With pressure mounting oncfrom all quarters to act against terror modules, the website of Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) — the parent organisation of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) has been shut. The JuD portrays itself as a charitable organisation.
Security experts, however, say this is no assurance that it is the end of the terror outfit that has almost always resurfaced with a different name.
The JuD traces its origin to 1981 when it was started under the name Markaz al-Dawa Wal Irshad (MDI) (The Centre for Religious Learning and Propagation) by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed along with Zafar Iqbal and Abdullah Yusuf Azam.
A senior IPS officer, who has been monitoring LeT said, “Each time they are forced to shut, they crop up with a different name and operate with impunity under the guise of a charitable organisation. We cannot ascertain when front organisations like Jamat-ud-Dawa would crop up again.”
Saeed, sources say, had used the MDI as a platform to raise the anti-India rhetoric in as early as 1986. It, initially, ran a website under the name www.markazdawa.org. When the US mounted pressure on Pakistan post the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and imposed sanctions on MDI, the website was shut down.