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Shafiq Mengal- State Sponsored group went rouge and became LEJ-A

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Let's start with excerpts from a Dawn Article


Where he earned laurels for his decisions for taking the fight to the terrorists in Fata and also in Karachi deservedly, there are areas left still untouched that are crying out for some sort of policy-change manifestation.

Whenever the issue of free rein given to jihadi groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad is raised, security experts with intimate knowledge of the security establishment’s thinking say that since these groups have never threatened or attacked Pakistani forces they are not a priority.



Fair enough. But at the same time it should be made abundantly clear to these groups that the days they were seen as a tool of national security policy are over. Any solo flights in terms of militant activities anywhere else will also invite the wrath of the state.

Even then, what continues to worry me about the perceptions that guide policy over such groups is, for example, what has become of the Baloch Musallah Defai Tanzeem led by one Shafiq Mengal. This group is said to have enjoyed the confidence of the FC-led Balochistan law and order set-up and, alongside the paramilitary force, was seen as being in the vanguard of the fight against Baloch separatists.

The group seemed to have complete freedom of action and nobody bothered when red lines were crossed as long as its targets were those seen as hostile to the state. But who was looking when other scores, including personal and sectarian, were settled?

Eventually, when the state tried to rein it in as the first hint of policy change emerged, the group’s leader went rogue. In the past months, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi al-Alami and Daesh have claimed responsibility for attacks on the lawyers and the police training centre in Quetta and, more recently, at the Shah Noorani shrine in Khuzdar. Shafiq Mengal’s name is being mentioned as being a part of this grouping.

Along with focusing on the threat to our eastern frontiers and along the Line of Control, the incoming chief will also have to focus attention on this issue. Those responsible for the murderous attacks in Balochistan claim to be based in Afghanistan.

http://www.dawn.com/authors/966/zahid-hussain


Now an article from Local balochistan newspaper, according to which, Shafiq Mengal returned from Syria in September 2016 after spending 3 months there and is openly recruiting people for ISIS


feature_1455904563shafiq_magall.jpg
Sep 16, 2016, 1:50 pm



خضدار(سنگر رپورٹ) ڈیتھ اسکواڈ سرغنہ شفیق مینگل کی تربیت یافتہ داعش کا خود کش بمبار گرفتار، گزشتہ روزایک نجی ٹی وی چینل نے ایک خود کش بمبار کے گرفتاری کادعوی کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ مذکورہ خود کش بمبار نے اعتراف کیا ہے کہ بلوچستان میں شفیق مینگل کے تربتی کیمپ میں انکی ٹریننگ ہوئی ہے اور وہاں پر داعش میں شمولیت کی۔واضح رہے کہ گزشتہ تین ماہ سے شفیق مینگل کو نہیں دیکھا گیا جو اچانک دو ہفتہ قبل واپس اپنے علاقے میں دیکھے گئے،اہم ذرائع کے مطابق شفیق مینگل اپنے دیگر چھ ساتھیوں سمیت براستہ افغانستان سے ہوتے ہوئے شام گئے اور وہاں باقاعدہ داعش کے اعلیٰ عہدداروں سے ملاقات کی اور کچھ وقت گزارنے کے بعد دیگر چھ شام کے اہم کمانڈروں سمیت واپس اپنے علاقے میں آ گئے ہیں۔خضدار،وڈھ،باغبان، ناکولیان،جیوا میں مزید کیمپ قائم کر کے خود کش بمبار تیار کیے جا رہے ہیں،علاقائی ذرائع کے مطابق شفیق مینگل کے لوگ کھلے عام عرب داعش کے لوگوں کے ساتھ علاقوں میں تبلیغ کر کے لوگوں کو داعش میں شمولیت کی دعوت دے رہے ہیں

http://dailysangar.com/home/page/2730.html#sthash.ZO891H14.dpuf
 
One name that frequently appears in official conversations about the camp and the graves is Shafiq Mengal. He was first mentioned by one of the seven eyewitnesses who testified before Justice Meskanzai in Khuzdar on February 13, 2014. The witness said he had evidence that his brother, whose body was among those recovered from the Tootak graves, was abducted by Shafiq Mengal.

