Hafiz Muhammad Saeed
For the umpteenth time, the Lahore High Court sends free Mohammed Hafiz Saeed, founder of Lashkar-i-Toiba terrorist organization, and head of his political-humanitarian wing, Jamaat-u-Dawa, who recruits men for the jihad throughout the subcontinent.
The move was, on the other hand, predictable, only a matter of days since Washington, on Pentagon pressure, unveiled part of the so-called 'new strategy' for the region and issued a decree which is a masterpiece of hypocrisy : Pakistan has had renewed a seven hundred million dollar loan to be disbursed in two tranches.
The first to be given immediately, the second when they will prove to have undertaken unspecified 'concrete actions' against the Haqqani network. At first the decree spoke of 'Haqqani and Lashkar-i-Toiba', but the organization guilty of organizing the 2008 Mumbai massacre has magically disappeared in the final ratification.
So, the man on whose head is pending a ten-million-dollar bounty is still free to stay at home. Stay, and not go back, because in any case Hafiz Saeed has never spent a day in jail in his life and the locks around the chalet where he lives are constant: to keep the curious out of the place, rather than to hold him in.
In the justifications of the release sentence, the High Court explicitly states that Hafiz Saeed is released because sending him home and free to go on with his terrorist activities is no longer a detriment to the state's finances and political relations.
Immediately after the verdict, Pakistan's most famous red beard promptly appeared on television, to thank the judges of the High Court and to reaffirm its firm intention of continuing to fight for the freedom of Kashmir.
Trying of course to reiterate the narrative that Washington seems to be sticking to: LiT is an indian problem and campaign for Kashmir freedom only. Nothing more far from reality: Lashkar-i-Toiba in fact, unless the Haqqani, has a global jihad project declared and written in its own manifesto. Lashakar-i-Toiba, and not the Haqqani, recruit jihadis in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, just to mention few countries.
Lashakar-i-Toiba, unless the Haqqani, sent off fighters in Bosnia, Chechenya, Syria, and in every corner of the world where a war is fought. To state implicitly that LiT is only about India while the Haqqani are an international problem because they work in Afghanistan, means not only to continue the dumb theory of good terrorists but to create more and more solid ground for future trouble.
