Quake-hit Kashmir Shining Example of Humanitarian Jihad

[sonz]

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, March 21, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Some seventeen Pakistani Muslim, some officially banned over alleged terror links, have been championing a "humanitarian jihad" to assist the survivors of last year's deadly Kashmir earthquake.

"We work with all the international NGOs. They can see that we are not killers," Mohamad Shafiq, who directs the Kashmir operations of the Al-Rashid foundation, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday, March 21.

"I do not say that all the Muslims are good, but the idea spread in West that all of them are terrorists is false. Our work here shows that."

The accounts of Al-Rashid foundation were frozen by the Pakistani government after it was added to a United Nations list of terrorist organizations.

Ever since, the foundation has had difficulty carrying on with its mission.

"Since that blow, we only operate with ready cash," explained Shafiq.

"The money is collected around the country and brought here by couriers. With our bank accounts, we could have done much more."

Nonetheless, the foundation figures prominently on a UN-drawn wall list of different groups' humanitarian activities in the various disaster sectors.

A powerful quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale killed more than 73,000 people in northwestern Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir.

It also left more than 3.5 million others homeless and destroyed entire towns across an area of 20,000 square kilometers.

In the first hours after the quake while the army was counting its dead, the Muslim groups were conducting systematic searches for survivors in the rubble of ruined buildings, according to Spiegel Online.

They seemed to be the only ones with a well-functioning network -- both in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani state of Azad Kashmir, and in the completely devastated settlements of Bagh and Balakot.

They set out on foot for villages that had been completely cut off from any aid by landslides.

They brought blankets and food, performed first aid and transported the wounded down into the valley.

Hand in Hand

Jamaat-ud-Dawa, allegedly the incarnation of the banned Kashmir group Laskhar-e-Taiba, was one of the first groups to lend a hand of assistance.

"There were more than a thousand of us in the area," Ghulamullah Azad, the group's Kashmir spokesman, told AFP in the courtyard of a country in Muzaffarabad.

"We had offices, doctors, volunteers," he said, adding the group "received reinforcements from all over the country."

The spokesman said they were working hand in hand with foreign NGOs.

"Our relations with the army and international NGOs are excellent."

He said his group distributed American assistance and had an American surgeon operating in the hospital.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawa spokesman asserted that the people appreciated their efforts.

"We are welcome everywhere. People thank us, listen to us," he added, smiling through his long black beard.

The Jamaat-ud-Dawa flag -- a saber and black bands -- flies above one of the refugee camps close to Balakot.

Assistance offered included tent villages, house renovation, construction of mosques, schools and a field hospital as well as caring for widows and orphans.

The group also offers free dispensaries and charge-free ambulance service.

If some, including among the highest Pakistani authorities, praise this work in the disaster zone, some fear that it only reinforces Islamist influence in the area.

"Should jihadi groups that have been active in relief work remain as involved in reconstruction, threats to domestic and regional security will increase," the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said in a report published on March 15 in Islamabad.

"As long as they don't arm themselves and recruit rebels, there isn't anything wrong with what they are doing," says General Shaukat Sultan, a spokesman for President Pervez Musharraf.

In a Jamaat camp in Balakot, a neighboring town which was 95 percent destroyed by the quake, 50-year-old Wali Alam agreed.

"That evening even, they were there, with pots of food. God bless them! I will never forget!"