Why Gilani is right on LeT

The US move to squeeze Pakistan by putting a bounty on Hafiz Muhammad Saeed must be used to its advantage by Pakistan.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani says that this is an internal issue for Pakistan. Arresting, prosecuting, or simply containing Saeed, does not concern the United States because Pakistan is equipped to deal with its citizens.

The question is: Has Pakistan succeeded? The answer is no. A recent editorial in the Daily Times explained why. Writing about the “November 2008 Mumbai bloodbath in which 166 people, including six American citizens, were killed”, the newspaper has this to say about Saeed: “His subsequent arrest and trial, however, yielded an acquittal from the Lahore High Court for lack of evidence. It is evident that our Courts’ hands are tied if no credible evidence or witnesses are available. The former may be difficult to obtain given that our sleuths are not renowned for competence and also because people of Hafiz Saeed’s ilk have powerful protectors and friends in the intelligence community, which sees them as ‘strategic assets’. The latter are usually too frightened, or frightened off by open threats from organisations wedded to extremist jihad”.

There is another reason for Gilani to consider when he is asked to do more with regard to Saeed. It can be argued that the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s (LeT) attacks on India damaged Pakistan more than they did India. After the attack on Parliament in 2001, India mobilised for war. President Pervez Musharraf was pressured to ban LeT and Jaish-e-Muhammad. Little benefit accrued to Pakistan from the event except a devaluation of its assets.

After the attack in Mumbai, the United Nations Security Council (under GA 9527, modifying resolution 1822) accepted India’s and the United States’ case that Hafiz Saeed and Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi were responsible for them and they were put under sanctions. The world stopped accepting Pakistan’s denials on the matter.

As strategy, such attacks are emotionally fulfilling but not effective. The idea that India was slapped by 10 men who kept its economic centre under siege for three days is satisfying to those who hate India. But other than killing some Indian women, children and men, this did not achieve much. Of course, it is valid to assume that the LeT saw value, including for propaganda, but the attack did not move it towards its goal. LeT’s goal is to free Kashmir from Hindu rule and have the crescent of Islam hoisted again on Red Fort.

I would say the attack made achieving the goal more difficult because it is the LeT that was squeezed after it, not India.

The benefit such assets bring to Pakistan is little compared with the cost they carry. Their actions are not effective for three reasons.

First, India’s economy has escaped the orbit of South Asia’s low growth curse. The LeT’s bloodiest attack could not change that. Second, Indians have a cultural ability (which Pakistanis also share), to absorb trauma. Traumatic events are episodic and put behind us more easily than by the West. Third, such attacks have failed to provoke communal rioting because there is a consensus that it is Pakistan that carries them out.

On Pakistan’s side, allowing space to the LeT has led to other problems. Saeed is the moving force behind Difa-e-Pakistan Council. This group has made parliament’s delicate job of repairing relations with the United States more difficult. There is a side to the Difa-e-Pakistan Council which is not about Hindus, Christians and Jews, but threatens Pakistan’s own communities.

For this reason Gilani is right about the Hafiz Saeed case being an internal issue, but only if he sees it in terms of both sovereignty, and as a problem.

The truth is that even if the US put the bounty on Saeed to please India, and I believe it did, the beneficiary will be Pakistan. If he cannot successfully prosecute Saeed, Gilani should use this opportunity to convince the army to shut the LeT down.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8^th, 2012.