By starting to act against Hafiz Saeed's JuD, Pakistan has a chance to redeem itself and should not squander it

The end of the last millennium saw a flicker of rare peace between India and Pakistan. It was singular not just because it was brokered between a rightwing government in India and the Pakistani army but also because it came as a direct result of General Pervez Musharraf announcing that he would ban the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. The two extremist terrorist outfits had given India great grief and in the January of 2002, the Pakistani general was a man on a global public relations mission, shaking hands with then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and delivering fiery speeches proclaiming zero tolerance to terror. Until 2008, when the 26/11 attack took place, the India-Pakistan problem seemed to ebb away from collective consciousness, paving way for mutually beneficial trade agreements and even a nuclear meeting or two. [caption id=“attachment_4226407” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File photo of Hafiz Saeed, head of the Pakistani religious party, Jamaat-ud-Dawa. AP[/caption] A whip cracked on terrorism then had reaped benefits the world over. Today, with its purported crackdown on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa — an organisation founded and maintained by Lashkar-founder and 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed — Pakistan is once again presented with an opportunity to make good of its anti-terrorist agency. This is an opportunity it would do well not to squander. Universally rebuked Few governments have had to face global rebuke as sustained and as stern as the Pakistani government, especially in the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack by a Jaish-e-Mohammed suicide bomber, which killed 42 Central Reserve Police Force personnel. While avowed allies like the United States of America found little recourse but to condemn any role Pakistan might have played in harbouring terror elements, global terror financing watchdog Financial Action Task Force issued it a warning of blacklisting if immediate steps were not taken soon. The United Nations Security Council, a key member of which is China (Pakistan’s most loyal friend) has  also condemned Pakistan. With a constantly failing economy and having been directly dependent upon global aide for so long, Pakistan often finds itself pushed to the proverbial corner in the face of uninhibited criticism. Its every move is questioned, its most stirring rhetoric on terrorism draws skepticism . There is reason for this. In few countries would a declared terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head find it within himself to walk in and out of evening sermons, give interviews during house arrest, have terrorism charges withdrawn by his government, float his own political party and eventually contest for the prime ministerial elections in Pakistan in July 2018. Declared a terrorist by the UN, US and India for his involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, not only has Hafiz Saeed enjoyed shelter in Pakistan, but citing a lack of evidence, the Pakistani courts  also freed him after having detained him in 2017. [caption id=“attachment_6222981” align=“alignright” width=“380”] File image of Hafiz Saeed addressing a crowd in Lahore in 2016. Reuters[/caption] India had then sent dossiers of evidence against Saeed’s involvement in the attack that killed 174 people and injured more than 300, asking specifically why evidence gathered against him by the Federal Bureau of Investigation was also not included in Pakistan’s chargesheet, reported Moneycontrol. On the day, the country’s home department also announced that it would not to file any subsequent cases against him. Police guards stationed outside his house were removed and a large number of his supporters had gathered to celebrate the end of his house arrest. In his address to supporters from his Lahore house, Saeed vowed to mobilise people to take control of Jammu and Kashmir. Ambiguous no more? Pakistan’s line on Saeed has mirrored its current ambivalence on Jaish chief Masood Azhar, who is proclaimed as innocent one day, unwell on another and whose career carries no solid evidence to conclusively nab him. It is at this point that the attention being paid to Hafiz Saeed by the Pakistani government aims to break new ground in securing for itself its lost global repute. On 21 February, days after the Pulwama attack, the Pakistan government announced that it had banned the JuD and Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation. The move of sealing the Lahore headquarters of the JuD and FIF and detaining more than 120 suspected militants marked what many held as yet another one of Pakistan’s selfsame eyewashes. However, Pakistan soon followed up this decision with the even more significant step of barring him from delivering the weekly Friday sermon at the JuD headquarters. This would be the very first time in years that Saeed was present in the city but absent from the Jamia Masjid Qadsia. This is also keeping in mind that the popularity enjoyed by Saeed among sections in Pakistan is enormous. He is the vice-president of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, an group of more than 40 political and religious parties. Thousands of JuD volunteers helping with rescue work in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, the 2010 and 2014 floods, and the 2015 earthquake in Pakistan, have taken Saeed to cult status, making the current government’s move to corner him an ostensibly unpopular one on its own soil. Saeed then moved a proposal to be removed from the UNSC 1267 sanctions list of UN recognised terrorists. Significantly, Pakistan played the right cards here too, denying the visa requests of the team of UN officials who were to interview him in Islamabad. On 7 March, while addressing a press conference, Pakistan’s information minister Fawad Choudhury said a consensus had been built in the country over its attitude towards handling terror in recent days, reported Dawn. He noted that one of the fundamental bases for the plan was to take steps to ensure that Pakistan’s soil was not used against any other country. No small step for the Pakistani government, yet a giant leap for the country nonetheless.