Pakistan bans JuD, Haqqani network
Within 48 hours of US Secretary Of State John Kerry leaving Pakistan's shores, the government here banned 12 organisations, including the Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD), a front for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, as well as the Haqqani network.
India blames JuD chief Hafiz Saeed for the 2008 Mumbai attacks for which the UN had banned his organisation in December 2008.
The move is seen as part of its renewed anti-terror efforts in the wake of last month's Peshawar school attack. The decision also comes a day after the US State Department declared Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Mullah Fazlullah, sheltered in Afghanistan, a "specially designated global terrorist" on Islamabad's insistence.
Last year the State Department had named JuD as a "foreign terrorist organisation".
Fazlullah had claimed responsibility for the December 16 attack on the Army Public School, Peshawar, in which 150 people, mostly children, were mowed down in cold blood.
Amir Rana, executive director, Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, Islamabad, said the banning of an organisation means freezing of its assets, blocking of its funding sources and proper monitoring of its activities.
"In the next move, the offices, infrastructures and networks of the proscribed groups will be banned," he said. Pakistan was said to have taken over JuD's educational institutions and other properties after the UN ban.
"It's our first step towards execution of the National Action Plan. The nation will see more positive steps towards dismantling militant groups. Both civilian and military leadership decided to ban the Haqqani Network and JuD," The Express Tribune quoted a senior intelligence official as saying.
While JuD continues to operate openly in Pakistan, and its leader, Hafiz Saeed, holds public rallies and often gives TV interviews, the Haqqani Network, a yesteryear friend of Pakistan's spy agency, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), was using the tribal region of North Waziristan as its springboard.
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