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An official displays evidence at the site. — Photo by Fahim Siddiqui/White Star
The son of Naseer Mengal, a former federal minister, Shafiq Mengal set up a pro-government tribal militia known as the Baloch Musallah Difaee Tanzeem, in the latter half of 2008. The original mission of the militia was to defend the local population in the Mengal-dominated Khuzdar, Wadh and Awaran areas of central Balochistan against attacks from Baloch separatist militants. But it soon degenerated into a death squad, killing people for political as well as non-political and tribal reasons. The high court lawyer, who accompanied Justice Meskanzai on his visit to Tootak, tells the Herald that Shafiq Mengal is considered a “pawn set up by the intelligence agencies to counter Baloch militants in the province”.

Shafiq Mengal first appeared in Tootak in November, 2009, when he lured a few activists of the separatist Baloch Student Organisation to the area with the promise that he would organise the broadcast of nationalist songs there to create awareness about separatism among the local people. To gain the confidence of the local population, in 2011 he renamed his organisation the Haq Na Tawar — which means the Voice of the Truth in the Brahvi language, the mother language of most people in and around Tootak. All this was a decoy to spot, abduct and kill separatist activists, say government officials.

By then, Shafiq Mengal had also shifted his base to Tootak. It was around this time that pro-separation graffiti first appeared in the area, say local sources. “Until then, it was a place where people had no idea of, or interest in, the ongoing separatist movement,” says the lawyer.

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Recovered bones are pictured near the mass graves discovered in Khuzdar. — Photo by Fahim Siddiqui/White Star
Shafiq Mengal, whose mother is the first cousin of Sardar Ali Ahmed, the head of the Qalandrani tribe in Tootak, and owns land in the area, soon fell afoul of his mother’s tribesmen who were unhappy with his activities. The Qalandrani chieftain first accused Shafiq Mengal of the abduction of his three sons — aged 31, 22, and 16 — in 2011. By the end of that year, 17 of Qalandrani’s relatives had gone missing. The last of them – a 22-year-old – was abducted from Karachi’s Gulshan-e-Maymar area.

Shafiq Mengal, who comes from an influential and educated family, dropped out from Aitchison College in Lahore, and later attended a Deobandi madrasa. A high court lawyer based in Khuzdar claims that Shafiq Mengal has been involved in providing protection to many Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives in Balochistan and that he has worked closely with the avowedly anti-Shia Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. “He works as their subcontractor,” he said.

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Officials unearth bullets in what they suspect was a secretarian militant camp in Tootak. — Photo by Fahim Siddiqui/White Star
Shafiq Mengal’s long-time tribal and political opponent, the former chief minister Akhtar Mengal, who heads the Balochistan National Party–Mengal (BNPM), also accuses him of killing several of BNPM workers in Wadh and Khuzdar. The Musallah Difaee Tanzeem, indeed, openly claimed responsibility for many of these murders. A BNPM official based in Khuzdar says that Shafiq Mengal and his men have adopted a two-pronged strategy in the area. “They are either killing people for their political or ideological affiliation or they are kidnapping people to demand a heavy ransom,” he says. But their brutal control is absolute. A station house officer in Khuzdar was brazenly killed when he tried to register a case against Shafiq Mengal for the September 2013 kidnapping of Manaf Tareen, a senior Quetta-based doctor, says the BNPM official. All this bloodshed has put immense pressure on the government to put an end to Shafiq Mengal’s activities, and the sudden interest officials are showing in the Tootak graves is a means to contain him, says the Khuzdar-based lawyer. Otherwise, he says, the discovery of mass graves is not an unusual incident in the area. “Qalandrani tribesmen have been reported in a Quetta-based newspaper as saying, again and again, that there are mass graves in other areas as well,” he says. But nobody has taken note of those graves. Deputy Commissioner Shah is highly circumspect. He does not reject or confirm any theory about the mass graves. “What I know is that we are trying very hard to bring transparency in the way we work. Considering the environment around us, that is a huge feat in itself,” he says.

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Rangers are pictured collecting evidence from the site. — Photo by Fahim Siddiqui/White Star
Jan Mohammad Bulaidi, the spokesperson for the Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, says the provincial government is playing an active role in investigating the Tootak mass graves because it “wants to bring out the facts before the public.” He says the judicial tribunal has been set up because the whole episode is shrouded in mystery. “Things that happen openly don’t need tribunals,” Bulaidi says, when asked why the government has not set up any judicial tribunals to investigate the killing of Hazaras in the province.

