A BANNED jihadi charity accused of links to November’s Mumbai attacks has resurfaced in north-western Pakistan, where it is running an extensive aid programme for people fleeing the fighting in Swat.
The Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) offers food, medical care and transport to villagers fleeing into Mardan district, where authorities are faced with an influx of more than 500,000 people.
But the charity, according to experts, officials and some of its own members, is the renamed relief wing of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a group the Pakistani government banned last December after the UN declared it a terrorist organisation. Jamaat-ud-Dawa is considered to be the public face of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group accused of orchestrating the Mumbai attack on hotels and cafes that killed at least 173 people.
The Pakistan government declared a crackdown on Jamaat-ud-Dawa, closing dozens of offices and arresting its leaders, but during the past 12 days its volunteers have re-emerged under their new name.
The first relief camp is outside Sher Gur in Mardan, just a few hundred metres from the border with Malakand, the mountainous area comprising Swat, Dir and Buner where the fighting is concentrated.
On Tuesday evening, a stream of trucks, tractors and rickshaws, all loaded with war-weary refugees, was met by roadside volunteers offering water, fruit juice and plates of steaming hot rice.
The vehicles were marshalled into the camp by a bearded man waving a black-and-white flag depicting a long sword and the Kalma, the Islamic article of faith – the same as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa standard.
Also present was Hafiz Abdur Rauf, the head of the FIF and the former head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s welfare wing. In a rare interview, he described the charity’s programme.
The group’s 24-hour kitchens had fed 53,000 people in roadside camps and in schools where people were living, he said. A fleet of 23 minibuses transported victims from the battle zone, while seven ambulances took the injured to hospital.
It offers to pay bus fares for people fleeing to cities such as Lahore and Karachi, and is organising emergency lodgings in madrasas for those staying behind. It plans to build two tented camps for 3,000 displaced families in the coming month.
At a traffic junction, bearded activists manned a fundraising tent festooned with FIF signs and the group’s distinctive black and white flags. “Stop the killing of Muslims,” read a sign in Urdu, with blood dripping from its letters.
“The old name was Jamaat-ud-Dawa; this is the new one,” said Amjad Ali, a 34-year-old trader who described himself as a spokesman. He said the organisation was led by Hafeez Saeed, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa emir currently under house arrest.
“Most of my colleagues are from Jamaat-ud-Dawa,” he said, adding that it had 80 volunteers in Mardan district. – (Guardian service)