Islamists fish in troubled Pak waters

Five years after Islamist charities aided victims of a deadly earthquake in Pakistan,earning massive goodwill as the government struggled to respond,the same scenario may be unfolding again....

Five years after Islamist charities aided victims of a deadly earthquake in Pakistan,earning massive goodwill as the government struggled to respond,the same scenario may be unfolding again.

Charities,some with suspected ties to Islamic militants,have stepped in to provide aid to Pakistanis hit by the worst flooding in memory,which has killed over 1,500 people and displaced over a million. The charities and the militants whom they are suspected to front could gain support if the relief efforts pay off,as they did after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake that killed 75,000 people.

We have lost everything. We only managed to save our lives. Nobody has come to us, said Mihrajuddin Khan,a school teacher in Swat Valley. We are being treated like orphans,animals.

Salman Shahid,spokesman for the Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation,believed to have close ties with the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Lashkar-e-Toiba,said they had set up 13 relief and six medical camps,and a dozen ambulances were providing emergency treatment. Several other Islamist groups are also helping with relief.

Were very much there. Were the only group that is providing cooked food to trapped people and those lying on roadside, Shahid told Reuters from the groups headquarters in Lahore. Our volunteers are evacuating people.

Huma Yusuf,a columnist for Dawn,told Reuters it is very likely that they the Islamists will exploit the governance vacuum in the wake of this tragedy to fuel their own recruitment. The failure to govern in times of crisis breeds conditions that allow extremism to thrive, Yusuf wrote in her column Sunday. Few can forget that8230; the governments failure to cope with immediate relief efforts in 2005 created a vacuum within which Jamat-ud-Dawa pulled off its greatest publicity stunt8230; The consequences8230; are obvious today in the support and influence that the organization enjoys.

Riffat Hussein,a defence expert at Quaid-e-Azam University,decried the governments total paralysis in the face of tragedy. What we have seen is the governments almost total paralysis and they have not been able to mobilize the resources, Hussein said.

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Last year,when up to 2 million people were displaced by fighting between the Pakistani Army and the Taliban in Swat valley,Falah-e-Insaniyat and several other Islamist groups provided food,medical care and transportation to those in need,in the absence of effective aid from the government. Swat is now one of the areas hit hardest by flooding.

PTI reported that a spokesman for the militants,Muhammad Umer,had sent an e-mail to news organisations announcing a ceasefire in flood-affected areas. We are announcing a temporary suspension of mujahideen activities in the flood-hit areas to give another opportunity to people to seek forgiveness, PTI quoted from the email.