Is Pak crackdown on Jamaat an eyewash?

Deception Game Of Pakistan
Just days after launching a crackdown on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) after the UN banned it, Pakistani authorities have released four detained workers and removed police guards deployed at the home of a senior leader of the organisation. It has also been learnt that the main complex JuD is still open, casting a fair amount of doubt that Pakistan is not sincere about cracking down on the terrorists and that the clampdown is merely a hogwash.

Authorities in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir released the four detained workers of the Lashkar-e-Taiba's front organisation and also withdrew police guards posted at the home of the group's regional head, Maulana Abdul Aziz Alvi.

Chaudhry Imtiaz, the Deputy Commissioner of PoK capital Muzaffarabad, told the Dawn newspaper that police guards had been removed from Alvi's residence but he had been asked not to leave the area without informing the administration. Alvi, who heads the PoK chapter of the Jamaat, was put under house arrest in his Karyan village on Thursday.

"He had been placed under house arrest for security reasons. He is still under surveillance and cannot leave the station without prior intimation to the authorities concerned," Imtiaz said.

He said four people taken into custody from a workshop run by the JuD in Muzaffarabad had been released because they were "merely mechanics". Imtiaz said there were no instructions from the federal government to detain the "regional or second-line leadership" of the JuD.

Meanwhile, the Times, London, reported on its website on Monday that the main complex of JuD in Muridke is still open after the UN Security Council placed the group on a terrorist list.

Pakistan claims that it ordered the closure of JuD's facilities on Thursday under pressure from India and the United States. But when the Times visited the complex in Muridke, 30 miles from the eastern city of Lahore, over the weekend it was functioning normally with no sign of any police presence.

Most of the 1,600 students at the complex were away for Eid holidays
, but a dozen or so staff and about 40 others were moving freely around the buildings, none of which was sealed. Mohammed Abbas, 34, also known as Abu Ahsan, the administrator of the complex, said: "We've not had any official communication about closing. A lot of parents have been calling, afraid that it will be closed or there could be some violence, but we are telling them to send their children back."

The half-hearted raid is certain to feed scepticism about Pakistan's supposed crackdown on the movement, which is led by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the founder of LeT.