Banned group helping out Pakistan refugees

MARDAN – A banned charity with alleged links to the Mumbai terror attacks is helping people fleeing the fighting between the Pakistani military and the Taliban, group members said yesterday, raising questions about the government’s pledge to crack down on the organisation.

Around 2 000 former members of Jamaat-ud-Dawa are handing out food and transporting refugees at three centres, said a member of the group, which is using the new name Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation but the same logo as the outlawed group.
The offensive against Taliban insurgents in the Swat Valley area has driven at least 800 000 people from their homes, with 80 000 staying in several camps south of the battle zone. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told Parliament yesterday that it was the largest internal displacement of Pakistanis since the country’s creation in 1947.
‘They are sacrificing for the future, and every Pakistani is ready to help them,’ he said of the refugees.
The military claims to have killed about 800 militants in the operation so far, including 54 announced yesterday. Troops have fought their way to within six kilometres of Swat’s main town, Mingora, spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said. Nine troops also died in the previous 24 hours, he said.
The offensive is shaping up as a major test of the Pakistani army’s often questioned commitment to uprooting the insurgency gnawing away at the stability of the nuclear-armed, pro-Western state, but the exodus could undercut support for the fight.
The US and the UN say Jamaat-ud-Dawa is a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group accused of planning and carrying out last year’s attacks in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai, which left 166 people dead and hundreds more wounded.
The government launched a crackdown on Jamaat soon after the attacks, arresting several of its leaders, seizing its assets and closing its branches. Jamaat denied having any links to Lashkar, which in turn denied involvement in the attacks. – Nampa-AP