US helpless to stop J&K infiltration

Author: PTI
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 8, 2003
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=36785738

Despite agreeing with India that cross-border infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir has again increased after a temporary drop in June last year, the US finds it "increasingly difficult" to reconcile with Pakistan's support to terror due to its cooperation in US-led war in Afghanistan, a leading American newspaper reported on Saturday.
 
Pakistan's longstanding support for those it considers "freedom fighters in Kashmir has proved increasingly difficult to reconcile with the US-led global war on terrorism," the Washington Post daily reported.
 
It said "Indian officials regularly argue to their US counterparts that Pakistan is on the wrong side of that war."
 
The report said that a year after President Pervez Musharraf announced a ban on Muslim extremist groups, several of the organisations have been reconstituted under different names and are raising funds and proselytising for jehad against India and West, the paper said.
 
Over the past few months, the Post noted, leaders of four groups banned by Musharraf have been released from house arrest or jail.
 
One of them, Hafiz Sayeed of Lashkar-e-Taiba, has been travelling around the country to whip up enthusiasm for renewed attacks on Indian forces in Kashmir. He has addressed about 100 gatherings in last two months to "educate people about the virtues of jehad," according to an aide who spoke on conditions of anonymity.
 
Pakistani authorities have also released almost all of the hundreds of militants detained after Musharraf pledged on January 12, 2002 to dismantle extremist groups, the daily said quoting Pakistani officials.
 
Pakistani officials acknowledge that jehadi gropus are reorganising and donation boxes for the supposedly outlawed organisations have reappeared in mosques and public places. The resurgence of jehadi groups, several of which have been tied to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, has caused deep concern among Western diplomats, who say it holds the potential of renewed confrontation between India and Pakistan, and calls into question the depth of Musharraf's commitment to the US-led war on terrorism.
 
"At one point I think the government was very seriously committed to reining in (the hard-line religious parties opposed to Pakistan's cooperation with the US and which are conducting the jehad against India)," said a Western diplomat on condition of anonymity. "Now I think the commitment has probably flagged."
 
The Post said Pakistan maintains a lenient attitude towards groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad.
 
"Trained and supplied by Pakistan's Inter-Services agency, these organisations have long been regarded as an instrument of State policy. The government has used them to 'bleed' India, with its vastly larger military, as a means of applying pressure for a negotiated settlement of the Kashmir issue," it said.
 
The Musharraf government, it points out, has allowed considerable latitude for militant leaders who were supposed to have been reined in. Even during their detention, Sayeed and two other leaders -- Masood Azhar of JeM and Fazlul Rahman Khalil of Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin -- stayed in ISI safehouses, where they were permitted visitors and the use of cell phones, according to statements filed by their relatives in court proceedings related to their cases.
 

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