How many people do you think are colluding to save one Hafiz Saeed?
Must be a heck of a lot. You actually make the argument that he is only involved in charitable work. Fine ! Why, in that case is he advocating war and a few days ago - Jihad against India ?
Since a lot of you keep calling this Indian propaganda, let me give you a very un-Indian source. Here's an article from Newsweek quoting Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, the U.S. State Department's top counterterrorism official :
The Next Al Qaeda? - Newsweek.com
Some excerpts:
For some analysts, LeT may be an even greater threat than Al Qaeda because of its technological sophistication, its broader global recruiting and fundraising network, its close ties to protectors within the Pakistani government, and the fact that it is still a less high-profile target of Western intelligence. Since about 2003 its fingerprints have been found on anti-Western attacks and plots from Afghanistan to Iraq, Dhaka to Copenhagen. And the choice of targets in LeT's most spectacular operation to datethe carefully choreographed November 2008 assault on Mumbai, including luxury hotels popular with Western travelers and a Jewish centerhave been cited by Blair and other top U.S. officials as a sign of LeT's increasing interest in attacking the West. "In Mumbai the targets they went after were the targets of the global jihad," says terrorism expert and former CIA officer Bruce Riedel. Shortly after Mumbai, Pakistani authorities arrested alleged LeT communications specialist Zarar Shah and reportedly discovered on his laptop a list of 320 potential targets, most of them outside India. They included sites in Europe, says a Western intelligence official.
As further evidence of LeT's increasingly global agenda, U.S. authorities point to the case of David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani-American living in Chicago who was arrested in October for allegedly conducting surveillance on behalf of LeT for the Mumbai attacks. (He has pleaded not guilty.) Investigators say he and LeT had another plan as well: attacking the offices of the Danish newspaper that had run a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. Reportedly acting on information provided to the FBI following his arrest, authorities in Bangladesh late last year picked up a number of LeT operatives whom they believe were preparing to attack the American and British embassies in Dhaka. "Very few things worry me as much as the strength and ambition of LeT, a truly malign presence in South Asia," Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, the U.S. State Department's top counterterrorism official, told reporters in January, after the Dhaka plot was uncovered. To Riedel, the plot against the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka shows that "we are now at war with Lashkar-e-Taiba." And in February a previously unknown faction of LeT claimed responsibility for the bombing of a café in Pune, India, that was popular with foreign tourists and expats. Before Mumbai, Western intelligence officials say, LeT had seemed careful to avoid killing foreigners in India. Now, as in Mumbai and Pune, the group seems committed to "internationalizing" even its Indian attacks.
LeT's roots date back to the guerrilla war against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Among its founders was Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian who, along with Osama bin Laden, formed the influential Afghan Services Bureau, a precursor to Al Qaeda. Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, LeT sent its militants to fight in the Tajik civil war as well as in Bosnia. But it found its first real calling in the violent uprising against Indian rule in Kashmir.
Pakistan's formidable spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, eagerly backed LeT, among other proxies in Kashmir, with money, weapons, and training. LeT headquarters in Muridke was set up on 77 hectares of land donated by the Pakistani government. Its construction was funded by many of the same Saudi moneymen who financed Al Qaeda. To this day, analysts say, some in the Pakistani military regard LeT as an important reserve force that could be unleashed in the event of a conflict with India.
It's not clear when LeT began plotting against Western targets, but its grudge against the West is longstanding. LeT's philosophy is similar to other Pan-Islamic jihadi groups, including Al Qaeda, but with a uniquely Pakistani twist. It wants to establish a Muslim caliphate across South Asia, re-creating the dominance of the 17th-century Mughal empire. In addition to being virulently anti-Jewish, LeT is rabidly anti-Hindu. It blames British imperialism and the West for what it perceives as the weakness of Pakistan, and Muslims in South Asia generally. In its official literature, the group has called for the "reconquest" of Europe, which it claims was once in Muslim hands but was stolen away by Christian Crusaders.
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, one of LeT's founders and its top spiritual leader, has repeatedly proclaimed that the Western world "is terrorizing Muslims." "We are being invaded, humiliated, manipulated, and looted," he told a Pakistani newspaper in 2003. "How else can we respond but through jihad?" He has urged his fellow Muslims to "fight against the evil trio: America, Israel, and India." As recently as this past spring, his son, Hafiz Talha Saeed, had publicly preached that it is the duty of every Muslim to wage jihad against Jews and Christians wherever they are.
..........If Pakistan is reluctant to go after (or allow the U.S. to go after) Al Qaeda in the border regions, it is less eager to go after LeT's base in the Pakistani heartland. Unlike Al Qaeda, LeT has a large charity arm that is popular in both Punjab and Kashmir, where it runs schools, an ambulance service, mobile clinics, and blood banks. It earned tremendous good will in Kashmir for providing humanitarian assistance after a devastating earthquake in 2005. Moving against it could provoke serious civil unrestor even civil war. LeT and the Pakistani Army draw many recruits from the same poor Punjabi areas, often from the same families. LeT's humanitarian wing worked alongside the Pakistani military to help civilians displaced during the Army's campaign to retake the Swat Valley from the Taliban. Zarate describes Is-lama-bad as being in "a delicate dance with a Frank-enstein of their own making" when it comes to LeT. He says that many Islamabad officials realize that the group has become a liability, but want to avoid provoking LeT into turning on the state.
Even without direct attacks on the West, LeT could deal a severe blow to Western interests.
Few believe New Delhi would allow another major attack from a Pakistani-based group to pass without a military response. And any conflict between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan has the potential to spiral out of control. Even a limited Indo-Pak conflict could have severe effects on the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. Nearly 80 percent of supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan are offloaded in the Pakistani port of Karachi. An Indo-Pak war would also distract Pakistan from pursuing the Taliban. One solution, then, is for the U.S. and its allies to move more aggressively to ferret out and dismantle LeT cells located throughout the Pakistani diaspora.
since 'charity' beging at home, the terrorist saeed should do some of that at home too.
