dovetail such linkages with a consultative mechanism for promoting tourism and environment, etc. Joint control or joint management as suggested by Pakistan has been ruled out.



Although official sources deny sending any non-paper to Islamabad, Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, in an interview recently with Karan Thapar for CNN, had disclosed that the Indian Prime Minister did send such a non-paper for consideration of Pakistan. Though he did not reveal details, he claimed that back channel talks on the non-paper were in progress.



The Pakistan English daily, THE NATION, carried the story about Dr. Manmohan Singh’s “ non-paper on its front page on August 7. Headlined “India offered HK autonomy to Pak” [HK being the abbreviation for “Held Kashmir”, Pakistan’s description of Jammu and Kashmir] the Islamabad datelined report says, “Prior to the Mumbai bomb blasts there was a marked progress in the peace process to the extent that New Delhi offered even autonomy for Kashmir through a non-paper to its nuclear rival but the tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats by both Pakistan and India proved a serious setback to the already stalled dialogue process.”



A “non-paper” in diplomacy means a proposed agreement or negotiating text circulated or submitted informally for discussion without committing the originating country to the contents. In other worlds, if the UPA Government did submit such a non-paper, to use sub-continental bureaucratese for Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s “kind perusal”, then it remains a substantive proposal made without committing India to honouring it.



THE NATION claimed, “It was days before the Mumbai blasts that Pakistan received a ‘non-paper’ on Kashmir from India containing the proposal of autonomy to Kashmiri people but within its Constitution.” It adds, quoting diplomatic sources in Islamabad, “The proposal on Kashmir’s autonomy calls for the return of the State to its pre-1953 constitutional condition, which means that all its affairs, sans defence, foreign affairs and communications, would be run by the State Government. Nonetheless, the deadly blasts in India’s financial capital changed the whole scenario with the ties between the two countries coming under duress reflected well by the expulsion of each other’s diplomats on Saturday”.



THE NATION further says, “In the non-paper India also offered to reduce more troops in Kashmir in case of end to subversive acts in Kashmir by the militants with the alleged support from elements across the Line of Control. Besides, New Delhi also expressed its willingness to set free the Kashmiri detainees not involved in terrorist acts.”



The paper said the Indian non-paper was in response to President Pervez Musharraf’s proposals with regard to demilitarization, self-governance and joint management of Kashmir to resolve the core issue on permanent basis. Had the July 11 Mumbai bombings not intervened, the ‘non-paper’ would have become the basis of further discussions between India and Pakistan. According to THE NATION, no discussions on the Indian proposals are likely in the months to come but if the peace process is put back on the track, it could become a basis for formal discussions on the Kashmir issue between the neighbours.



Political observers say if it could be true – India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who has been personally steering the so-called peace process with Pakistan and is given to coming up with “out-of-the-box ideas”, has offered to, no matter how informally, radically alter New Delhi’s terms of engagement with Srinagar. More importantly, he has offered to undo more than half-a-century of Jammu and Kashmir’s integration with the rest of the nation which has brought it within the ambit of the Constitution, rendering Article 370 more or less redundant. In other words, to reach a concord on the “core issue” as defined by Pakistan, he is willing to consider, ever so informally, cutting Jammu and Kashmir loose from the Union of India.