"The shackles of slavery in Kashmir will be broken," Hafiz Saeed told a packed mosque in Karachi last month. "Jihad won't stop even if we are martyred. [Others will] carry on our mission. "Muslims and Hindus can never live like brothers."
Saeed officially quit the leadership of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba movement some weeks before it was outlawed last year. But he and his followers say they have regrouped under a new name Jamaat-ud-Dawa. They are holding rallies, preaching Islam and running schools and hospitals. The Indian army blames Lashkar-e-Tayyaba for much of the violence racking Indian Kashmir and claims that recruits are still creeping across from Pakistan. Jamaat leaders defiantly tell their followers that the Government cannot prevent them going to Kashmir to support a "legitimate freedom struggle".
Another group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, has renamed itself Khudam-ul Islam, saying it is preaching Islam and doing social work. Its leader, Masood Azhar, one of India's 20 most-wanted men, was released from house arrest in Pakistan this year. A third group, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, has been renamed Jamiat-ul-Ansar and says it has a non-militant agenda.
Sources within the militant groups say that Pakistani authorities closed training camps in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir last year under intense US and Indian pressure. "We faced a massive crackdown last year when Musharraf banned jihadi groups," said a former member of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in
Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. "Our members were arrested, offices were sealed and camps were shut, forcing us to change our strategy."
But the crackdown made little difference. "We have scores and scores of trained and motivated volunteers ready for jihad. Raising manpower is not a problem," said a member of a banned group, who requested anonymity. "Despite the ban, there is no dearth of money… the people who know us give us donations anyway."
India accuses Pakistan of engaging in a proxy war in Kashmir, by sponsoring "cross-border terrorism". New Delhi vowed to deal strongly with Islamabad after the massacre of 24 Hindus in that region. Pakistan says it only provides moral, political and diplomatic support for an indigenous freedom struggle in Kashmir. Its officials claim that one cannot detain people indefinitely without proof of their involvement in violence and that it is easier to keep track of these groups when their leaders are free.
But critics like Afrasayyab Khattak, Chairman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said the contradictions inherent in Pakistani policy are unsustainable: "The state should not allow non-state factors to use its territory against any country, nor should it allow private militias. This is a big contradiction threatening the country from inside. Pakistan cannot co-exist with militancy."
