Lashkar-e-Taiba’s charity wing reaches out to Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine

 The Indian Express, New Delhi , December 11, 2017


The Lashkar-e-Taiba’s charitable wing, the Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation, has established operations reaching out to Muslim populations inside Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state, the organisation has claimed in propaganda material released online. FIF volunteers, the organisation has said, “distributed millions in cash money and blankets among more than 300 besieged Rohingya Muslims”.

The claim was backed by Bangladesh-based intelligence officials, who told The Indian Express that the group had been operating in refugee camps near the town of Cox’s Bazaar, with the help of local Islamist groups.
Shahid Mahmood, FIF’s head of foreign operations, said in an online statement that a relief convoy raised by the organisation had succeeded in entering Rakhine “in extremely risky conditions” — an evident reference to the illegal crossing of the Bangladesh border. He said FIF intended to “start its relief activities in all areas of Burma where Muslims are besieged”.
The FIF’s operations, a senior Bangladesh intelligence official said, “could mark a dangerous new phase in the Myanmar conflict”, where transnational jihadist groups become more heavily involved in the fighting, so far spearheaded by the poorly trained and equipped Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), also known as the Harakah al-Yakin.
Lashkar links to the Rohingya conflict are known to date back to at least 2012, when its chief, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, shared a stage with jihadist commander Abdul Qudoos Burmi. FIF operations in the region began when it built homes and a madrasa for a community of over 1,000 refugees in Indonesia.
“ARSA hoped it could overwhelm the Myanmar state using a few bombs and villagers armed with spades and sickles,” the official said. “That was a disastrous calculation, and now others from Pakistan are stepping in”.
Bangladesh had, in October, shut down relief operations among local Rohingya by two controversial international Islamic charities, Muslim Aid and Islamic Relief, as the local Fazlullah Foundation. However, the groups continue to be free to operate elsewhere in Bangladesh, raising concerns that groups like the FIF may be able to use their work as cover.
Myanmar’s military has long alleged that ARSA insurgents were trained in fabricating improvised explosive devices — used during its first wave of strikes on police and army outposts in August — by trainers brought in from Pakistan. In May, an IED accidentally blew up while al-Yakin cadre were gathered in Kyaung Taung, north of Buthidaung, killing seven men and their Pakistani instructor.
From August 25, ARSA’s cadre began human-wave attacks against over 30 police and military outposts, using WhatsApp messages and announcements by local clerics to mobilise villagers
Three days later, ARSA’s Pakistan-born, Saudi Arabia-raised leader, Muhammad Ataullah, also issued WhatsApp messages asking villagers to burn down ethnic-Buddhist villages, apparently in retaliation against attacks by vigilantes.
Police sources in Bangladesh say much of the FIF’s work in the Cox’s Bazaar area have centred around the Imam Muslim Islamic Centre, run by local cleric Hafiz Salahul Islam, the first military chief of an earlier Rohingya jihadist group called the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation.
Abdul Rehman, an Islamic Centre official on the run and a cleric handling finances arriving from the large Rohingya diaspora in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, was responsible for knitting together ARSA’s assault plans, the sources said. He, in turn, drew in a Karachi-based jihadist who used the name “Umar Farooq”.
Facing sanctions from the United Nations and the United States, the FIF’s continued operations inside Pakistan have led to intense pressure on Pakistan’s banks and financial systems. In March, Pakistan’s State Bank, the equivalent of India’s Reserve Bank, is scheduled to make a presentation on action it has taken to deny the FIF and other sanctioned groups access to the banking system, or risk being blacklisted.
x

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

India Joins Russia in Voting Against West-Backed Move to Expand Powers of OPCW

The Wire: June 28, 2018 New Delhi: India voted against a UK-backed move that will allow the global chemical weapons watchdog to apportion blame for illegal attacks, criticising the decision to grant “unchecked powers” to the head of the group which could be used for “partisan” purposes. On Wednesday, more than two-thirds of the member states of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) voted to authorise the international body to identify the perpetrators and sponsors of a chemical weapons attack. It also specifically called on the OPCW’s technical secretariat to begin work on identifying the perpetrators behind the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The draft decision, sponsored by 30 countries, was adopted at the fourth special session of the conference of the states parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention at the Hague, with 82 in favour and 24 negative votes. While Europe, the United States and their allies voted ‘yes’, there was strong oppo...
Read more

As financial insecurity rises in urban India, so does investment in insurance

Image
Scroll.in March 13, 2020 Urban Indians are becoming less confident about their financial security. Up to 58% of them fret over financial independence post retirement, which is a 4% increase from last year. An equal share of urban Indians worry about meeting their daily medical expenses and sustaining their current lifestyle once they stop working. The findings are part of a survey published by Delhi-based Max Life Insurance in association with London-based consultancy Kantar. The firms surveyed 7,014 respondents in 25 cities, including six metros, nine tier-1 cities, and 10 tier-2 cities, between December 2019 and January 2020. Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz The trends Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz A significant share of urban Indians also say their families will have no financial support in the event of the breadwinner’s death. In such a scenario, around 57% believe the family sav...
Read more

ED tracks Swiss Bank A/Cs of Agusta scamster

The Poineer February 10,2019 Rakesh K Singh The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has tracked a dozen Swiss bank accounts in the name of Rajiv Saxena, who is key accused in the Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam. The ED has also found out accounts held by  his family members and associates where the kickbacks in the now scrapped deal were allegedly parked. Two bank accounts are in the name of Rajiv Saxena’s  associates Pankaj Jain and Sumita Jain who are also the authorised signatories. The  third is in the name of another associate Ajit Singh Bubber, but Rajiv and his family members are authorised signatories. The remaining nine accounts are largely owned and operated by Rajiv, his family members and associates. Rajiv Saxena was deported by the UAE authorities on January 30 and the ED formally arrested him the next day and a court later granted his remand to the agency. He is currently undergoing custodial interrogation by the ED. The agency had in 2017...
Read more