He refuses to comment on Shafiq Mengal’s role in the mass graves, but adds that some political parties are “trying to politicise the matter of the graves”. By pointing out that there has been a steep decline in the killing and dumping of nationalist activists over the last few months, Bulaidi seems to suggest that the provincial government has been able to rein in intelligence agencies and death squads run by people like Shafiq Mengal. “You should notice that for the fourth month in a row, not a single political activist's body has been found in the province."


http://www.dawn.com/news/1094180
 
LEJ (Any faction) was never patronized by the state, it was and continues to remain a top target. Don't believe in DAWN, they always toe a pro Tehran line as well as the narratives of a certain religious sect i won't name here.
 
LEJ (Any faction) was never patronized by the state, it was and continues to remain a top target. Don't believe in DAWN, they always toe a pro Tehran line.

Dont confuse two separate issues. Shafiq Mengal was heading a state sponsored group 2-3 years back, FC raided his house and tried to rein into his group. Shafiq went rouge and undergorund and became a chief patron for LeJ and attacks on Shia. Since his trip from Syria, he is spreading ISIS ideology now in balochistan.
 
Dont confuse two separate issues. Shafiq Mengal was heading a state sponsored group 2-3 years back, FC raided his house and tried to rein into his group. Shafiq went rouge and undergorund and became a chief patron for LeJ and attacks on Shia. Since his trip from Syria, he is spreading ISIS ideology now in balochistan.

I am not confirmed that whether Shafiq Mengal went rogue or not.

But this is a truth that state is complacent in handling ASWJ or LeJ inside Baluchistan and we are yet to see a strong concrete action against them in Baluchistan.
 
A more detailed article on the involvement of "State" in Balochistan and promoting rogue groups for vested interest.
http://daleel.pk/2016/10/29/13721

Dont confuse two separate issues. Shafiq Mengal was heading a state sponsored group 2-3 years back, FC raided his house and tried to rein into his group. Shafiq went rouge and undergorund and became a chief patron for LeJ and attacks on Shia. Since his trip from Syria, he is spreading ISIS ideology now in balochistan.
Shafiq Mengal is not the first and nor the last story of asset going rogue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyas_Kashmiri
 
What is the hard evidence to back it up? - Just because DAWN an agenda driven newspaper is saying so doesn't automatically turn it into a fact does it?

Dont confuse two separate issues. Shafiq Mengal was heading a state sponsored group 2-3 years back, FC raided his house and tried to rein into his group. Shafiq went rouge and undergorund and became a chief patron for LeJ and attacks on Shia. Since his trip from Syria, he is spreading ISIS ideology now in balochistan.
 
What is the hard evidence to back it up? - Just because DAWN an agenda driven newspaper is saying so doesn't automatically turn it into a fact does it?

Who financed Musala baloch tanzeem in their fight against Separatists and give a free pass to them to operate ?. This group has a FB page where they flaunt their weapons and strength.

If that is not enough for you, then nothing can convince you otherwise.
 
Who financed Musala baloch tanzeem in their fight against Separatists and give a free pass to them to operate ?. This group has a FB page where they flaunt their weapons and strength.

If that is not enough for you, then nothing can convince you otherwise.

By that definition we might soon end up even brandishing "Aman Committees" in the same very category.
 
Well all are responsible for this. Both military establishment and civilian government ruling this country and that province.
The question is that who is doing it willingly and who is being made complacent? Dumping claim isn't gonna help the cause. How Dr Malik's attempts to bring militant groups into national stream were systematically sabotaged, is a clear evidence.
 
The question is that who is doing it willingly and who is being made complacent? Dumping claim isn't gonna help the cause. How Dr Malik's attempts to bring militant groups into national stream were systematically sabotaged, is a clear evidence.

Well his efforts were also sabotaged by PML(N) who removed him to replace him with his shitty feudal CM.
 
Then howcome we see almost daily surrender by "Ferrari" in large numbers if his attempts were sabotaged?
Ferrari camps are maintained by small ghundas around. Ferrari camps are mostly maintained by lords who use this labor for mineral extraction. If you'd remember, Pakistan couldn't even send supplies in BRA controlled areas when earthquake hit Balochistan 2-3 years ago. The BLA, BRA are a frenchise like Taliban. People use them. And now its more than just BLA/BRA in Balochistan, its much worse.

Well his efforts were also sabotaged by PML(N) who removed him to replace him with his shitty feudal CM.
:lol: okey I see the refuge now. If the process had Establishment's equity, it would have continued, No?
 
Lashkar jhangvi has been used in Punjab to execute political opponents as well. that's the reason why rangers were not given permission to conduct a Karachi style operation in Punjab
 
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