Pakistan’s Big Risk

When a devastating earthquake shook mountainous Kashmir in October 2005, killing 80,000 people, burying entire villages under landslides, one of the first and best-equipped relief organizations on the scene was the Jamaat-ul-Dawa charity. It brought in physicians, surgeons and nurses. It set up emergency surgical and first-aid clinics. It pitched tents to house the homeless and distributed food and medicine to tens of thousands. It stayed behind and helped to build some 5,000 permanent homes for the displaced.

It's no wonder that Jamaat was able to react so quickly. Kashmir has long been a recruiting and training ground for Jamaat's other face—the Islamist, anti-Indian Lashkar-e-Taiba guerrilla organization, which both Indian and U.S. intelligence have singled out as the planner and organizer of last month's murderous Mumbai attacks. Lashkar's main aim is to wrest the Indian sector of Kashmir from New Delhi's control through violence.

Today Islamabad took the extraordinary and surprising step of banning Jamaat from Pakistan. Police quickly closed dozens of Jamaat's offices across the country, including nine in the sprawling port city of Karachi, the country's largest. The government also issued an arrest warrant for the Jamaat's amir, or supreme leader, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who is based at a mosque and madrassa complex in Lahore. "We are required to take action against Jamaat and its leaders under the Security Council resolution," said Sherry Rehman, the information minister told NEWSWEEK.

In a startling admission for a Pakistani leader, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said today that his government was investigating links between Jamaat and Lashkar, and admitted that "the two groups have the same leadership." This is the first time any Pakistan leader has acknowledged the link between the two groups.

The crackdown is the Pakistani government's most serious action taken against an extremist organization since soon after 9/11, when it banned Lashkar. It could be a dangerous gamble for Islamabad. Many Pakistanis, who may be sympathetic to Jamaat and its charitable works and therefore willing to overlook its association with Lashkar's gunmen, could oppose the government's iron-fisted policy. Islamist groups and the religious parties will no doubt try to organize public anti-government and pro-Jamaat organizations. The group's suppression may also drive many of its adherents underground where they could hook up with still-active Lashkar operatives and begin a violent action against the government.

Pakistan's move against Jamaat comes after weeks of pressure on Islamabad by India and the United States. Jamaat's top operatives, such as Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, one of Lashkar's founders, recruited, trained and controlled the 10 gunmen who carried out the killing of more than 170 people in Mumbai, according to Indian and U.S. intelligence. Pakistan at first firmly denied that any Pakistanis were involved in the massacre, but this week, as evidence of Lashkar's involvement mounted, the government belatedly took action against the Lashkar-Jamaat combine. It started by raiding a riverside Jamaat madrassa complex near Muzaffarabad last Sunday. After a brief firefight it arrested Lakhvi and several other key Lashkar leaders.

That move was not enough to satisfy New Delhi and Washington. To increase the pressure, a United Nations Security Council committee on Wednesday declared Jamaat a terrorist organization and slapped it with U.N. sanctions, including the freezing of its assets, a travel ban on its members and an arms embargo on the organization. On Thursday, to ramp up the pressure, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte arrived in Islamabad on Thursday on the heels of Condoleezza Rice and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen. Sensing that further resistance could seriously damage relations with Washington, Pakistan launched what appeared to be a nationwide crackdown on Jamaat and its leadership.