Lashkar front encashes Eid, makes millions from hide
ASSOCIATED PRESS LAHORE, NOVEMBER 24
MILITANTS in Pakistan are going to reap a cash bonanza worth millions from selling skins of animals slaughtered on Eid al-Adha, a Muslim sacrifice day, with hundreds of thousands of dollars expected to reach a group linked to the 2008 Mumbai attackers, according to an ex-member of the group and leather industry workers.
Vo lunteers for Jamaat-u-Dawa, suspected of having served as a front for the group behind the Mumbai attacks, were collecting bloodied skins across the country after this year’s Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice. Their work shows the deep roots it and other banned groups have in Pakistan.
Militants behind attacks in Pak
istan and across its borders get funds from extortion, drugs, kidnappings and donations from foreign sympathisers. But some of the money comes by way of charities, including those collecting hides to raise funds. Over this year’s holiday, which fell last week, Pakistanis killed around 5 million sheep and goats and 1 million cows, according to the country’s tanners association. The skins are of no use to those who kill the animals, but are snapped up by tanneries. The sale of skins in coming days will account for around 45 per cent of the needs of Pakistan’s leather industry this year, the tannery association said.
Militant groups are not the only ones to benefit from hide sales.The leading hide collector in Karachi, the country’s largest city, is its ruling party. Another major beneficiary is a cancer hospital for the poor run by Imran Khan, a cricketer-turned-politician.
Extremist groups typically run seminaries that have thousands of children who can go door-to-door to collect them from people happy to have them taken from their front porch, according to former JuD spokesman Abdullah Muntazir. “These are the people whom I trust and these are the people who do the best work for charity,” said Illahi Shaikh, as he directed a team of butchers cutting up his two cows outside JuD’s mosque in Islamabad. “So what if the US calls them terrorists, I don’t care,” he said.
The UN’s listed JuD as a terrorist group after the Mumbai attacks, saying it believed it was an alias for Lashkar-e-To iba. Islamabad initially moved against the group. But the group has since scored wins against the government in court.
In Islamabad alone this year, the group collected 2,500 skins on the first day of the three-day holiday, members of the group at the Quba mosque said. Agha Saiddain, from the Ta nners Association, said JuD was the fourth largest beneficiary, with the Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami the No 1 earner.
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