Hafiz Saeed, an albatross around Pak’s neck

Sankar Sen
Senior Fellow, Institute of Social Sciences

Hafiz Saeed has become an albatross around Pakistan’s neck. The Pakistan army and the ISI have so long been using him in their covert proxy war operations against India and whipping up anti-India hysteria inside Pakistan. Now, under international pressure, Pakistan has been forced to arrest him. His arrest took place on the eve of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to the US. President Donald Trump has in his tweets claimed credit for Pakistan’s belated coercive action against Hafiz. He has said that considerable pressure had to be exerted on Pakistan to find him and placing him in custody. 

This claim is factually wrong. Hafiz was not hiding, he was stomping across Pakistan and spewing venom against India in his meetings and seminars. The Pakistani authorities were aiding and abetting him. 

The charade of arresting and releasing Hafiz Saeed has been going on for a long time. He has been detained a number of times earlier too by the Pakistani authorities in response to international pressure and then released by the courts. On one occasion, the Chief Justice of Lahore High Court, Khawaja Sharif, remarked in court that “Saeed could not be called a terrorist for killing Hindus because Hindus are responsible for terrorising by occupying Kashmir.” (Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan). 

This mockery of justice is going on since 2001 when Saeed was arrested for the first time for the attack on Indian Parliament. Again, he was put under house arrest after Mumbai terror attacks, but later released on orders of the Lahore High Court. The US Department of Treasury has declared Saeed as a ‘specially designated global terrorist’ and offered a reward of $10 million for information that brings him to justice. 

Hafiz has been charged by the US and India for his links with terrorists and masterminding the Mumbai carnage. The vast network of Hafiz includes hundreds of seminaries, schools and hospitals. The front organisations of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF), have, according to sources, more than 50,000 volunteers and hundreds of paid workers. 

To cap it all, he also runs stealth courts, in violation of the constitution of Pakistan, and decrees punishment. According to a press report (News, April 9, 2016), these courts operate throughout Pakistan and only the Lahore court of the parallel judicial system issued verdicts in as many as 5,500 cases, which include cases of murder. It has a vast religio-political training complex at Murdike, near Lahore, and receives huge donations from Arab businessmen. LeT activists earned public plaudits during natural calamities like the earthquake in Kashmir in 2005. 

Hafiz Saeed constitutes an important element in the calculations of the Pakistan army and the security establishment. The deep state categorises all armed militants in Pakistan into three groups: the first group that constitutes threats to Pakistan, the second group that poses threats to Pakistan and the US and the third group that poses threats to the US and India. Hafiz Saeed belongs to the third group. 

In the estimate of the army and the ISI, this makes him a valuable asset and a suitable horse to be backed. Moreover, the army feels that he is patriotic and in the event of American withdrawal from Afghanistan (which now appears imminent), Hafiz will be needed in pacifying the militants now fighting in Afghanistan, and, if necessary, to direct them against India to Kashmir and keep Pakistan out of turmoil. 

Christian Fair, in her book Fight to the End, refers to the 2005 manifesto of the LeT, which acknowledges support and encouragement of the Pakistan army. Army generals fear that an all-out confrontation with the LeT will drive their thousands of adherents to the arms of Pakistani Taliban and trigger serious turmoil, as happened earlier with some of the disgruntled outfits of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi that set Pakistan in flames. The army loathes to take that risk. 

Now, at last, Pakistan’s moment of truth is coming, under pressure of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which last year placed Pakistan on the grey list of countries exercising inadequate control of moneylaundering and terror-financing. It threatened to put Pakistan on the blacklist if it did not significantly improve its efforts to control terror-financing. It will be a perilous situation for Pakistan, which is already facing a serious financial crunch, if it is blacklisted. The FATF has demanded not cosmetic but credible and irreversible actions against the terrorists. 

It remains to be seen what Pakistan now really does. It has initiated a number of cases against Hafiz and his aides for terror-financing. Pakistan is now in a bind. It seems it will be difficult for Pakistan this time to hoodwink international agencies like the FATF by cosmetic methods. Pakistan is on the road and seeks international aid for its collapsing economy. 

Pakistan’s all-weather friend China has not been of much help in this regard. But now it finds itself between the devil and the deep sea. Prime Minister Imran Khan, after his warm meeting with President Trump, has said that Pakistan will firmly control the armed militias but it will be difficult for Pakistan to completely disown Hafiz Saeed, nurtured by it for so long. 

First, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa has an extensive network in Pakistani diaspora. The Pakistani authorities fear that if they seriously attempt to suppress the group, it will launch successful terror attacks in the Panjab province. Moreover, LeT members have contacts with Al-Qaeda and in the past, they have helped Al-Qaeda operatives escape after their defeat in Afghanistan, and given them shelter in Pakistan. Stephen Tankel writes in Storming the World Stage, “Lashkar is after all a jihadi organisation, with a long history of waging pan-Islamic campaigns. Kashmir may be the group’s primary target but never been the apotheosis of Lashkar-e-Jihad.”

The ISI has tried for the political mainstreaming of Hafiz and the LeT. This endeavour has not been very successful. Further, there is danger inherent in political mainstreaming of terrorist organisations. The LeT has a record of waging pan-Islamic campaigns and members of the group have participated in terror plots in Europe, North America and Australia. The move may backfire. Earlier, the government of Nawaz Sharif was in favour of dumping Hafiz, who, it felt, constituted a threat to society. But the army opposed it and viewed him as an ally in its proxy war. 

This is going to be an uphill task. But if Pakistan tries to adopt kid-glove methods in dealing with some terror groups, it will strengthen international misgiving, as the Dawn has said in its editorial (July 21) that Pakistan is selective in dealing with the terrorists. 

Imran Khan has said that his government is determined to get rid of terror groups, and blamed the previous governments for giving them a long rope. But for achieving this, Pakistan has to close all avenues that have so far enabled the terror groups to circumvent the ban on their activities. We are keeping our fingers crossed.