At first sight, they could be the grounds of an English public school, with neatly trimmed lawns and earnest young pupils walking between classes. But this is the site that India believes is the headquarters of the terrorist group responsible for last week’s Mumbai attacks.
Boarding houses provide spartan accommodation, and orderly rows of trees line the sprawling site, just outside the eastern city of Lahore. Smartly turned-out pupils perform science experiments in the classrooms, peering into microscopes and connecting electric circuits. There is a farm, a swimming pool and a hospital.
India, and some Western terrorism experts, believe this is the headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Islamist group suspected of carrying out last week’s Mumbai attacks. But according to the organisers of a tour of the site on Thursday, it is simply the educational and charitable arm of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, an Islamic group that is legal in Pakistan but declared a terrorist organisation by the US.
Following Pakistan’s ban on Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2002, it is widely believed to have morphed into Jamaat-ud-Dawa, though the two claim to have no link.
The campus, set in countryside at Muridke, an hour’s drive from Lahore, is the place that India would be likely to target if it took retaliatory military action over the Mumbai attacks.
”This is a residential and educational complex,” said Abdullah Muntazir, Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s spokesperson, taking journalists around the Muridke site on Thursday in a media charm offensive launched by the group. ”You can see for yourself. This is all Indian propaganda.”
”Jamaat-ud-Dawa speaks up very loudly against Indian conspiracies; we let the public know that India is the real enemy. That’s why they always point at us.”
The carefully orchestrated visit took foreign and local journalists around the beautifully equipped school and hospital. The school follows the national curriculum, the headteacher, Rashid Mehnaz, said, taking pupils from around the country. The poor were given financial help, with richer pupils paying fees.
Mehnaz condemned violence, saying suicide attacks were ”absolutely wrong — it is forbidden in Islam”.
A press conference and sumptuous lunch was laid on for journalists. However, the madrasa, mosque, and other facilities remained out of bounds, and once the official tour was over the media were no longer welcome. Although the group had said anyone was welcome to look around the site at any time, the Guardian’s attempt to take up this offer after the tour was met with a heavy-handed response: burly young men arrived on motorcycles and circled, demanding that we leave.
Given the attention that has suddenly been focused on Lashkar-e-Taiba, and on to the complex at Muridke, the invitation to visit may have been arranged after a prod from the Pakistani authorities.
Certainly there were plain-clothed officials present, who said they were members of ”special branch” — often a euphemism for the Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency. They wanted to provide an armed escort back to Lahore, but why intelligence agents were there — and why an escort might be necessary — was unclear. Muridke is not in a dangerous part of Pakistan, and the offer was declined.
It has long been said that the ISI has secretly backed Lashkar-e-Taiba, though the agency always rejects the accusation.
”The Indian media is creating a hype, but I don’t think they’ll bomb us,” said Muntazir. ”If they did, it would be up to the government of Pakistan and the armed forces to deal with it.”
He said Jamaat-ud-Dawa was a peaceful group, but it had ”supported” Lashkar-e-Taiba until that organisation was banned. He said that ”morally”, they still backed those who were fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Taiba is the leading such group.
”The [Kashmiri] freedom fighters are doing their job very well. Their cause is just,” said Muntazir. ”But I can’t speak on behalf of Lashkar-e-Taiba.” — guardian.co.uk