Pakistan is making a big show of its “crackdown” on Jamaat-ud Dawa, the charity that serves as a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. The government claims to have rounded up scores of members and closed multiple offices since the United Nations declared the group behind the Mumbai attacks a terrorist entity and named four senior leaders terrorists. But if Pakistan’s detention of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Jamaat-ud Dawa and Lashkar-e-Taiba, is any indication, the crackdown is far from serious. The New York Times reports on the details of Saeed’s so-called “house arrest.” It turns out that Saeed is neither confined to his home, nor under arrest.
A few miles away, in Mr. Saeed’s leafy neighborhood, it was a decidedly more relaxed scene. Several dozen policemen ringed the area around his home, standing casually with rifles and enforcing a house arrest that seemed more of a forced vacation. Two heavily bearded workers from Jamaat-ud-Dawa arrived with food, and the police raised the barricades and allowed them through, choosing not to inspect their Suzuki truck. Mr. Saeed’s relatives have been allowed to come and go freely from the home, policemen said. A young boy and a girl standing on the second-floor balcony of Mr. Saeed’s home looked down at the police and smiled. One local police commander, seeing journalists arrive, rushed over and proclaimed that Mr. Saeed was confined inside his home, banned from going outside now or at any other time. Almost on cue, Mr. Saeed emerged moments later from the mosque across the street, clad in a green jacket and a cream-colored shalwar kameez, the long tunic and baggy pants that Pakistani men commonly wear, and ambled back to his house. “No, no, it’s not Hafiz Saeed,” the embarrassed commander said, though it clearly was. “I’m just following instructions,” he added.
Pakistan’s defense minister freely admitted the crackdown on Saeed’s terror group occurred not because Pakistan has tired of the group’s activities, but because the government was concerned it would be labeled a terrorist state and suffer from UN sanctions. “We are part of the international community and cannot afford confrontation with the whole world,” Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told the Pakistani press. Meanwhile, Saeed’s son openly threatened the Pakistani government with violence at a sermon in one of Jamaat-ud Dawa’s mosques.
Inside the mosque, Mr. Saeed’s 38-year-old son, Mohammed Talha Saeed, took his father’s place at the podium and inveighed against the government’s crackdown as the result of “dictation from the United States” and pressure from “Jews and the Hindu lobby.” “If the government continues this type of activity, then one day the army of God will come,” he lectured, urging the worshipers to remain patient.
