The city of Lahore, gradually
but surely, has been changing its skin for the last several
months as the jihadi slogans and donation appeal campaigns
by the right-wing and jihadi parties littered on the walls
and thoroughfares have disappeared, making way for corporate
ads and city businesses advertisements.
But the government’s anti-jihadi campaign’s
message took its time to reach Lahore.
The jihadi organizations claim that the campaigns may
have been wiped off the walls of Lahore, but campaigns
to collect funds and jihad campaigns continue underground.
However, a senior city police official tasked with countering
jihadi activities claims the government’s vigorous
crackdown on these outfits has managed to rid Lahore of
its ‘jihadi face’.
“Still I can’t say that we have a permanent
solution at hand as these organizations keep resurfacing
again and again. But the major operational outfits like
Sipah-i-Sahaba, Sipah-e-Mohammad, Hizbul Mujajideen, Hizbut
Tehrir and Lashkar-e-Taiba have been dismantled and dispersed.
They are on the run and they can’t continue openly
what they have been doing,” said the police officer.
However, the religious organization that sponsor donation
camps and jihadi campaigns say that they are still doing
what they were doing and have only changed strategy. “If
someone thinks we have stopped, that’s wrong. We
have not budged an inch from our point of view on jihad
and Kashmir,” said Yahya Mujahid, spokesman for
Jamaatul Da’waa, formerly known as Lashkar-e-Taiba,
the banned jihadi outfit.
“All you can say is that we are keeping a low-profile
on our activities as the government has cracked down on
us, but we’ll never accept what is happening between
India and Pakistan,” said Mujahid. “Lashkar-e-Taiba
is being run by our brothers in Kashmir and they demonstrated
with attacks on the Kashmir bus that policy has not changed,”
added Mujahid.
“There is lot of support for Jamaatul Da’waa
here in Pakistan and we are sure that the momentum in
Kashmir will pick up,” said Mujahid. Jamaat-e-Islami’s
city leader Ameerul Azeem echoed these views. “We
have just changed our strategy from donation camps to
door-to-door campaigns. We still do the wall chalking
etc but the government’s crackdown makes us campaign
door-to-door. We won’t change our point of view
nor policy on Kashmir or jihad,” said Azeem.
Hafiz Riaz, a central leader of JUI (Fazl), another religious
organization that has never been involved in Kashmir but
led the resistance against Soviets and Northern Alliance
in Afghanistan, said that his group has never been involved
in graffiti nor donation campaigns for jihad in Kashmir.
However, Riaz tried to sum up the issue: “Look,
these campaign were run by government institutions and
now they are being closed down by the government itself.
So, what’s the big deal?”
