Pakistan Govt Yet to Ban JuD & FIF – Both Remain ‘Under Watch’
On 21 February, the Pakistani government had announced that it had banned the JuD and FIF.
Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its wing Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation have not been banned by Pakistan despite its announcement a fortnight ago and the two organisations continue to be only in the list of groups under watch.
According to the website of the Pakistan government's National Counter Terrorism Authority (NCTA), which was updated on Monday, 4 March, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) are organisations under watch by Ministry of Interior under Section 11-D-(1), Schedule-II of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.
The NCTA website says the notification regarding JuD and FIF, putting them under the list of organisations under watch, was issued on 21 February. However, before that, the website had said that both JuD and FIF were placed on the watch list in January 2017.
On 21 February, the Pakistani government had announced that it had banned the JuD and FIF, amid intense global pressure to rein in the militant groups following the 14 February Pulwama terror attack that killed 40 CRPF jawans.
A spokesperson of Pakistan's Interior Ministry had said on 21 February that the decision to ban these two groups was taken during a meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC) chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan.
"It was decided during the meeting to accelerate action against proscribed organisations," the spokesperson had said in a statement.
"It was further decided that Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation be notified as proscribed organisations by the Ministry of Interior," he added.
According to officials, JuD's network includes 300 seminaries and schools, hospitals, a publishing house and an ambulance service. The two groups have about 50,000 volunteers and hundreds of other paid workers.
The US Department of the Treasury has designated its chief Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, and since 2012, the country has offered a $10 million reward for information that brings Saeed to justice.
Saeed was listed under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008. He was released from house arrest in Pakistan in November 2017.
The NCTA has so far declared 69 terrorist organisations as banned and a sizeable number of these organisations are based in Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
The NCTA has turned a blind eye to major militant groups such as the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Al Badr operating in Jammu and Kashmir.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)