Banned Pakistani group Jaish-e-Mohammad draws followers to mosque

Karachi: The leader of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), one of Pakistan's most feared militant groups, recently drew hundreds of followers to the Batha Mosque.

Although JeM has been banned in Pakistan since 2002, local police officers joined mosque guards in cordoning off the garbage-strewn dirt lanes surrounding the mosque and providing security for the rally.

"They had metal detectors checking people going in," said Ali Khan, 27, who works at a barber shop about 50 yards from the mosque's white iron gate.

Jaish-e-Mohammad is being scrutinised by US and Pakistani investigators for a possible connection to Faisal Shahzad, the 30-year-old Pakistani-American accused of attempting to detonate a car bomb last week in New York City's Times Square.

Pakistani authorities arrested at least four suspected JeM members in Karachi this week, including Mohammad Rehan, who in July allegedly drove Shahzad to the northwestern city of Peshawar, the gateway to the country's Taliban-filled tribal border areas.

In light of the Shahzad case, the United States probably will push Pakistan to clamp down on groups such as JeM that harbour bitter hatred for the United States and have begun to establish links with Al Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan's record in enforcing its ban on militant groups has been poor, Pakistani analysts said.

In Karachi, banned militant groups routinely dispatch workers to mosques where they have strong followings to pass out jihad pamphlets and compact discs, said Raza Hasan, a Karachi-based crime reporter for Dawn, a Pakistani English-language newspaper.

"Authorities have not come down hard on Jaish-e-Mohammad or any of these banned outfits," Hasan said.

"They seem to lack a policy."

If there has been a policy, it has been one that publicly condemns certain militant groups while discreetly allowing them to function under the radar.

To facilitate their operations, some extremist organisations have created humanitarian front groups with different names that raise funds for building schools and health care clinics.

What's not known is how much of that money gets channelled to militant activities.

"Usually when the government bans these militant groups, they suddenly start welfare work," said Yousuf Khan, an analyst.

"During the earthquake in Kashmir in 2005, Jaish-e-Mohammad began helping people and rebuilding. That's their technique: to become philanthropic and get sympathy."

Still operational

Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group alleged to have engineered the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people, is banned in Pakistan but continues to operate under the banner of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which runs hospitals and schools in Pakistan.

Although the West regards Lashkar-e-Taiba as a terrorist organisation, the group's founder, Hafiz Saeed, moves freely through Pakistan and periodically delivers sermons at a mosque in Lahore.

US officials and others in the West worry that Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba may be operating training compounds in Pakistan's volatile tribal belt along the Afghan border. Experts doubt that the Shahzad case will prod Pakistani authorities to crack down on those groups.

"I'm afraid it will be life as normal," said Khan.

"There is a lot of sympathy among many in law enforcement for these people. You cannot wipe this out."

It is widely believed that Pakistan's intelligence community helped form Jaish-e-Mohammad in the mid-1990s to battle Indian forces in the Indian-administered section of Kashmir.

Later, however, the group widened its mission, training thousands of recruits to fight US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.